Note that this is a private forum that requires login and the categories aren’t private since there’s no need for that. From Private category comments exposed via email
I’m not sure if we should prevent notifications emails to staged users when the forum requires a login (and maybe even is invite_only or requires user approval). I’m on the fence here. The notifications certainly make sense when the forum is public.
Still, for the private forum use case, it would be very useful being able to disable this behavior.
Alternatively, I can alter the permissions for all categories to require trust level 1 to address this issue. But then a padlock appears next to all category names. Perhaps that can be hidden somehow?