I’m getting loads of emails now from this discourse, which is great as it shows how much use it’s getting!
However, I want to turn off email notifications for some topics, but can’t figure out how to.
When I go to a topic that I want to ignore, I see this at the bottom:
This describes exactly what I want, but it isn’t the behaviour I’m seeing - I still get emails for each new comment in the topic.
Any ideas?
I haven’t actually tried it, but disabling “Mailing list mode” in Preferences > Emails might help.
This site was originally setup in “mailing list mode”, perhaps now is the time to change that, I think users could still opt to get emails about every post, currently the "default email always Send an email notification even when the user is active by default." option is ticked, shall I untick it? This might not be the setting change we need…
Cheers, that can be done globally "default email mailing list mode Send an email for every new post by default." — I could untick this?
Would that result in significant change in the behaviour that users currently see? If so, I’d be very cautious - there may be people who really like getting everything by email.
For me, the ideal outcome would be that the current behaviour was preserved, but that users then had finer control over what they are getting - e.g. allow turning off notifications unless @mentioned or replied to, on a per-topic basis. I realize this may be an impossible goal!
I have to say I agree with ensuring users can control the number of notifications they receive. I get way too many from this one 
Cheers, that can be done globally “default email mailing list mode Send an email for every new post by default.” — I could untick this?
I think it would be sensible for an individual to try it first before considering changing it for everyone.
Please don’t turn off mailings globally.
Update: looks like individuals can turn on/off the mailing list mode thing.
In which case I’m content for the global setting to be changed.
OK, mailing list mode is now off by default for new accounts and existing users can change their preferences.
if I want to unsubscribe from a topic, I hit “To unsubscribe from these emails, click here.” in the footer of any email from the topic and then I have the option to mute just that topic
Is that not what is required…?
To summarise (and please correct me if I’m wrong) the problem here was the ‘mailing list mode’ overwrites the more subtle behaviour that Discourse offers.
Without mailing list mode enabled, users who start, reply to, or subscribe to a thread are notified when there are updates. That’s the default behaviour people expect from forums.
Mailing list mode, on the other hand, does what it says on the tin, and works more like (for example) Google Groups.
As far as I’m aware that is correct.
I’m still getting emails for topics which are marked as “Normal - You will be notified if someone mentions your @name or replies to you.”
Do I need to do something else to enable the more subtle Discourse behaviour?
I think you need to disable mailing list mode in your preferences.
A recent Discourse update resulted in mailing list mode being disabled by default, I have now re-enabled the mailing list mode so people who have opted to get a copy of posts by email should start receiving them again.