Mod idea: Reply to thread by e-mail - Postet den (2016 Views)
Starting Member
scyrius
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So one of the things (one of the only things) that I liked about Yahoo! Groups was the ability to reply to threads by e-mail. I think that would be a fairly useful add on. That way if you subscribe to receive announcements about new thread posts you can reply to the e-mail announcement and it will be automatically placed in the thread... is this feasible?<
   
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Support Moderator
Podge
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3776
How would you deal with spam ?<
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Forum Moderator
AnonJr
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Have you read this thread yet?
http://forum.snitz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=61331

While it is possible, I think the real question is do you really want to do that?
I can see where it would fit well in a corporate environment since you don't need to worry about driving traffic to your site. But on a regular website where you need to get traffic to grow and expand (and maybe even earn a little money) it may not be a good idea to encourage people to not come back to your site. That's why in the thread referenced above I mentioned that I could see it in certain circumstances.
(Sites like Yahoo! and Google are exceptions to this since they derive the majority of their traffic from other sources.)

If you really want it, I wish you the best of luck. I certainly lack the skills for something of that level at this point in time. blush
<edit>Didn't even think of spam...</edit><
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Junior Member
Nertz
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Spam is a concern but shouldn't be too difficult to deal with in a closed intranet. The forum db has on file the email addy of each registered user, chuck all others. Addys can be spoofed though, and that's why I'd keep it in a closed intranet only.

I've put a bit of thought in this concept for a corp intranet app (already well protected behind a spam firewall). ForumID and TopicID make up the email addys for the replies. I'd want it for reply only, original post should be posted the normal way. Biggest challenge is whether to use a POP3 client polling a mail server or an SMTP Listener. Either with bits and pieces from post.asp and post-info.asp should work.
cheers,
Nat<
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Starting Member
scyrius
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As a matter of fact, this would be for a corporate forum. We've set up a forum with a few mods to be used as a beta testing forum but one of our developers will not use the forums if he cannot reply to posts via e-mail<
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Support Moderator
Shaggy
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Well, the solution there, then is to just ignore him until he comes to his senses - it's a ludicrous amount of work just to get around one persons stubborness and defeats the whole purpose of a forum.
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Starting Member
scyrius
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Unfortunately the reason the forum is being set up is for his (among a few other's) benefit. So if he decides that the inability to reply by e-mail is a show stopper, then I have to scrap everything I did to implement Snitz on our network. Unfortunately, I have minimal programming experience so I'm unable to make a mod of my own. But I suppose I'll leave off bothering everyone with this since it's clear that no one really wants this feature except for my coworker<
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Snitz Forums Admin
ruirib
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Well it seems the issue is much more the fact that this is not a very simple development task.<
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Starting Member
scyrius
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7
Well, that too. I did take a look at the other thread on this issue and it's clear that this isn't a mod that anyone would be able to just slap together. Nor for that matter would I expect anyone to because as I've said, it's clear that very few people are actually interested in this sort of thing. It seems it would only be useful in a closed intranet behind a firewall. Which is exactly the setup we have here...<
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Forum Moderator
AnonJr
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It sounds more like he wants a mailing list instead of a forum. It may be that a mailing list better suits the needs. Did he explain why being able to reply to a thread via e-mail was such a big deal? If its a matter of preference/laziness I wouldn't worry about it.<
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Starting Member
scyrius
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7
See the problem with not worrying about it is it means I have to scrap the project. I'm an intern with the company so I can't just go to this man and say, "tough, deal with it." And I'm fairly certain that a mailing list wouldn't work. He doesn't want a mailing list. He wants forums. We have a mailing list set up already...<
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