User Name Confusion

[rmlcirculation]

Hi -- Some of my board users are having difficulties posting under their own names. There have been two instances where one person has responded to a post via their own email account but the message appears to have come from someone else.

My first thought was that someone was not logging out of the message board after posting, but this last occurrence happened after someone replied to a post via email. I've subscribed my users to the board and most prefer the email method.

The board is here: http://circulation-message-board.1056930.n5.nabble.com/
The post in question is here: http://bit.ly/TDqUMU

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[GregChapman]

Hi rmlcirculation,

There are several features of your forum that make it unusual. The first is that you do not appear to have made any changes to the default settings so that those in the "Anyone" group may post. This means that anyone can use any name as they post and many of your users are doing just that.

I made a test post on your forum as an unregistered user and initially I used the name Andrew Brown, the same name as another of your users. That placed a cookie on my computer that recalled the name when I made a second post. Clearing the cookie allowed me to reset my name so as I write this "Greg Chapman" is shown as making three posts, but two of those still appear on the forum as being posted by Andrew Brown, the name I used earlier

Meanwhile the other "Andrew Brown" shows a separate running total of messages posted by that user.

This is all the behaviour I would expect where those in the "Anyone" group is allowed to post. The solution, unless you want literally anyone to post under any name (and possibly a different name every time) is to go to: Options > Users > Change Permissions and against the "Create_topic" and "Reply" permissions remove the mark from the "Anyone" column and set it in the "Registered" column. That will force those wishing to post on your your forum to register first. Their chosen username name, which may not necessarily their real name, will appear by their posts and it will always be linked to their registered email address, so there cannot be the duplication you complain about. (Unlike the situation described above when an unregistered user changes their name, when a registered user changes their username all their past posts are updated to show their current username.)

NOTES TO Nabble:
In investigating this I found two minor bugs and what appears a more significant one:

# I use a plain text mail program and the mail I received that tells me the "encoded" address to use when posting included the lines:

As you requested, the email address to post new topics under Circulation Message Board is:

Circulation Message Board <[e-mail]>

The address in the second line should really be expressed as: <[e-mail]>

# When I subscribed, the mail with the link to confirm subscription arrived with the wording:
-----------------------------------------------
You have been invited to subscribe to Circulation Message Board, which is available at:
-----------------------------------------------
when it should perhaps read: "You have asked to subscribe to...."

# More importantly, the subscription doesn't appear to be working! It's the first time I have tried subscribing as an unregistered user of a Nabble forum.

I made a post direct on the forum after subscribing. It didn't arrive in my Inbox. After a period of five minutes or so, I posted another. This too has not arrived at my email address. I thought I had allowed plenty of time for any Nabble housekeeping to take place. To check that I hadn't failed to subscribe properly, I clicked the subscription confirmation link a second time and the screen I was taken to confirms that the subscription is already in place. As an unregistered user are you automatically placed on daily digest delivery?

[Pedro]

I'll investigate it.

[GregChapman]

Hi Pedro,

GregChapman wrote

# More importantly, the subscription doesn't appear to be working! It's the first time I have tried subscribing as an unregistered user of a Nabble forum.

I made a post direct on the forum after subscribing. It didn't arrive in my Inbox.

I have an update on this bug.

It seems that subscriptions are working, but it is just that I am not getting back my own posts. I complained about this earlier I thought that it had been fixed for all users but now I see:
http://support.nabble.com/Convert-Forum-to-Mail-List-tp7580384p7580495.html
that it's just fix you offered for my own forums. I think this is bad policy. Not everyone uses GMail or other mail clients that offer a "conversation" mode, where inbox and sentbox are combined for mail between parties. As far as I'm aware most still use separate Inbox and sentboxes where the practice of not returning your own posts to mail lists is most awkward.

I also notice that the other problem I mentioned recently, which appeared to have been fixed still applies here:
http://support.nabble.com/feature-request-html-text-conversion-tp6425065p7581428.html
on this forum, as an unregistered user, I am still getting a blank line where it should tell me the address to use for a new topic.