I didn't go into detail, but I can assure you user emails are not
exposed on the web in Discourse, but a post has to be associated with an
account, and an account has to be verified by emailing the user, and the
email is stored in their private profile so they can, well, receive
email. The technical issue is that this approach means you cant get a
response from emails defunct decades ago. And there's another amusing
issue is that I found on import of 25 years of stuff into a GNU Mailman
list that suddenly people started replying to topics and seemed
surprised that they got no response (because people don't seem to look
at dates!).
And as a last gasp, I recall when I was running the GNU Mailman lists
that we had a web based interface to it which was half way decent. This
may only be supported with GNU Mailman 3, I don't remember (we are on
2). I think it is called Kitty, and it's part of the official
distribution, or very closely associated with it. Also, there's a very
powerful search engine available for GNU Mailman which is much more
capable than simple text search terms in the user archive. So without
changing anything this list could be improved using the GNU approved
add-ons (I assume GNU approves them).
Andrew
On 26/02/2023 5:21 pm, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
It's really a pity that such a conversion is not supported, since it
would be extremely helpful in the long run. However, e-mail addresses
shouldn't be exposed in the web interface (the already existing e-mail
list archive doesn't do that either). The construction of threads
rather relies on the 'In-Reply-To:' and 'References:' fields, AFAIK.
