FYI this has now been updated by @LeoMcA. See:
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This plugin is now obsolete, right?
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Yeah, this can be done without a plugin! (On latest beta branch currently.)
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Not quite – for us – unfortunately.
We need to make sure that folks who belong in certain groups have specific notifications that are enforced. For example: We have a group of Representatives who must always be watching the first post of our Announcements category. Receiving and disseminating those topics within their institutions is part of their role as Representatives. If they wish to stop receiving them then we would need to find a new Representative for that institution (which would necessitate changes to other systems beyond Discourse).
So, allowing folks to change their notification settings after joining a group – which is how the beta functionality works, IIUC – is not an option for us. It would offer an option within Discourse that would not accurately map to the human expectations that surround our use of this tool.
Not allowing people to request to stop receiving email isn’t an option for most sites on the internet. It would be a violation of the acceptable use policy of virtually every ISP and mail delivery service, including yours, I’d imagine.
You’d need a plugin that, perhaps, caught that unsubscribe request and then took an appropriate action, or perhaps you’d construct a data explorer query to find people who had unsubscribed and run it periodically and take action when you found people who’d done that.
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I appreciate you’re trying be helpful and thank you for taking the time to respond. I can assure you we’re not behaving irresponsibly or flaunting relevant regulations.
Your suggestion of using data explorer is solid, but it does put the burden on us to monitor users’ settings. We’re a team of just 2 staff, so that’s time I’d rather spend doing other things. But I do see the wisdom of migrating to the new plugin (which will presumably stay updated, whereas my hacky one may fall apart at any minute).
I do wish there was an option to send a message to an admin for specific changes to settings. Just so we can track what’s happening and make sure that the volunteers working with us are getting the information they need.
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I can use Data Explorer to see which users are viewing a specific category like so:
SELECT * FROM category_users WHERE category_id = '10'
Any suggestions for how to see which users are watching which categories all in one view? (I could then export it and process it as a spreadsheet.)
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