I get a lot of forum members emailing me privately without the possibility to email them back because they have no email address set in their forum profile (I have to use the main OSM page messaging option instead). As a response to that I have disabled sending email from users who don’t have an email address in their forum profile. This ensures there is always a reply address available for the receiver. Emailing now goes through the email forum of this forum (instead of the users email software) to enforce this behavior.
I also added a patch to the forum that removes the email link next to each post if that user does not have an email address configured.
Messages I sent never were delivered nor returned, and messaged which were told to be sent to me never came in. The same mail adress works fine for mailing lists and osm account.
It would be better to put the email thing off the forum until it is tested as working properly, as unresponded mails look a bit unkindly.
There is another problem: I had no e-mail-address in my profile, but someone sent me an e-mail. The system replied to him with “Message sent”, but of course I never got that Mail. So, yes, please, deactivate the e-mail-function…
The forum has just been updated along with a patch to disable email functionality to members who don’t have an email address in their profile. Also, members who don’t have an email in their profile get a message to configure one if they want to send an email to another member (if the forum email functionality is used).