Using Discourse instead of an email mailing list

[Discourse]

This topic explains the advantages of using Discourse over traditional email mailing lists for group conversations and community management.

Required user level: All users

Discourse is a modern platform designed for group conversations that offers significant advantages over traditional email mailing lists. While email remains effective for one-on-one or small group communications, Discourse excels at handling larger, ongoing discussions. Here’s why you should consider using Discourse for your community:

Improved navigation and organization

Linking and cross-referencing

Discourse makes it easy to link between different topics, creating a web of interconnected discussions. This feature allows for:

• Easy navigation between related conversations
• Automatic notifications when a topic is referenced elsewhere
• A clear list of incoming links for each topic

Categorization and tracking

Unlike the challenge of managing multiple mailing lists, Discourse offers:

• Categories with granular tracking controls
• A dedicated “Unread” page for topics you’re following
• A “New” page for brand new topics
• A “Top” page to highlight popular discussions

Enhanced user experience

Lower barrier to entry

Discourse offers flexible onboarding options:

• Social logins (Google, Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, etc.)
• Single Sign-On with custom login providers
• Invitation links
• Whitelisting of company emails

Moderation controls

Prevent spam and manage user behavior with:

• Crowd-powered moderation flags
• Customizable trust levels
• Automated spam detection

Reduced noise

Discourse encourages meaningful interactions by:

• Using “Likes” to acknowledge agreement without unnecessary comments
• Allowing users to edit their posts, reducing follow-up corrections

Improved searchability and archiving

On-site search

Discourse offers powerful search capabilities:

• Full-text search across all content
• Advanced search options to filter by user, date, category, and more
• Similar topic suggestions to prevent duplicate discussions

SEO-friendly content

For public forums, Discourse enhances discoverability:

• Search engine-friendly format
• Internal and external linking improves SEO

Flexibility and integration

Email integration

Discourse can still cater to email-centric users:

• Configure incoming email to allow email-based interactions
• Optional “Mailing list mode” for users who prefer email-only engagement

Mobile app support

Access your Discourse forums on-the-go:

• View new and unread counts across multiple Discourse instances
• Receive notifications (except push notifications for self-hosted forums)

RSS feeds

Discourse provides RSS feeds for various pages:

• Append “.rss” to topic URLs for individual topic feeds
• Category-specific RSS feeds available
• See this guide for a complete overview of the available RSS feeds

Considerations when switching from mailing lists

While Discourse offers numerous advantages, consider the following when transitioning:

• Discourse requires more substantial hosting resources compared to simple mailing lists
• Some users may need time to adapt to the new interface and workflow
• For very small or early-stage projects, a full Discourse instance might be excessive

Importing mailing list content

If you decide to switch to Discourse, you can import your existing mailing list content. For guidance on importing mailing lists, visit our mailing list import guide.

Additional resources

• Foreman :: Discourse, 6 months on: Impact Assessment
• Discourse vs. email -- Pros & Cons
• Finding Discourse RSS feeds

Last edited by @hugh 2024-08-02T04:38:09Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-08-02T04:38:15Z

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[pne (Philip Newton)]

Another mailing list pro is: all mailing lists end up in one mailbox.

Depending on the user’s workflow, they may read them all in one place or filter them out to various labels or folders.

Discourse may have several related mailing-list equivalents in one place, but that’s generally just from one company.

If I’m interested in horse-riding and leap seconds and 13th-century Dutch art history, I’d probably rather fire up one email client in the morning (which I do anyway) than have to visit umpteen separate Discourse instances hosted on various websites.

I think what might be useful would be something like Usenet: a decentralised one-stop shop for all sorts of content, so the horse riders, leap-second buffs, and art history lovers could all be at the same place – they would then simply choose which categories to watch and which ones to ignore.

[Rob_Nicholson]

The new app for mobile does something similar to this in that all it really does is show the new/unread counts for each of your Discourse forums. Not sure if there is a web portal that does something similar? The stack exchange group of sites ended up having one notification box didn’t they which helped me picking up on posts across multiple system but I don’t think it had a shared front end portal.

Does Discourse have an RSS feed? I use Inoreader these days and it would be handy to have my various Discourse feeds in there as well.

[pne (Philip Newton)]

@Rob_Nicholson

all it really does is shown the new/unread counts for each of your Discourse forums

This just works for hosted forums, right? So that would only partially help if one is also interested in Discourse forums that are self-hosted by other users/companies/groups/etc.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Counts and basic functionality is fine, push notifications are omitted

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

Indeed, but discourse will email you posts if you want it to.

[Mittineague]

@Rob_Nicholson

Does Discourse have an RSS feed?

Many pages do. Try appending “.rss” to a URL eg.

Why use Discourse instead of a email mailing list?

Discourse Meta - Latest topics

[pne (Philip Newton)]

Also things such as categories, e.g. https://meta.discourse.org/c/faq.rss

[xiasummer]

A mailing list like google group has many good propertities.

If you want to make discourse compete the Mail list. You need at least these propertities:

For open groups:

• The group can be managed by many people. Like anyone can add or delete themselves all by themselves.

• So The group names must be presented somewhere.

• The discussion should be emailed to the email box, at least optional. And, I believe the mail should be from the sender, not from noreply.discourse.org or other public mail box.

• People can choose to post to someone in the list, or post to the group.

