How do I stop myself from receiving email notifications for my own posts in mailing list mode?

We’ve recently set up Discourse, and I’ve found that every time I reply to a new topic, I will receive an email containing my reply. This seems similar to Getting notification when you reply to a topic, though this topic does not discuss email notifications.
I feel like this is a bug as I know what I’ve just posted; I shouldn’t have to receive an email confirmation.

this should only happen if you have mailing list mode on

1 Like

Where would I find that setting? I can find nothing called ‘mailing list’ in my preferences or the admin section

Send me an email for every new post (unless I mute the topic or category) in your user prefs

Correct this only happens with that setting on, but would be nice to not receive still, if easy to implement.

The option is easy, just a question of what the default should be. I can always change it so we stop the echo and see if people complain.

Or maybe simply stop the “echo” for all posts that originated from mail.

Fyi the echo also happens if you post on Discourse - not only when you’re replying via email

So:

  1. Setting to receive email of every new post is on
  2. User posts on Discourse or emails in a reply
  3. Receives email of your own post :smile:

IMHO default should be no echo. There’s no usable purpose of it.

1 Like

The “echo” was added in for the mailing list nuts, I thought. “I need a local copy of everything”

Fine let’s remove it and see if anyone complains, PR please?

1 Like

Hi,

not really a complaint, but in fact it could be interesting to get an echo only for categories or threads that are watched, not the whole site, I know some people who only want to watch the category that interests them, but without necessarily muting all the other categories.

The main interest of echo is letting the first poster of a thread being able to reply to himself by email.

In discourse, all you need to do is go to your preferences and you will do the rest!

Unless I miss something, the options are

  • Send me an email when someone messages me
  • Send me an email when someone quotes me, replies to my post, mentions my @username, or invites me to a topic
  • Send me an email for every new post (unless I mute the topic or category)
  • Do not suppress email notifications when I am active on the site

So if you want to get notified of your own message initiating a new thread, you have to check option 3, am I right? Or is there a way to get echoed without having to watch the whole forum (I know we can mute, but it’s kind of violent, when you want to have more granularity on other categories you don’t watch)?

In fact, it’s not the echo by itself in which I’m interested, but about someone who initiate a thread and reply to himself:

Imagine you send to discourse+category1@blah.com a thread like

Need help with my helicopter
I have a probem, blablabla

Then you realize you forgot some informations, as you are in a mailing list, you can’t edit your message, so in a traditional mailing list you reply to yourself

Oh by the way, I forgot to say… it’s turning around and around

or

My bad, just forget it, it’s ok, it was the rotor

But if you do this, instead of replying to discourse+{threadkey}@xxx you in fact reply to discourse+category1@xxx with the subject “Re: Need help with my helicopter”

I’m not sure discourse is able to understand that it’s the same thread, it’s why I thought an echo may be necessary for people watching a category (maybe as an additional option)

Thinking about it, a perfect option with sub option would be;

  • notify my messages by email in categories or thread I watch
    – only when i start a new thread

This way ml users would have each thread in their mailbox, then able to reply without having to wait for another user reply, and without being polluted by lot of echoes, especially in Gmail conversation style.

1 Like

Are there plans to still remove this? Maybe add a sub-option ‘Apart from my own posts’?

I think having email alerts of your own posts will be off-putting and may lead to people just turning it off - which is a shame as I think it’s an excellent feature otherwise.

3 Likes

I know there have been much discussion about this issue (Here, and here for example) and it was apparently concluded as a wanted feature by most users.

I disagree however and believe discourse has an ever growing community of users who are non “mailing list” users and have no interest at all of saving an archive of all discussions on their mail client. For our own community it is mostly an annoyance for most users.
It would be great to have an option to opt out of receiving email for my own replies (especially when I reply from my email anyway).
I am completely with @AstonJ’s opinion and suggestion as well as many others who have also commented on it.

1 Like

I’ll add my voice here because I’m of the same opinion:

I want email notifications for every post (because I want to keep track of what happens on my low-traffic forum and to make sure questions are answered in a timely manner), except my own (for obvious reasons).

I haven’t found a satisfactory way to achieve this with Discourse yet.

2 Likes

Do you have Mailing list mode enabled? I don’t see any other reason why you would receive email notifications for your own posts. I certainly don’t.

Yes it was enabled, I just disabled it.

To be honest, I still believe the notification settings are needlessly complicated and confusing.

Can you please confirm that with the following settings:

I will receive notifications

  • for every new topic
  • for every new post in existing topics
  • for every mention and private messages
  • even if I’m currently logged in

except for my own topics and posts?

As long as you are Watching all categories, then yes.