Hi everyone,

Portability is on my mind, and I just realized that a good way to provide this with OGM powered OGs is an interface to download an MBOX file for the group. The easiest way to do this would be for OGM to append an MBOX file whenever someone posts, and then to provide a tab or admin link where the mbox file can be retrieved by the group owner.

The advantage of this is that MBOX files can be imported to any email client (virtually) and is an accurate history of what actually happened in the group. Like mailman and pipermail archives. This would make a case for migrating lists from mailman to OGM powered OGs.

The disadvantage is that if content has been deleted or changed in the OG, that won't be reflected in the MBOX file.

Comments

lp’s picture

lp commented

While this does sound like an interesting feature, and one that would make adoption more attractive, is it really necessary that this import is carried out by OGM?
Some of the primary rationale for OGM had to do with the output and speed of the existing tools, as Kyle wrote in the initial discussion.:
- ...emails were ugly...
- ...loss of email history...
- ...could be 20-30 minutes before everyone has gotten the email.
- ...messaging module insists on running all text it sends out through a Drupal input filter...

So given that you wouldn't be concerned with the email output, could Mailhandler still be used for the import process? There looks to be some proof-of-concept here, and here. They're old posts, but it seems reasonable to re-purpose existing modules if possible.

As far as maintaining an archive, I can think of a few tricks: Using rules to auto-subscribe a user titled "list-archive" which is associated with a (local to server?) email account that creates the archives. That's a hack though. If anything, I think creating an MBOX for portability is the bit that seems to belong in OGM code, or a sub-module, but I'm wondering if this could be carried out at the MTA level.

tobias’s picture

tobias commented

Thanks LP - missed your response for some reason. :)

I've been exploring this a bit this week and realized that it's probably possible to do what I am talking about with drupal views - provide an interface to group owners to export their content to then import it again elsewhere (eg in a wordpress blog or whatever). I haven't gotten very far with it but it seems not to be a stretch. I am also seeing that I can create an interface for exporting users using views. The difficulty with this approach is that while what Kyle initially proposed is true and I agree with him (this is why I'm here using og_mailinglist!), the messages get seriously munged during the import process. They are changed irreparably into something else (nodes) that are not as portable as email.

I remember old forum tools I've played with many years ago (e.g. fudforum) provided a field for a hidden email address to use as an archive - that's not an entirely silly idea in this case. I had forgotten about that. Why not just let group owners add an email address to use for archiving? They could do this now by creating a fake user with an email address set up as the archive.

Mailman does this by adding to MBOX files for each group, starting a new MBOX file every month. Then via pipermail archives a link to downloading the MBOX files is provided. This is the most portable method of all and is very empowering to everyone but the pipermail archives interface is terrible for finding anything, email addresses are not always munged, and it's impossible to delete a message once it's in there.

My idea, which I am going to be exploring some more with my users in the coming months, is to set things up so that group owners know they can always export their own users and content anytime they like.

Cheers,

Tobias

kyle_mathews’s picture

kyle_mathews commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

Setting this as closed as it's a bit out of scope for this module.