If someone has an email notification for a thread, they can easily reply and join the conversation without switching to a web browser. But what if they didn’t get the notification for whatever configured reason? Is there a way to jump into a thread via email alone?

Try setting the Category notification level to Watching First Post on the desired Category to receive the emails. Then reply to those emails.

But what if you don’t have the email already?

Not convinced you read my suggestion carefully enough. If you set that notification level you will receive emails for every new Topic in that Category regardless of your involvement.

Well, I read it again and I’m still not getting it. How does that help with a thread that was started when the user had that option turned off? I mean, short of having a time machine.

Oh sure you can’t go back in time. This will only work for Topics created after you set that and after 10 minutes of closing the browser window. I don’t think you’ll find any way of doing this without having received a notification you can reply to.

With a mailing list, you can join a thread by looking up the Message-Id in an archive somewhere and manually editing that in. But that’s pretty advanced and not accessible to typical users anyway. I guess with DIscourse at least they can start a new topic and the mods can move it to the thread if ap…

[image] mattdm: With a mailing list, you can join a thread by looking up the Message-Id in an archive somewhere and manually editing that in. By the time you’ve found the message ID on the internet you might as well reply on the internet too if the archive has that facility (which Discourse d…

The system uses reply keys. I don’t think you can spoof them and they are user specific: [image] Reply key / email address check not working? (replies by email) support Disabling that setting isn’t a good idea. Email addresses are always validated. Each reply key is bou…

Would it be possible for a plugin to generate and display the relevant reply key - perhaps incorporated into a mailto: link - beside each post? There could be separate “reply” and “quote” links. I’m not saying any of this is a good idea, but it would replicate some mailing list archive behaviour.

How can someone who wants to primarily interact via email join a topic in progress?

Support

merefield (Robert) December 13, 2020, 10:52pm 9

The system uses reply keys. I don’t think you can spoof them and they are user specific:

Topic		Replies	Views
Send by email a message to add it in a topic Feature email-in	0	496	October 3, 2022
Mailing list - to a topic Support	12	1131	May 17, 2021
Subscribe to a topic by email in a "watching first post" channel Feature	16	2557	November 22, 2023
Incoming email replies do not share the same topic Support email-in	6	170	December 9, 2025
Can I start a new topic by sending an email message? Feature	11	7130	June 27, 2017

How can someone who wants to primarily interact via email join a topic in progress?

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