Properly setting up your own email server is a pain so a lot of us are using email providers (mailjet, sendgrid, mailgun etc). These are easy to set up as SMTP relays but they also cost a lot of $$ if you got serious volume. Right now there is no option (or, at least I did not find one) to disable all chatty email traffic except essentials (registration, pass reset). There is a lot of emails sent for watched topics and private messages. It should be possible to disable these and leave only essential ones.
This is mostly covered in 2.1 where you can turn off emails for notifications etc and get alerts instead.
Good to know, thanks. But is that a user setting or an admin setting? It should be admin's choice to turn it off.
It's mostly a user setting, especially in 2.1 where alerts are likely more useful (and by default).
Not sure I agree this should be an admin setting, especially with the base argument of "setting up email is hard" rather than any stronger argument.