Are you using a real user to send welcome messages?

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

I started off our new Discourse forum with me as the designated sender of the Welcome Message. I figured this would be a nice way to give the message a human touch, and I did indeed have a few pleasant exchanges, just like I had here here on Meta when I got my welcome message from @codinghorror

Problem is, I now have hundreds out outgoing messages crowding up my Messages. When I went there to find an exchange I needed to reference it was really difficult because all of the messages are titled the same as well!

I ended up doing the following:

1. Reset to default sender, i.e. @system
2. Give @system our default contact e-mail.
3. Set @system’s notification settings to send mail when being mentioned or receiving private messages.

Hopefully this works out.

Has anyone else encountered this problem? Did you take a different route?

[lisajill (Lisa Wess)]

I discovered this too. I wish that the PMs didn’t clutter up my inbox while still coming from me; and that the replies to that welcome PM still came to me. That’d be ideal, really, in our community.

[DeanMarkTaylor (Dean Taylor)]

I am using @system however for different reasons on one of my largest installations.

• image download event notifications are important to ensure the post still looks the way it should, those don’t make sense coming from a normal user, however they do from @system.
• technical issues are dealt with by myself and only technical problems, it makes no sense for me to be the replacement @system user as I do not handle community issues and I should not be sending the welcome messages.
• Usually nobody logs in as @system because there is no point to, we have separate representatives for community issues and it would make sense for one of them to handle it - but then as tech support I loose visibility of the other important events. Discourse - doesn’t seem to allow for this.
• Only one personal message to @system has been missed - although it was a surprise to find it.

This has perhaps lead to a couple of problems to do with important system event notifications not being received, as I would have expected these to be sent via email:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/download-remote-images-setting-reset-during-upgrade/20357

Disk space and backup failure notifications

It appears that one or more of the following are true: There are no backup failed notifications low disk space notifications failure notifications are not working I have recently experienced a disk space issue where Discourse was left in a Read-only state. Although backups had failed for a few days before this was the first time it was left read-only. I had received no notifications of backup errors or disk space issues at all. In addition I didn’t get any notification again of the “downlo…

This may have been due to me not having an email address set on the @system user.

I have recently added an email address to the @system user - hopefully this is part to do with the reasons these events have been missed.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

I agree this is annoying, however, note that search within your PMs works fine if you want to find a particular message. Try initiating a search from the messages tab on your user page – there is a checkbox for it – or view the search help.

Longer term we do need a way of segregating out all the thousands of welcome PMs…

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

As an addition, I also find it a bit weird that the Admin panel throws a warning when no user is set here.

Enter the name of a friendly staff user account to send important automated private messages from. Update site_contact_username in Site Settings.

Too strong of a message for an optional setting that is currently a bit rough.

[AdamCapriola]

My suggestion would be to not show the welcome messages in the sender’s PMs until there is a reply. (Filter it out from the message lists and counts until posts > 1.)

Is there any common scenario you’d want to see it otherwise? I guess it helps keep tabs on the latest users to join in case you want to reach out to someone you might already know, but that seems rare.

I changed my default sender to @system a while back because my inbox was getting crazy (I don’t know how you manage @codinghorror!) but am realizing that I’ve probably missed out on users replying to the welcome messages, which is unfortunate.

[daath (Lars)]

@codinghorror

Longer term we do need a way of segregating out all the thousands of welcome PMs…

Any idea when this is going to happen? My message box is pretty useless with 25000+ welcome messages I did succeed in finding a message a few times, but would be really cool if they could be hidden, somehow.

Or moved to @system (which in turn appears to be the specified admin) and replies goes to the admin specified…

[tobiaseigen]

I’d be satisfied with having a way to archive all these messages.. Eg have an inbox and archive of PMs. That way you look at them and move them out of sight when you’re done with them. When a reply comes in the messages move back to the inbox.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

This is resolved indirectly due to the last round of changes around group messaging and restructuring the user page that @sam did.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Yes, I plan to change it so all welcome messages are auto-archived, will get that change in this week.

Dealing with the history is a bit of an annoyance though.

[Falco]

@sam

Dealing with the history is a bit of an annoyance though.

Yeah, I have 110k users (auto created with the api, only 30k visited, 10k active) and my pm inbox is wasted

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

@Falco

my pm inbox is wasted

not your inbox … your “sent” folder, your inbox should be happy and dandy.

[tobiaseigen]

@sam

not your inbox … you “sent” folder, your inbox should be happy and dandy.

I am ing the inbox, sent and archive folders - yay! This will be a huge improvement. Nice work.

[alefattorini (Alessio Fattorini)]

@sam

Yeah, I have 110k users (auto created with the api, only 30k visited, 10k active) and my pm inbox is wasted

Please do it as soon as possible.. I want back my personal messages

[alehandrof (Alex Armstrong)]

So, what’s the situation with this currently? I’d like to send more human welcome PMs and was thinking of switching them over from a system account to me. What will happen to my poor sent folder?

[dax (Daniela)]

Before discobot, I used to send the welcome message from me instead system.

@alehandrof

What will happen to my poor sent folder?

Your sent folder will be full of welcome message, but fortunately, you will receive notifications only if a user reply or like the message.

[Brandon007 (Brandon)]

@erlend_sh

결국 다음과 같이 처리했습니다:

1. 기본 발신자를 @system으로 리셋했습니다.
2. @system에게 기본 연락처 이메일을 지정했습니다.
3. @system의 알림 설정을 멘션되거나 개인 메시지를 받을 때 이메일을 보내도록 변경했습니다.

정확히 어떻게 @system의 이메일 주소를 변경하셨나요?

제 경우 기본값이 no_email으로 설정되어 있고, 이 플레이스홀더 주소를 포럼의 연락처 이메일로 변경하려고 하면 작동하지 않습니다. Email 탭으로 가서 Skipped를 클릭하면 no_email이 유효한 주소가 아니라는 이유로 메일이 전송되지 않았다는 메시지가 표시됩니다.

현재 이메일 주소가 유효하지 않아서 새 주소를 검증할 수 없습니다. 이상하네요.

[Lilly (Lillian)]

시스템 프로필의 계정 설정(사용자 관리 화면이 아닌)으로 이동하면 시스템 계정 이메일 주소를 변경할 수 있다고 생각합니다. /u/system/preferences/account

[Brandon007 (Brandon)]

맞습니다. 제가 바로 그 부분에서 막혔습니다.

이메일을 변경하면 녹색 배경의 메시지가 표시되는데,

현재 주소로 이메일을 보냈습니다. 확인 지침을 따르세요.

라고 나와 있습니다.

하지만 저는 그 이메일을 전혀 받지 못했습니다.

그래서 Emails와 Skipped를 클릭해 보니, "To Address"가 "no_email"이고 "Skip Reason"은 다음과 같이 표시되어 있습니다.

501 5.5.4 Invalid TO: Missing domain

즉, 이메일이 "no_email"로 발송된 것입니다. 이는 기본값으로 설정된 주소를 변경할 수 없다는 뜻입니다. 하지만 분명히 이를 해결할 방법이 있을 것 같습니다.

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

이 방법을 사용해 Rails 콘솔을 통해 수행해 볼 수 있습니다 (먼저 백업하고, 한가한 시간에 실행하세요!):

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