I tried looking for ways to get Discourse to behave properly as a mailing list. I found this:
https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Discourse#Quality_of_the_email_support
The comments from February this year don’t fill me with confidence. Especially not with the reference to a Coding Horror post[0] that almost completely places threaded conversation as a horrible legacy that doesn’t work now, when I know that none of the more modern alternatives have utterly failed at convincing me they are any better.
[0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/web-discussions-flat-by-design/
Simon
As a list lurker, there’s a minor irritation with posts from Discourse :
they all have a couple of images in them (Visit Topic and a gmail-like
avatar, which is usually just an initial letter).
Since gmail doesn’t show images by default (and a mailing list doesn’t feel
like somewhere one should turn off the default), every post is accompanied
by a link to display images. This is tolerable when it accompanies the
occasional actual images but seems excessive on every post.
As a list lurker, there’s a minor irritation with posts from Discourse
:
they all have a couple of images in them (Visit Topic and a gmail-like
avatar, which is usually just an initial letter).
Almost as if it’s trying to impose a traditional forum view on email 
My MUAs show who the mail is from if the From address is intact. My MUAs (all of them) are much better at this, so I do not need to see that in the email body. Two of them even show an avatar graphic if they are a contact, falling back to a letter.
Mails from the list with Discourse do not leave the From address intact, so this doesn’t work. RFC 5322 and RFC 6854 define the From header as the address(es) of the author(s), and the Sender header as the address of the person (or entity, I guess) responsible for actual transmission of the message.
Since gmail doesn’t show images by default (and a mailing list doesn’t
feel
like somewhere one should turn off the default), every post is
accompanied
by a link to display images. This is tolerable when it accompanies the
occasional actual images but seems excessive on every post.
Many MUAs don’t show images by default or have the option for it. I experience the very same.
Simon
I came to check if a test attachment-via-email post worked properly and I’ve found that only the first post of this thread actually got sent to me via email, so that’s yet another instance of Discourse being broken.
Depending on the options set
Discourse will sometimes not send mail if youve already browsed it in the gui
The idea is to try and be clever and only send mails for unread things. Although you can turn that off to get everything regardless
Depending on the options set
Discourse will sometimes not send mail if youve already browsed it in the gui
The idea is to try and be clever and only send mails for unread things. Although you can turn that off to get everything regardless
I already have. It doesn’t work properly.
Alan Burlison
