I've never used topics for my mailing list, but would like some Nabble input on best-use practices

[PedXing]

So, I've read the Nabble documentation on using topics/subject prefixes in conjunction with a mailing list and I want to make sure before I make any changes to my Nabble setup that I understand everything correctly so I don't screw anything up.

I have my Nabble forum app setup as a mailing list archive.  Lets say I initiate 5 new prefixes to the list and convince people to use them.   [classifieds] [announcement] [discussion] [wanted] [rideshare] for example.  So I need to go to the forum app, options, structure, create new sub forum, and use the prefix text without the brackets as the name of the sub forum (i.e. "classifieds") and I do this for the 5 prefixes that I want to support.  From that point on, any email coming from the list with a given prefix in the subject will be automatically shoved into the appropriate sub forum, and any message posted in the sub forum will get the prefix added to the subject when fed back to the list.  Any message without a prefix will just drop to the parent forum and any user can choose to view the forum in a flat hierarchy if they so choose.  And of course if I want to manually move items to the appropriate sub forums that is always available.

Does this all sound right?  I want to make sure that by adding a sub forum I won't be wrecking my existing mailing list archive setup.

thanks!

[Franklin <Nabble>]

We no longer support this feature and we should remove it from the Help documentation.  The best practice is just to have a separate mailing list for each topic.  If your mailing list is so active that you need sub-forums, then most users would probably only want to subscribe to some topics instead of getting everything.

[PedXing]

whew!  good thing I asked then.  =)

Thanks for getting back to me on that Franklin.  I was hoping to NOT have to use multiple lists but maybe that's what it takes.  I've implemented keywords secretly in mailman but no one on my list really knows they are there or how to "subscribe" to them anyway so it would have been nice to kill two birds with one stone with your previous "hack."  

This is all of course to keep the mailing list alive and on my servers.  I know I could switch completely over to Nabble to handle the workload of the mail server but that means a loss of control over users and moderation that I currently enjoy with mailman and I'm just not ready to do that.  

I will continue to examine ways to add this functionality to my list through other channels.

Thanks for all you do!

shane

[PedXing]

but that also begs another question.... what DOES happen to my "mailing list archive" if I add sub-forums?  

[GregChapman]

I don't have a mail list archive, but given Nabble's "universal back end" I suspect this Help File I prepared for my MIXED forum should give you some clues.

Let me know if it leaves you with questions because it probably means I need to expand my help file!

(Incidentally, the GMail/Googlemail issue is a UK/European copyright thing and was largely resolved last year.)

[Hugo <Nabble>]

The Help article from GregChapman is really good -- I hope we can improve our documentation to that level soon. The answer to PedXing's question is this: if you create a sub-forum under a mailing list archive, messages will still be archived at the parent forum. But if a user posts a new message under the sub-forum, the message will be sent to the mailing list and replies will be archived under it.