Hi,
This forum seems to be built with open-source “Discourse” software. This tool usually has a “mailing-list” mode, that can be activated in Profile / Preferences / Email / Enable Mailing-list mode.
I personally don’t use web forums on a regular basis, because they are far too much time-consuming. I’d prefer a mailing-list.
Is it possible to enable “Mailing-list” mode here ?
Thank you in advance. Kind regards.
Hi, do you mean that you want to receive e-mails when you get a reply?
If so, go to your profile → 
Preferenes → 
Emails and set whatever you like.
No, I would like this forum to work like a “mailing-list” : I’d like to receive an email for every post in this forum, as described here :
https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-mailing-list-mode/46008
Thank you. Discourse is a great forum software that is used on various projects. I noticed some of them have the feature “Enable mailing-list mode” available, and some other don’t.
Then, I think there’s something to configure on the server-side to ensure this feature is available for users. I found that :
Just suscribe at forum selecting the option to receive email for all posts and you are good 
I don’t think that it’s for all the topics, the ones you have not selected or being part of.
Won’t allow replies via email, as a mailing-list would.
I’m sure Missy will chime in. But basically you want to turn on and manage an entire mailing list infrastructure just because you don’t want to hop on and search?
Thats a TON of emails BTW (I read or at least eyeball the vast majority of new posts.). Not to mention the updates and replies. There’s likely a reason os is NOT on.
Chances are slim to none it happens because someone needs to admin it and honestly most people don’t want thier inbox hammered… Theres aa reason listsrvs have fallen out of favor.
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Indeed, each day sees about 900 posts. That’s a lot of emails.
“Mailing-list” seems to be one of the many available features in the Discourse software. As far as a Discourse server is already running somewhere, it may just require somme additional configuration steps to activate it. No additional infrastructure.
I sbscribed to various other projects which use Discourse as a forum server. Some of them (not all) have this feature enabled. That’s why I’m asking if it would be possible to enable this feature here.
Moreover, mailing-lists are some kind of “way of life” for people coming from the last century, like me 
I have subscriptions to nearly 50 mailing-lists. All the messages are sorted automatically in subfolders. Each time I have a few minutes of free time (such as when I’m waiting on a phone line, when I’m installing software, etc…), I can browse them just with one click on the corresponding subfolder; and when I know the answer, posting it just requires an additional click !
I personally don’t use forums on a daily basis, because they are too much time-consuming : I have to login (remember or store user/password on every terminal), then browse web interface which are often clumsy. Assume I’m actively monitoring 5-10 projects daily, I’d need to connect to 5-10 (different) web servers. I just don’t have time to do that ! In the meantime, reading the same things in a mailing-list just requires a few seconds…
As a conclusion, if community only works through a forum, I’ll probably go there just when I have a particular problem But I won’t just browse discussions daily, and I won’t answer to other people when I know the answer
Please note forum software (f/ex groups.io or Discourse) do not decide what is the “right” way of doing things They offer both behavior (web forum and mailing-list), so that everybody can choose how he wants to interact with the community.
Then, as far as Discourse is used here, I’m just asking if it’s possible to enable the mailing-list feature, because I don’t know how to live without that If not, I would understand, I’d work on HA by myself, publish my plugins on Github, and until I’m retired and have a lot of free time I’ll probably come on the web forum some times a year, but not more.
Sorry for the inconvenience,
Kind regards
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Indeed, each day sees about 900 posts. That’s a lot of emails.
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I have more than 50 subfolders corresponding to mailing-lists about various topics. Some of them have several tenths of thousands of messages. That’s not a problem for a Thunderbird mail client. Even mobile clients (such as Android or iPad) don’t have problems to browse recent messages, as far as you do not configure them do download the whole mailbox history
I also have tight mail filtering rules (quite mandatory when working with mailing-lists), and a trashcan when needed
Moreover, browsing 900 messages, and fully reading the 5-10 messages that would be of interest for me, requires far less time on Thunderbird than it would require on a web interface
Anyway, I’m not trying to convince anybody that mailing lists are better, or worse, than web forums ! I’m just saying that lots of engineers do appreciate mailing-lists, and I’m kindly asking if it’s possible to enable this feature, that already exists in the Discourse software.
(and I don’t ever manage to quote text correctly on a web forum 
)
Let’s just say it’s jot as easy as just ‘turning it on’. You are only thinking about this from the client side.
In modern day email. Mass email is problematic… VERY problematic. I fact so problematic it’s worth avoiding at all costs if you can. Those 900 go to everyone who subscribes and the youre a mass mailer. Then you have to contend with every destination servers antispam. About half have advanced protection on and report to others and suddenly you’re combating email from your entire domain NDR’ing because your mail rep plummeted.
So I totally get your point. I’ve been doing IT since 1998. But you can’t just ‘turn it on’ especially mass mail especially in 2024.
You are true, I missed that. Mass mail, and esoteric blocking rules from some providers, are very good reasons
Anyway, I’m not asking to activate this as a default. This would only apply to people like me who activate the “mailing-list” option in their settings. As most of (younger) people don’t ever know what a mailing-list is chances are that we would never trigger anti-spam thresholds
There are dedicated platforms for mass-mailing (such as Mailjet). Their job is to make mass-mailing reliable, and ensure the sender will not be blacklisted. Those platforms are targeted mostly for business mailings (=ads). I don’t know if that could work here. Anyway, that would require some additional administration time, I agree.
The problem is you can’t turn it on for a few.
Because it impacts the ENTIRE domain you have to evaluate secure mass mail and DKIM for the entire property. That’s my point. It’s a LOT of work. It’s not a checkbox and - - go
Hi hi! Just wanted to hop in here to make sure people knew that I have seen this and am acknowledging it.
I am starting to look at changes for our Discourse forums so this is very timely to suggest. I’ll dig into it, but Nathan makes some very valid points about how this will impact everything overall. No promises other than I will investigate this request and follow up when I make a decision. 
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