Mailing list features

You are definitely not alone. I think there are two main reasons why it still takes some effort to figure out if and how to use Discourse as a mailing-list replacement:

  1. this feature is still very much under development
  2. although discourse can in many circumstances replace a classic mailing list, it requires a different mode of thinking, first on the part of the admin and then on the part of the users. Perhaps the most evident example is this: if you/your users believe it is a good thing (or it is for whatever reason required) that everyone receives every message (as is the case on mailing list) then Discourse is probably perhaps not the right way to go (unless you force every user into mailinglist mode, but what would be the point?)

So, in order to avoid frustration, I think the best way to approach the subject (and ultimately to answer the questions in the OP) is to

a) try to get an idea of the current state of discussion regarding email features in Discourse by reading as many email related topics as possible (even the ones that don’t appear to be about mailing lists in particular because my impression is that it is difficult to separate “mailing list emails” from other emails sent by discourse.
b) be open to rethink your approach to email lists, otherwise you will probably dismiss Discourse as unsuitable too soon. In the end, you may have to dismiss it anyway if your users won’t tag along, but that is something different than not even you seeing the benefits.

Here are some topics that I found useful in that respect (I don’t claim this list to be comprehensive in any way):

https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-a-category-perhaps-the-best-kind-of-mailing-list-mode/27507

I think it was especially the latter two topics that I found particularly enlightening and which give some indications as to what might be possible in the future. In brief, if I remember correctly, the tenor was that there should be some form of category based (rather than universal) mailing list mode and my impression is that that will be the closest you can get to classic mailing lists (if that is what you want). Of course, you can have that already now, but only if you see the whole forum as your mailinglist.

6 Likes