Don't send email notification to sender on forum posts by email

Proposals
1

I use primarily email notifications. Every time I reply to a forum post by email, I get an email notification with my own post a few seconds or minutes later.
When a user posts to a forum via email, is there a way to exclude them from the outgoing email notification?

1 Like
2

I like the sound of this too. I get way too many emails as is, getting more that I in effect sent to myself is bad?

3

Weā€™ve received this request a few times before. (Developers, have a look through T180, T441, T611 for reference - unfortunately our bug tracker is not visible to the public, so Iā€™ll summarize here.) The main counterargument is that some users like to get the bounceback as an acknowledgement that their message was successfully received and posted. In particular, I rely on the bounceback to verify that the forum is properly receiving and sending emails every time I update the site. A second argument is that when a user replies to a forum post via the web interface, if we donā€™t generate an email notification, their ā€œcopyā€ of that thread in their own email will be missing all of their own posts, preventing them from being able to read through the full thread.

So with this in mind, Iā€™m left with two questions:

  • Given these caveats, if we gave users the option to ā€˜opt-outā€™ of notifications for their own forum posts, would that option be used by enough people to make it worth implementing and supporting it?
  • If we did make such an option, should it suppress notifications for your posts using the web interface, or only for your posts via email?
4

I agree that not sending a notification when using the web interface creates ā€œholesā€ in the email conversation, so my answer to the second point would be ā€œonly for your posts via emailā€.
The first point means that forum posts will behave like exam question comments. It causes the same issue described by the other point.

How about option 3:

When you post through email (forum and question comment) you get a confirmation email that your reply has been posted.

5

Huh? You canā€™t post question comments through email.

6

My bad. I thought itā€™s an option that I just never use.