Some testing shows that “read-only” users get email notifications that include “Reply to this email to respond”. is there or could there be email footer logic that would show a more apropos and friendly text, e.g. “Topic is closed/read-only. Replies will be ignored”?
I set up a new category that has all permissions for moderators, but only See permissions for others. A “civilian” sees the Reply to respond" footer on email notifications. Ditto for a category where all can create/reply but the topic is closed, and a moderator has replied. Civilian getting email notification sees the “reply … to respond” footer.
I’ve recategorized the topic to #ux.Displaying the ‘reply to this email to respond’ text for emails that a user can’t reply to seems like something that should be fixed.
Testing this on my own site, if a user attempts to reply via email to a topic they can’t post in, they receive an ‘Email issue – Reply Not Allowed’ email from the site. If a user attempts to reply via email to a closed topic, they receive an ‘Email issue – Topic Closed’ email. I’m not sure if anything can be done to improve the handling of closed topics - it’s likely they were closed after the email was sent. For topics that the user wasn’t allowed to reply to at the time the email was sent, it should be possible to not include the ‘reply to this email to respond’ text.
This is our use case for closed topics: we’re experimenting with having paired topics, “News-XYZ” and “Talk-XYZ” for situations where there are frequent updates and we want to make the official and concise info easy to find, e.g. when a member of the community is ill and in need of support.
So “Talk-XYZ” is an ordinary topic, and “News-XYZ” is closed, so that only moderators can post in it.
So my wish would be that if the topic is closed when the email notification is sent, the “Reply to this email…” message in the footer be omitted (or revised) as well.