# CMake discourse mailing-list mode incorrectly personally addresses all email

**URL:** https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-discourse-mailing-list-mode-incorrectly-personally-addresses-all-email/738
**Category:** Site Feedback
**Created:** [February 28, 2020, 11:19pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-discourse-mailing-list-mode-incorrectly-personally-addresses-all-email/738 "2020-02-28T23:19:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![airwin](https://discourse.cmake.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@airwin](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/airwin)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2020, 11:19pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-discourse-mailing-list-mode-incorrectly-personally-addresses-all-email/738/1 "2020-02-28T23:19:03Z")

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My mailer software (alpine in this case) makes the important distinction  
between personal email and list server email, and I assume that is also  
true of other mailer software. And the cmake and cmake-devel mailing  
list software default configuration supported this distinction by sending  
all mail to a list server you were subscribed to by default, and only  
using personally addressed email when the user was specifically  
Cc’d by a poster.

So the issue is that cmake discourse mailing-list mode currently  
destroys this important distinction by personally addressing _every_  
email to users.

To fix this CMake discourse issue, please implement a set of reasonable  
rules (such as specific mention of a user’s name or a reply to a  
specific user or a Cc to a specific user) where personally addressed  
email will be used, and otherwise use a list server mail address  
(which mailing-list mode users are automatically subscribed to).

If the fix for this CMake discourse misfeature is not planned any time  
soon, I would like to transfer this discussion to the CMake discourse bug  
tracker. But I cannot find that so could you please let me know where  
that is?

Alan

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### Author: ![brad.king](https://discourse.cmake.org/user_avatar/discourse.cmake.org/brad.king/32/11_2.png) [@brad.king](https://discourse.cmake.org/u/brad.king)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2020, 2:05pm UTC](https://discourse.cmake.org/t/cmake-discourse-mailing-list-mode-incorrectly-personally-addresses-all-email/738/2 "2020-03-02T14:05:46Z")

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Discourse is a general-purpose platform that we happen to deploy for CMake but do not develop or maintain ourselves. The name “mailing list mode” is a stretch IMO but that’s what Discourse devs chose. There is no real mailing list server address that forwards delivery to members or anything like that. All messages go to personal email. Really the setting just means “send me notifications for everything including my own posts”. The actual messages themselves are still normal notifications the same as in non-mailing-list-mode.

> please implement a set of reasonable rules (such as specific mention of a user’s name or a reply to a  
> specific user or a Cc to a specific user)

Each user can configure their own such rules on a per-category or per-topic basis by setting the notification level (when not in mailing list mode). See the [Forum Help](https://discourse.cmake.org/faq) page for instructions on email notifications. That allows one to at least filter notifications to topics of interest, though the notifications still always go to personal email.