I notice that Digests are sent in batches together to a lot of users at once. I’m curious if it would be possible to have those spread out more so that you’re not causing a big sudden spike of traffic from the Digests being sent. I notice from my MailChimp stats from campaigns that go out, people seem to open/click emails by a huge margin in those first few hours after an email goes out, if they’re going to at all. So spreading out the Digest emails in Discourse could help. I have over-provisioned with the DigitalOcean droplet I have, so it’s not a big deal for me - but might be helpful for those that are just on the edges of hardware for their Discourse.
AI-generated summary
In a discussion titled “Spread out Digest emails to mitigate sudden traffic?”, jesselperry observes that Digest emails are sent in large batches, causing sudden traffic spikes, and suggests spreading them out over time to reduce server load. They note from MailChimp data that most email opens occur shortly after delivery, implying that staggering sends wouldn’t significantly harm engagement — and might even help by avoiding server strain. codinghorror agrees in principle, proposing adding random variation to send times, but doubts performance issues would arise since not everyone opens emails immediately — only a small fraction clicks through within minutes. jesselperry supports this with a Quora link showing that most opens happen soon after sending, reinforcing the idea that spreading sends could be safe and beneficial. watchmanmonitor adds a related thread link discussing slow Digest delivery, possibly hinting at existing issues or user concerns around timing. The thread suggests a simple, low-risk optimization: randomizing or staggering Digest send times to smooth traffic without hurting user experience.
We should add some random variation to when we send these out. But it seems unlikely you would have perf problems from even a few hundred people clicking through. And people don’t always read their email at the same time.
「いいね！」 3
Most email opens happen soon after a campaign is sent: http://www.quora.com/On-average-how-soon-is-an-email-opened-by-the-recipient-after-it-is-sent