• Some of the good topics should be presented to Discourse, while some should just be a notification or other short messages that should NOT be presented to the discourse.

###For private Groups, there should be one or a few managers.

• How should we present there private groups? How should the Manager manage the groups? All big problems.

Discourse is not so mature to replace mail-lists.

I think we should devote great effort to solves all these problems first. Now is not the time for marketing.

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

@xiasummer

The group can be managed by many people. Like anyone can add or delete themselves all by themselves.

Doesn’t Discourse allow that too, but with even greater granularity?

@xiasummer

So The group names must be presented somewhere.

I don’t understand what you mean by this.

@xiasummer

The discussion should be emailed to the email box, at least optional.

Like we do?

@xiasummer

And, I believe the mail should be from the sender, not from noreply.discourse.org or other public mail box.

I can’t say I agree with that one. This is how broken, messy email chains happen.

@xiasummer

People can choose to post to someone in the list, or post to the group.

Could you explain further? What is “the group” in this case?

@xiasummer

Some of the good topics should be presented to Discourse, while some should just be a notification or other short messages that should NOT be presented to the discourse.

Also don’t understand this one.

@xiasummer

How should we present there private groups? How should the Manager manage the groups? All big problems.

Just require logins? What’s the big problem?

[pacharanero (Marcus Baw)]

@erlend_sh this is a really good article and covers some of the points I often have to make to people when I’m explaining why they need a forum as opposed to several mailing lists. I work primarily in the National Health Service in the UK, where email is used for everything (unless a fax machine can be used), and therefore people are literally drowning in emails, when there are so much better ways of handling and sharing information such as (but not limited to) Discourse forums. Most of the user-land resistance comes from a primal fear that you will increase that email volume. My contention is that if you know everything is archived on the forum you can simply delete the notifications or switch them off.

One killer feature of fora over mailing lists that you missed out is the access to ALL of the messaging history that you get when you join a forum. With older style ‘listserver’ mailing lists you only have whatever history you’ve saved in your email client.

This messaging history may well contain the answer to your question, so you can search, find your answer, and you don’t even need to post your n00b question. (If you had posted that n00b question on the mailing list, people would bark back at you ‘THAT question again? Wasn’t that answered just a few weeks ago?’ anyway, so if you can find the existing post it’s an advantage)

Admittedly, with some ‘mailing lists’ such as Google Groups you can search the messaging history to a degree, but this isn’t they way most people normally interact with the forum, so I think fewer people than you think would know/bother to do this.

Marcus

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

Thanks for pointing that out. I added a paragraph under “Search friendly archive that prevents repetition” including a showcase of our “Similar topic” JIT notification. Let me know if you have something to add to that.

[tophee (Christoph)]

@pacharanero

If you had posted that n00b question on the mailing list, people would bark back at you ‘THAT question again? Wasn’t that answered just a few weeks ago?’

Though on certain discourse forums this will still happen to you The difference is, of course, that on discourse you have a chance of avoiding it, provided you know the right search terms.

[Rob_Nicholson]

Over on the CAMRA Discourse forums, an attempt has been made to placate those very familiar and happy with mailing lists by saying you can make Discourse work like a mailing list.

Personally I feel this is a mistake as said members will never learn about the advantages of working in the much richer web interface.

For me the biggest plus of a forum is that I can edit my reply after posting. I’m crap at proof-reading before hand so often spot a typo.

And isn’t the story from Colin in the (UK) national health service a common one?

[downey (Michael Downey)]

@Rob_Nicholson

you can make Discourse work like a mailing list

Sure, but there’s always the “extra features” of the web interface that will always be there, drawing people back and tempting them to check out the web UI. I’ve seen many people, originally “stubborn” and refusing to use the web, eventually switch over because the overall UX was so much better. Maybe not everyone, but it definitely happens. (Plus, I’m a big believer in the “meet people where they are” philosophy of building community.)

[fedorov (Andrey Fedorov)]

I would also add few more advantages of Discourse that I don’t think were mentioned:

• very comprehensive usage statistics reporting interface
• intuitive and engaging user feedback system with “likes” and “solutions” that attracts more participation
• plugins for integrations with external products (YouTube, GitHub) that help connect communities and further engage users
• effective moderation/spam filtering engine

[hellekin]

I wrote a short guide to using Discourse via email at LibreHosters. Did I miss something?

How to Use Discourse for Mailing-List Dwellers

[Jonathan5]

This isn’t really a difference between a working mailing list and a working forum, but in practice I have found that ensuring deliverability of emails from mailing lists on a shared server is hard work. Deliverability of email notifications seems easier with Discourse, using Mailgun, and it’s not such a potential problem anyway as people visit the forum online rather than rely entirely on receiving the email. This is just my personal experience.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@Jonathan5

in practice I have found that ensuring deliverability of emails from mailing lists on a shared server is hard work

Yeah no kidding cc @tshenry @simon email deliverability is an extremely difficult problem.

[MikeNolan]

If you’re requiring users to log in to access some content, post or use certain features, then Discourse doesn’t really eliminate the email deliverability problems, it just makes them less frequent, because you still have to be able to deliver SOME email to users to get them set up or to update passwords.

And my experience (30+ years as an email administrator) is that if you only have to deal with email delivery issues infrequently, you might not even notice when things change. (And they will change frequently, for example when ISPs modify their ground rules.)

High volume lists do create other categories of problems, as does allowing replies or topic creation by email.