Thanks. I agree that’s the ideal. The organisation i’m supporting is not in the tech sector and wants to support members (including elderly patients with cancer) who are less tech savy. It does not want to mandate users registering with the forum but sees the benefits for those that do.
It would be simpler if we could register users directly as you can with a mailing list - but with Discourse users still need to confirm their email address by responding to invites etc and many chose not to - or are afraid to. We are therefore using email as the primary communication method supplemented by the forum - as a record of previous communications for those that do register.
As I say it’s not ideal but I hope that explains the reasoning.