Here are updated versions of gushbellino's "Set No Notifications" plugin (https://community.elgg.org/plugins/508256) for Elgg 1.8 or newer.

Elgg has the email notification setting enabled by default for new user accounts. This could result in a lot of notification emails getting sent from your server unnecessarily. Also, some users might be annoyed by receiving these emails without choosing to get them on their own.

The "Set No Notification" plugin lets you turn off the email notification setting for user accounts. You can choose to disable the setting only for future new user accounts or also disable the setting for existing accounts additionally. Turning off the email notifications is a one-time change for existing accounts. If a user enables the notification setting again afterwards, this setting will be respected in case you choose the disabling again for "all users" at a later time again.

Installation:

1. If you have a previous version of the Set No Notification plugin installed, first remove the old plugin folder from your mod directory before copying/extracting the new version to your server,
2. Copy the set_no_notification folder in the mod folder of your Elgg installation,
3. Enable the plugin in the admin section of your site and configure the notification settings on the plugin settings page of the Set No Notification plugin.