[Mailman-Users] Integrating with a forum

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ed Pastore writes:

 > I'm posting here to see if anyone has any better insights than I have  
 > had so far and/or any comments on my existing document linked
 > above.

It looks like the webforum world is pretty thoroughly PHP-based, about
which I know nothing, so I have no technical comments.

 > Apart from the technical difficulties, the additional problem I see is  
 > with message overload. So I'm thinking of setting a second list. The  
 > existing one would be a full bidirectional mirror of the forum, and a  
 > new one would just be an announce list of any new topics posted to  
 > either (ie, anything that is a new topic on the forum or a new thread  
 > on the list).

Consider an RSS feed for this, too.

 > Or can I do that with umbrella lists somehow?

No, I don't think that really does what you want.  I don't see an
obvious way to do this other than to just have two lists, with the new
topic list reply-to munged to the main list.  I suppose they should be
sibling lists, though.

 > I further want the forum to support OpenID. I imagine that adds  
 > additional layers of complexity when combined with list integration.

Not if OpenID is just one way to authenticate.  The spamfiltering on
the list will handle troublemakers there, and the forum just trusts
the list and vice versa.  If you require that list members and forum
participants all use OpenID, then it would get complicated.