Default email settings
Below we describe the default settings. You can edit your emails settings if you want.
Activity summary digests
The default settings include a weekly activity summary email. You can choose other frequencies or even turn off the digests.
Emailed notifications
By default, individual email notifications are sent for:
- private messages to you
- posts that are direct replies to or include quotes from your posts
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@mentions of you or of groups that include you
- another user specifically inviting you to a topic
- whatever items you set to “watching”
However, by default, emails will not be sent if you have the forum open in an active browser window/tab.
Note: reply-by-email is not enabled currently, so you’ll need to visit the forum to post, regardless of your notification settings.
Watching/tracking specific items
By default, everyone is set to watching first post for #announcements:major
Consider looking through our categories and tags for other specific topics you’d like to follow. For example, watching first post for the #portland tag will provide notifications of Snowdrift.coop-relevant meetups and conferences in Portland, OR.
How to watch specific categories, tags, or posts (click to expand)
Discourse offers several levels of notifications:
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watching: get notifications of all posts
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watching first post: get notification of new topics
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tracking: no notifications but see a count of new activity (both new topics and replies) when visiting the forum
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normal: no notifications or activity count
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muted: no notifications, no activity count, and hide from the overview of “latest” posts
Notifications show as a number count when you visit the forum. Depending on your settings, emails go out for each notification as well.
Although watch settings for categories and tags apply to the relevant topics, you can separately override the setting on a per-topic basis. For example, even if you watch every category, you can unwatch a specific topic when you no longer want to follow that conversation.
Note: Settings for subcategories must be set independently from the top-level category (for example, watching #clear-the-path does not mean you will watch #clear-the-path:design — you need to set that separately).
Items to set for your watch preferences (click to expand)
To stay more engaged, we suggest the following settings:
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watch (maybe just first posts) or at least track the #clear-the-path subcategories relevant to your role(s)/interests
- Note: don’t set just #clear-the-path itself! We don’t post in that top-level, we only post in subcategories which must be separated watched!
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watch first post or track the #feedback-support sub-categories relevant to your involvement
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watch first post in the #welcome category (to welcome newcomers)
- maybe track the #general-discussion category
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watch any special groups you are in such as the #restricted:team category for team members or #restricted:board for Board of Directors and so on
You can always tweak your settings as you go. You could watch everything and back off if you want less notifications. Or you could set some core things and later decide if you want to expand your notifications.