[pmwiki-users] Email notification on a page change

[Joachim Durchholz]

Patrick R. Michaud schrieb:
> The downside is that RSS uses a "pull" model -- requiring that the
> feed be frequently checked -- whereas many people would like a "push"
> model whereby I'm sent a message as soon as the change occurs.

They probably don't want a push model. If there are 50 edits for a page, 
they'll get 50 mails for that same page.
If I want an update every 30 minutes, I should configure my RSS reader 
so that it checks every 30 minutes. If I want an update every 5 minutes, 
configure the reader for 5 minutes - and, btw, mail readers don't update 
more often anyway.
So I think the push vs. pull controversy is moot.

> It also seems to me that keeping track of watch lists and email addresses
> is very closely related to managing user preferences, as in the
> Cookbook.UserConfigurations recipe.

Indeed. If a user account is available, there's no need for email 
verification (assuming the email address was verified as part of the 
user account setup).

That leaves PmWiki with the necessity for mail verification though. 
Which means PmWiki needs to know how to read from a POP3 account - and 
administrators that wish to do mail verification need to configure it. 
(I'd heartily recommend writing some diagnostic utility for checking 
that everything is correct. Maybe PmWiki should even run a self-test 
every day and mail a warning to the administrator if it finds anything 
that's amiss - but I digress.)

Regards,
Jo