use GitLab service desk + issue mail-in
suggestion 1
suggestion 2
benefits
rationale
The support forum was created long before CardBook started on GitHub and GitLab. It served as a discussion platform for @CardBook to interact with users. Now that GitLab has become the central focus point for CardBook development, the forum is currently maintained thanks to @cmmehl mainly as a courtesy for CardBook users enabling them to report bugs without creating a (free) GitLab account. They have to create a forum account though. Using the GitLab service desk enables users to create issues without Gitlab account nor 6660.eu account, just by sending you an email. Issues are certainly better handled within the GitLab environment, given all the available tools and contributors here. The GitLab service desk could therefore be used instead or in addition to the support forum. The former would spare you/us the very inefficient work of manually duplicating and converting the forum issues into GitLab issues and follow-up on them in both places simultaneously (as you have done with numerous issues in the past and continue to do).
eMail protection
from the GitLab doc:
Checking that box will enable Service Desk for the project, and show a unique email address to email issues to the project. These issues will be confidential, so they will only be visible to project members.
Warning: as the screenshot below shows, this email address can be used by anyone to create an issue on this project, whether or not they have access to your GitLab instance. We recommend putting this behind an alias so that it can be changed if needed, and enabling Akismet on your GitLab instance to add spam checking to this service.
What this means is forwarding another eMail address (alias) to this GitLab eMail address and share only the alias publicly. In this way, you don't expose the (unchangeable) GitLab address and can change the alias eMail address anytime, in case of abuse.
adding links to the addon page
Regardless of which one of these 2 solutions you choose, on the CardBook addon page ...
- … users should be told explicitly where to file bugs reports and support requests
- ... users should be encouraged to do so
Here is my suggestion for how to do this:
Please send support requests by eMail.
Please report bugs and feature requests at GitLab or by eMail.
note:
The first eMail address should be replaced by a forwarding alias address.
The second eMail address can be changed, so there is no need for an alias.