Disable reply by email

[mrdoob]

I'm sure some people like to be able to respond to an issue discussion by email, but personally I would like to be able to disable that feature for my repos.

1. Parsing emails is hard and there is always some left over.
2. People try to attach files on the email. Those files never reach the issues section.
3. Some people have holiday auto responses.

[cvrebert]

👍
Or at least make the email bounce back with an error message when someone misguidedly tries to send an attachment. Or add support for attachments.

Some people have holiday auto responses.

I'm looking at you, freaking Naver.com users!

[qfox]

👍

[asmeurer]

I think it would go a long way if they simply improved their email reply parsing, so that replies by email don't look like garbage compared to replies made in the web interface.

[qfox]

Well, this is even better if it goes that way. 👍

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

My biggest problem is that email replies can't use markdown. It's not for the original sender, but for me as a repo owner - comments like this need to be fixed: signalapp/Signal-Desktop#3352 (comment)

[Gadgetoid]

As far as I can tell, there's still no way to disable this "feature"? The comments here seem to miss the rather more fundamental issues with reply-by-email: beginners posting their telephone numbers.

I have, on more than one occasion, had to edit a response to a GitHub issue to remove personal information such as full names and telephone numbers - contained in email footers and sign-offs - that I'm reasonably sure our customers did not intend to publicly disclose.

Since editing can only hide things under the proverbial rug we are left with a serious issue whereupon private, personally identifiable information is leaked permanently onto the public internet because a beginner misunderstood what replying via email would actually do. Ignoring the myriad ways this might fall afoul of data protection regulations, it surely opens the door for abuse since users are effectively doxing themselves.

Since we deal with GitHub beginners, often posting their very first issue against one of our projects, I've a very strong preference toward completely disabling reply-by-email across our entire GitHub presence to avoid any such incidents.

[Benjozork]

This seriously needs to be looked at. We have numerous users leaking personal information without knowing it and getting frustrated when their attachments aren't delivered.

[bknaysi]

Has this change been implemented yet? Our team finds automatic email replies on issues particularly annoying. We would love to turn it off entirely. Perhaps a single setting at the repository level would satisfy the demand.

[zhiliatom]

My biggest problem is that email replies can't use markdown. It's not for the original sender, but for me as a repo owner - comments like this need to be fixed: signalapp/Signal-Desktop#3352 (comment)

Maybe my querstion is stupid, but how can I reply a comment by email and then It auto show in github. I have a try to reply other's review comment by email, but can't automatically reply on github website.

[TieWay59]

I'm also bothered by the autoreply of email lately. Since GitHub has developed a new featured message system (inbox), I choose to close most of my access to email. You can find related options in settings > notifications > Subscriptions. I closed Participating, @mentions and custom notifications to my mail.