On Wed, 24 Oct 2018 08:42:44 -0400
Robert Moskowitz <rgm(a)htt-consult.com> wrote:
I am using Discourse with Nethserver. It **DOES** have an email
interface! I receive an email for each posting tagged in the subject
for which sub-forum it is associated with. I CAN respond directly
via email, but it does take some time to get posted. Or I can click
on the provided link and go to that thread and respond there.
Your people thinking about Discourse should talk to the Nethserver
people about their email config
setup.
That said, the email interface is not as good as the web one, but it
does work for simple responses. Mail filtering on the subject does
allow me to put all messages into proper folders here.
Another advantage of email is I can read and respond while I am on a
plane (provided I synced down my inbox, but all folders are local).
Can't do that with a forum with the performance you get with airplane
internet connectivity. Particularly trans-ocean.
So my vote on forums and Discourse is a -0.5.
But if you DO go with it, configure it similar to what Nethserver
community has done. Then get the Discourse people to improve the
email interface. And maybe the Thunderbird people can do
improvements or maybe a plugin for better response capability.
Thanks for this real life experience, and correcting my
misunderstanding. I wonder if the list mail server could be subscribed
to the Discourse instance. Then the mail server would automatically
take care of passing messages back and forth. A post to the mail list
would show up in Discourse, and a post in Discourse would automatically
show up on the mail list. Transparent to users of both. And the mail
list archives would serve as a backup to the Discourse archives, just
as the Discourse archives would serve as a backup to the mail list.
Maybe that is stretching the functionality of both Discourse and the
mail server too far. But a big plus for being completely transparent to
users of both Discourse and the mail list, while allowing both to
contribute in the same conversations.