# Here's how to make the Discussion forums send emails for every reply instead of just the first one!

**URL:** <https://discuss.openedx.org/t/heres-how-to-make-the-discussion-forums-send-emails-for-every-reply-instead-of-just-the-first-one/8058>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** how-to\
**Created:** [August 11, 2022, 12:29pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/heres-how-to-make-the-discussion-forums-send-emails-for-every-reply-instead-of-just-the-first-one/8058 "2022-08-11T12:29:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rohan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f19dbf/32.png) [@Rohan](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/Rohan)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2022, 12:29pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/heres-how-to-make-the-discussion-forums-send-emails-for-every-reply-instead-of-just-the-first-one/8058/1 "2022-08-11T12:29:18Z")

</div>

I don’t like how the Open edX discussion forums only send students emails for the first reply. So when I was looking at [this](https://github.com/open-craft/edx-platform/commit/03731f19459e558f188c06aac5cc9ca1bbc675c2) fix for a different forum issue, I noticed the following code above it:

```auto
def _should_send_message(context):
    cc_thread_author = cc.User(id=context['thread_author_id'], course_id=context['course_id'])
    return (
        _is_user_subscribed_to_thread(cc_thread_author, context['thread_id']) and
        _is_not_subcomment(context['comment_id']) and
        _is_first_comment(context['comment_id'], context['thread_id'])
    )

```

If you replace that code with this code:

```auto
def _should_send_message(context):
    cc_thread_author = cc.User(id=context['thread_author_id'], course_id=context['course_id'])
    return (_is_user_subscribed_to_thread(cc_thread_author, context['thread_id']))

```

Then the forums will email the student (who’s following their thread) for _every_ reply! (By the instructor or by other students), which is much more appropriate (interrupt-based notification (email), not polling-based (where the student has to keep re-checking to see if anyone replied))

Of course in order to make this change in the Tutor-ized world, you need to fork edx-platform to your own copy in your own public git repository, and then forever more any time you would have run `tutor images build openedx` instead you need to run

```auto
tutor images build openedx --build-arg EDX_PLATFORM_REPOSITORY=https://github.com/your_username/edx-platform.git --build-arg EDX_PLATFORM_VERSION=your_branch_that_has_your_changes

```

And then `tutor local quickstart` as normal.  
(Also FYI rebuilding images will eventually steal all your disk space, so don’t forget to do `docker system prune` occasionally)

I would like to officially request that that code I removed be added behind a feature flag, but I’m not sure where to do that anymore?