Posted by
Will <Nabble> on
Oct 13, 2008; 12:52am
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Easiest-way-to-make-inbound-email-address-for-forum-subforum-tp1312581p1324049.html
You understand the whole deal perfectly.
mattengland wrote
...
I publicize a new discussion group (that servers both email and web forum for the same discussion content/topics/threads). I want to "brand" 2 things:
1) The website link for the (sub)forum, eg:
http://mydomain.tld/forums/discussion12) The email address for said (sub)forum, eg: discussion1@mydomain.tld
...
(1) can be achieved easily with embedding. But (2) is difficult, it's basically trying to sugarcoat something to make it look like something else - I assume you are a engineer so you know this kind of thing is never good.
What if you just have (1), and don't even bother with (2)?
When I want to post to a mailing list, I always find the mailing list URL first, go there, find the instruction on how to subscribe, subscribe to it, then compose an email, copy the mailing list address from the URL, send it out. Looking at this process, URL of the mailing list page is the key. Everything else follows.
Nabble fits into this process easily. Compare: you want to post to a mailing list, find the URL first, go there, subscribe to it, (may need to register to confirm your email address), get the mailing list address, compose an email to this address.
Having no single fixed public email address is actually a good way to prevent spams.
mattengland wrote
It doesn't seem to make sense to me to say to the email-only users: "well, if you want to send [new] emails to the list, you have to go subscribe to the forum, then you get your own, private email address that allows you to post [new] topics to the forum."
...
With a normal mailing list, you can tell the user the email address up-front, but it's useless because they still have to subscribe to it before they can post to it. So, the difference is just showing the address before or after subscription.
In summary, I think you understand the Nabble way of doing mailing list. It is unconventional, and personally, I have the same concern as yous. I think the conventional mailing list people will find it strange.
But in the final analysis, I think the Nabble way is a better way, and I hope you agree with me.
The Nabble way allows you to subscribe at any level, all with the same consistent UI. You can subscribe at forum-level, sub-forum-level, or thread-level, or even post-level - so you only subscribe to what you are concerned with. What you suggested may sugarcoat the sub-forum level subscriptions to make it more mailing-list-like, but it breaks this consistency, thus making the subscription feature less powerful.
Make sense?