Glad to be reminded of that setting. I enabled it to see how that feels.
I am actually looking for a user preference along these lines, so each member can decide depending on their own risk profile what they want to see in their email notifications.
AI-generated summary
tobiaseigen proposes a user-level preference for the private email setting, allowing individual members to decide how much content is included in their email notifications based on their personal risk profile. While the current admin-only setting prevents account enumeration and content leakage, mcwumbly requested clarification on specific use cases.
tobiaseigen elaborates that this feature would benefit privacy-conscious communities where users need control over insecure email channels. The proposal suggests mirroring the existing private email admin setting at the user level, potentially with a site-wide default for privacy-focused instances. Additionally, tobiaseigen highlights a critical compatibility issue: the private email setting currently breaks workflows involving staged users or group inboxes. When enabled, replies from staff to potential members do not send standard email exchanges but instead generate obscure notifications directing users to visit an invite-only site they cannot access, hindering onboarding efforts.
Let us know what you think once you get a feel for it.
Can you share a bit more about what you mean here? Are there a few scenarios you know of or that you could imagine that would help illustrate?
Just realizing I never hit send on this reply. I am back again because I now have some more context, and another reason to hope something is done here.
I am seeking to use Discourse to work with people and organizations who have varying risk profiles, which they need to assess for themselves. I also have joined some communities recently where members have to take some care to keep their online activities private.
Email is not a secure communications channel, as we all know. And some people might like to have some control over email that is delivered to their own inboxes. So the idea here would be to provide a setting to adjust this.
I realize this is a bit hard to do on a per-user level given that Discourse is a community platform and different people on the same site might assess their risk profile differently. But a user preference to limit what is sent to their email is a step in the right direction.
It could be the same as the private email admin setting, but on a per-user basis. And on a site (like mine) that is privacy conscious, it could be set to be enabled by default.
The new problem I have today with the private email setting is that it is not compatible with staged users. I have a group inbox similar to the Discourse @team group inbox, to allow people to reach me directly by email.
When I reply I want those emails to be sent to them as usual, and then allow them to have an email exchange with me. Then if and when they join the community they have access to the history and we can keep the conversation going.
Currently with private email enabled that is not possible.. instead they get the rather obscure looking notification with a prompt to visit the message on the discourse site, which they cannot do because it’s an invite only site.
