Fresh unlisted topics get emailed to 'watch first post'

[Frully]

I think this is a bug related to behaviour that others have noted…
Situation: Have global notifications category that only admin/management can post in, set every user to watch first post to ensure emails go out. If I create a topic toggled as unlisted (from topic create, before it’s ever made public), it still sends email notifications. The goal is to have the team wiki the announcement before it’s published per se, but sending it out a rough draft is a bit annoying.

Alternatively we can have an editors category, then have someone move the completed topic to announce, but it seems like extra work for what should be invisible. (If intentional, then it seems to defeat the purpose of having ‘toggle unlisted’ in the topic create menu.

My searches:

The difference between Closed, Unlisted and Archived topics

How do “Archiving” vs. “Closing” a topic compare? Common to both Displays a “lock” icon next to topic in lists Disables replying to topic Disables “Invite” button at bottom of topic. Closing or archiving a topic does not bump its last activity date. Continues to allow flagging of topic or posts. Continues to allow bookmarking. Specific to Archived topics Disables users ability to delete a post. Disables likes. Disabled poll based voting (effectively closing polls). Disables display of top…

How unlisted should work

Unlisted topics get sent on mailing list mode

I created some posts using the Configure the Discourse RSS Polling Plugin guidance with embed unlisted set to true. In the end I decided not to have them initially unlisted - but I noticed that a user who has “mailing list mode” set got email notifications of each of the unlisted posts. I didn’t see it mentioned in What is the difference between Closed, Unlisted and Archived topics?

Someone else noting that mailing list mode sends unlisted

Unlisted topic updates go to "Send me an email for every new post" setting users

For instance if posts are being discussed like this where they need to stay private (although not guaranteed private of course if someone happened to have the link): https://meta.discourse.org/t/non-staff-receive-notifications-of-unlisted-topics/24276/7?u=jesselperry Of course emails should still go out to anyone that happened to have gone in & marked the topic as Watching or Tracking, but to receive email updates to a topic they otherwise never interacted with seems like a loophole to me.

Noting that ‘send me all’ gets further emails after a topic is unlisted.