Last modified: 2014-09-04 03:05:54 UTC
Splitting this from bug 35306, Echo should support user subscriptions to feeds. "Feeds" in this context refers to updates (messages) from organizations or individuals that would typically be sent out as a newsletter currently. An example would be a user wanting to subscribe to updates from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost> or <https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter>. Currently these updates are served to individual user talk pages using a wiki bot (cf. <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery>), with the target (subscription) list being managed on a wiki page (e.g., <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Signpost>). Ideally a user would be able to subscribe in an easy way to a range of feeds and then receive notifications via Echo.
Idea mentioned at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/ee/2013-September/000661.html and I'm adding it to my list-o-things-to-nag-the-devs-about. :)
This looks more like an own extension using Echo, rather than a new feature for Echo itself. Do you agree? See the newborn (and almost empty now) [[mw:Extension:Newsletter]].
(In reply to comment #2) > See the newborn (and almost empty now) [[mw:Extension:Newsletter]]. See also [[mw:Extension:MassMessage]] from Legoktm. (and his recent announcement at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2013-September/000923.html)
Yes, I just saw it. However, that extension is 100% push: an author decides a list of people to be notified each time. The difference with the request here is that users would subscribe to newsletters, and then authors would just notify whoever is subscribed. There are similarities to be explored, though.
We might want to evolve these MassMessage + Newsletters extensions into a common Announcements extension? The use cases seem to be so overlapping. I'm not saying we should stop any development, just trying to converge. The Wishlist at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Newsletter#Wishlist covers pretty much the use cases that have been discussed. In any case I'm moving this report to Extensions Requests since everybody seems to agree that this is not an Echo feature per se.
On this front, I think we need a bit more of a firehose, a bulletin board, a crossover between blog and forum, that has all announcements divided in groups and tags, and that you can use Echo for to subscribe to interest areas. You would get notifications for things you are subscribed to, but you could always browse 'all announcement' in the firehose. Each topic would be bound to a feedback page, that hosts discussion etc..
