The discussion revolves around the default frequency of Activity Summary emails in Discourse. markersocial suggests changing the default frequency to “default” for each individual account, allowing admins to control the frequency without affecting users who have set it to something specific. However, simon points out that a modal window appears when changing the default email digest frequency site setting, allowing admins to apply the change historically to all existing users, but with the option to only affect users who have not yet modified the setting.
simon further clarifies that this change will not overwrite the preference for users who have already modified it, which is confirmed by the relevant code on GitHub. markersocial and simon discuss the nuances of this behavior, with simon providing evidence from testing on his development site.
So the Activity Summary emails by admin settings default are weekly and each new account will have ‘weekly’ set as the frequency when created.
Adjusting the admin setting only affects accounts created after the change.
I think it would be better to have ‘default’ set as the frequency for each individual account. So unless they specifically change it to say, weekly, then the period used will always be the same as the current forum default.
Benefit would be allowing the admins to have more control over the Activity Summary emails frequency and allow adjusting it over time for the significant amount of users who use defaults. While not affecting users who have set it to something specific.
I might be misunderstanding what you are asking for, but when you change the value of the default email digest frequency site setting, a modal window should open asking if you would like to apply the change historically. If you select “Yes”, the change will affect all existing users.
Ah, that’s great! Thanks. I was unaware that this was added. The only minor difference, unless I’m mistaken, is that this will overwrite this preference for all users, even if they have modified it.
I am fairly sure that when the default email digest frequency site setting is changed and the option to apply the changes historically is selected, the digest frequency is only changed for users who have not yet modified the setting from their preferences page.
