[consulting] Use of groups.drupal.org

[Boris Mann]

On 9-May-06, at 9:19 AM, Dan Robinson wrote:

> I know that we've had the conversation about moving over to groups and
> that the decision is to wait until the mail is ready.  I had an aha
> moment yesterday working with groups.drupal.org.  Again, sorry if this
> is old material but basically I was thinking - "who needs email
> lists?".  I'm a huge proponent of the inbox as a productivity tool and
> user interface - and in "list backed forums" in general.  As a  
> matter of
> fact I didn't think that groups.drupal.org would take off until we had
> og2list going.  However I set up my RSS feeds for groups and it comes
> into my mail client and I realized that basically I don't need much
> more.  The only two things would be:

Glad to see more people having the RSS epiphany. Drupal mailing lists  
are the only ones I participate in ... I'm a huge proponent of the  
feed reader as a productivity tool and user interface :P

> a) Comments in the RSS feed - I am not an RSS guru so I don't know if
> this would be possible (i'm sure that the comments could be  
> exported - I
> wonder about "threading" however).

The "right" combination here from my POV is as follows:
* proper subscription module that abstracts subscriptions from  
notification
* choose to be notified using different methods for different  
subscriptions -- e.g. email, RSS, IM, SMS
* for RSS "notification", have a single feed per user -- so all your  
subscribed to items could be retrieved via http://example.com/ 
subscription/[uid]/feed

The subscription(s) module and commentRSS are part of the way there.  
Securesite is needed so you can get access to node_access protected  
content.

> b) An inbound mail interface might be nice - and we already have that
> capability with the mail command thingie.  Or maybe the "add new
> comment" line would be fine.

og2list handles this.

> I can see this being a long-term solution for my clients who want list
> backed forums.

Invest in og2list and you're there.

-- Boris