Topic on Extension talk:Newsletter/Archive 1

I think this could be a much more elegant solution than MassMessage. I'm not a huge fan of the way MassMessage adds a new section to my talk page, and I think being able to send out Echo notifications to the users subscribed to a Newsletter, WikiProject, etc, would be far better than the current Talk page system, especially since Flow will eventually render the MassMessage system unusable.

As a manager of a small WikiProject task force, the ability to provide something like monthly updates on the progress of the project would be greatly appreciated. I'm sure the writers of The Signpost and other newsletters would be similarly appreciative of such functionality, not to mention the ability to easily get feedback on new features (such as Flow or VisualEditor) from interested parties.

I also think creating an official system to join/subscribe to things like a Newsletter or WikiProject that doesn't require editing a page and has a singular central hub for managing subscriptions/membership would be absolutely fantastic for the productivity of all users and projects.

The extension is in active use and is feature complete for its use case, but it was never designed to do anything you have in mind. Its only purpose is to make a list of users who want to receive a newsletter; the emails are then delivered by other methods, specifically by mailman on translatewiki.net.

I haven't abandoned the idea, but not being a developer myself there is only so much I can do. I looked for a technical mentor, hoping that we could start a prototype as a Google Summer of Code 2014 project, but I haven't found any (see my last attempt).

Note that this extension here is NOT the extension used in trasnlatewiki.net. It is a copy of the specific code that does that in some other extension (Translate? can't recall). Siebrand and I agreed to spin it off with the hope to see some development in the direction of a complete extension for handling newsletters, but this hasn't happened so far.

I'll keep trying and lobbying whenever I have a chance, but so far this is just a personal goal.

This post was posted by Qgil-WMF, but signed as Qgil.

Quick note: Developing an API that bots can use is part of Flow's ongoing (in-progress) work. The dev of MassMessage is even working on Flow part-time. :) Bots are a definite part of our future.

Nemo_bis, can you point to an example of where it's in use, so I can get a better sense of what it does? -Pete Forsyth (talk) 20:34, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth if you are asking about the Newsletter extension today, it can be tested at http://newsletter-test.wmflabs.org/

Very helpful, thank you! A few bits of feedback:

• "Create a newsletter" was a stumbling block to me understanding what's envisioned. I'm trying to think of a better phrase. The problem is, I would understand "create a newsletter" to do something like offering a wizard style interface that creates a page or set of pages, preloaded with suggested formatting based on a template or transclusion...but I think what is intended is more like "adding an existing newsletter to the extension's system." If I wanted to (say) create a newsletter for an existing WikiProject, there's a lot of stuff I'd have to do that isn't included in what this extension is intended to help with.
• In the test instance, when I click "Subscribe," there's a popup notification with some text, but it goes away very quickly. This is frustrating if you want to absorb the information but can't read quickly enough. Any way to have it stay?
• In the popup notification, it tells you that you'll be notified, but it doesn't tell you how. User talk page? Email? Echo notification?
• I wanted to try the "create a newsletter" option. But when I clicked the link, I learned that I had to be autoconfirmed to even get to that screen. Any way to lower the autoconfirmed requirements for this test wiki? (Once I got past that, the "create" and "manage" options seemed quite sensible!)
• It's interesting that subscriptions are no longer publicly viewable. This doesn't strike me as a problem, but it is a substantial change from how it's worked in the past, and should probably be clearly explained on the main page.

-Pete Forsyth (talk) 06:13, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I have created tasks for the first three points: T154761, T154763, T154770.

@01tonythomas handles the configuration of the test wiki. I guess it makes sense to allow all users to create newsletters, not just autoconfirmed.

I am not sure I understand your comment about "subscriptions are no longer publicly viewable". I guess you mean that it is public in MassMessage but not in Newsletter? These are different products that can (and will) coexist. I think Internet users generally expect subscriptions to be "quite private" (accessible for admins and publishers, not for the rest), which is the behavior that this extension follows.

Oh oh. So we are not limiting the `newsletter-create` right. We had https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T154534 which would make the default newsletter-create restricted to sysop. Do you want me to kill that patch, or add that feature only to the testing wiki at http://newsletter-test.wmflabs.org/ ?

This is only about the test wiki instance. For the Extension itself we keep going for sysop only by default, following the advice from steward MarcoAurelio.

Right. thought so. I just merged in the patch for making the extension work out exactly that, and removed the limits manually for the test instance.

Once it has been created, it can be *managed* without special rights, yes? I hope so -- many newsletters are created by non-sysops.

@Peteforsyth please check the brand new Help:Extension:Newsletter. It should answer your questions as potential subscriber, publisher, administrator. A Google Code-in student wrote it! Feedback and edits are welcome there.

In the current labs instance, yes. With the standard Newsletter package, only owners, sysops and users with 'newsletter-manage' right would be able to do that.

Alright. So have enabled newsletter-create,manage,delete right to '*' in http://newsletter-test.wmflabs.org/ There would be no more worries testing!