Mostly the goal of email replies is to support devices where you don’t have a web browser, or you have a very bad internet connection, and you want to quickly respond to a direct reply to you (or a PM).
And of course, someone is wrong on the Internet and needs to be educated, immediately, using whatever device happens to be at hand. Even worse, they were wrong in a direct reply to you! Get typing! Because what are you going to do, not respond? Then they’ll keep being wrong!
Mailing lists are a primary target for Discourse because seriously, the only thing worse than a mailing list, UI-wise, is getting kicked directly in the balls. So we have plans to support:
- subscribing to a category: you get emailed about every new topic. You might even auto-subscribe to every topic in that category.
- subscribing to a topic: you get emailed every response to that topic, not just direct replies to your posts as it is now
Not there yet. It takes time to get there. But mailing lists, oh my God, the only thing worse is phpBB style forum software.
