The discussion centers on whether it’s possible to globally suppress a category from mailing list mode in Discourse. mcwumbly asks if categories hidden from the homepage for noise reduction can also be prevented from generating emails. cpradio suggests defaulting the category to “muted” for new users and applying that setting historically to existing users via a documented method. sam confirms this approach and expresses growing disdain for the “hide from home page” feature, arguing it removes user control and should be replaced with easier default mute options. Stephen warns that removing “hide from home page” would cause two clients to leave Discourse, as they rely on hiding WordPress-published stubs from appearing in the latest topics feed — a use case he acknowledges is sometimes misused but still valuable. In response, sam agrees that default mute should also apply to anonymous users, calling its current exclusion an oversight in design. The conversation reveals tension between usability, user control, and administrative needs, with a clear preference emerging for default mute as a more flexible and user-centric solution — though not without pushback from those dependent on current hiding features.
I’m wondering if there is a way to suppress a category from mailing list mode.
There are a few categories that we are suppressing from the home page for noise concerns and I’d like to also prevent them from generating emails.
Is there currently any way to do that?
You could default that category to muted for new registrations and then set it historically to muted for all existing users.
Just confirming what @cpradio said years ago, default mute is the way to go.
In fact as time has passed I have grown to hate “hide from home page” and think this is a feature we should drop in favor of easier ways of applying default mute historically.
With default mute every user gets some level of fidelity, with hide from home page users have no control.
If this ever happens I have two clients who will probably walk away from discourse. Hiding posts in those categories for anonymous and logged in users was absolutely essential.
They have WordPress publishing stubs into discourse but have zero desire for said stubs to ever appear in latest.
The feature definitely has utility, but is obviously misused.
imo, default mute should apply to anon as well, that is simply an oversight in our current design.