Warning: very geeky topic!
This issue is relevant to clarity in the My Account tabs and settings that each member can access for their account, and also affects other interface elements.
I have had some discussion with Michael Kisor regarding the method(s) that the website uses to allow members to subscribe to topics and such and receive the consequent email notifications. I am familiar with the Messaging and Notifications modules implemented here, but only today I noticed that we also have the Subscriptions module, which I have not used, and it is largely a duplicate in function to functions in theMessaging and Notifications modules. This is why there are both a Notifications tab and a Subscriptions tab in your My Account pages, which are somewhat redundant. Messaging and Notifications are designed to be used in complement to each other, whereas Subscriptions is independent. Organic Groups require Messaging and Notifications, while no other modules are dependent on the Subscriptions module, so in theory the Subscriptions module could be turned off.
Resolving this situation is likely to be problematic, as turning off the Subscriptions module will disrupt all subscriptions that have been set up with it, and there is also one CCK field that would be affected, though I can't readily tell if that field type is actually used here. Perhaps the question, then, is to assess how much this module is actually used. Perhaps we could put up a Poll to try to find out, and maybe put up a sidebar notice of the change and how to deal with it, if we were to turn the module off.
Current Notifications functionality
Looking into this a little more, I think that because the Simple Mail portion of the Messaging module is not turned on, and there is no block available for displaying "Web" messages, which are the only way the Messaging module can currently deliver notices generated by the Notifications module, the functionality of the whole Messaging & Notifications pair of modules seems broken and moot. Until we do something different, maybe we should just turn off all the permissions for the Notifications module so that it doesn't show up on the My Account pages at all. It's just a source of confusion as it stands now.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
This could have unintended consequences.
It IS broke!
My point is that the way it is now, it is broken. There is no way for Notifications to actually accomplish anything, as I laid out above. If someone goes to their Notifications tab in their My Account pages and sets up a subscription there, nothing will ever happen.
Wait and see is best
I don’t think turning off subscriptions is an option unless you can figure out how to transfer all the existing Subscriptions into Notifications.
FWIW: I’ve seen this sort of situation arise in past versions of Drupal, where a newer technology comes along and supplants an older. It’s usually best to just wait and see what happens, as often migration tools emerge. I wouldn’t expect this issue to be adequately solved until D7.
subscriptions vs. notifications
ok so as I understand it, this is the issue of people subscribing to use the SWNI site and then sitting there waiting for someone to give them the ok. It sounds like if you can't transfer subscriptions at the moment (something about them being lost) that would be a problem. But the system is broken. So it sounds like a rock and a hard place situation. I don't know about how to resolve this. Is there a way to "shut off" subscriptions witout losing information. What would losing information do...I mean what are the consequences of losing information. Can we inform those people and say hey, we had to make a change for the better so you need to re-whatever...
Sorry I was in Scotland for three weeks and just got back last week...trying to catch up!
No, that's registering
Payal, when you write, "this is the issue of people subscribing to use the SWNI site and then sitting there waiting for someone to give them the ok", you are describing the process of registering, or creating an account. That's not what I am referring to.
Click on My account under your name in the left sidebar (you have to be logged in). Then click on the Subscriptions link that's over to the right, between Notifications and Contact (this link and the sections that appear below when you select it are all created by a module called Subscriptions). You'll then have these three links below your name: Overview Pages/Threads Categories. In theory, you can use these to manage in various ways your subscriptions to various topics and so on. But in fact nothing you do with these subscriptions or any of the Settings in the Overview section will create any result.
For example, according to my own settings, I have a Subscription to each of the forum topics that I have started. So when someone posts something in those topics, like you have, I should get some kind of notification of this. But I do not. I have Messaging and Notifications (these are the names of Drupal modules) set up on other sites that I manage (I do not use the Subscriptions module on those sites). When I subscribe to things on those sites, I get an email notification when someone else posts a reply to a post of mine, for example. I find that very helpful. It means I do not have to visit the site just to see if someone has posted something. And the email contains a link that takes me right to the new post on the website, so I can read it and respond there if I choose to.
Hmmm I thought that IS what subscriptions does
So I have subscribed to a couple of different topics. And I DO get email notifications when things are posted. So if we shut it off I would simply have to go back to the site and select again those topics I wish to be informed about (regarding new posts). For me, it wouldn't be big deal. We could put a little blip inte paper saying we made the change. And that people need to re"subscribe" to the topics they are intested in being notifed of (in regards to new posts). But that they need to use notifications.
I don't think a poll would be successful at all. People are not interested in being involved electronically, digitally, internetly :) I really need to figure out a way to encourage use of the website more. But people need a reason to want to go to the site. It needs to be easy to use and dynamic enough to be an interesting tool to our public. It is just too hard to use and I don't feel like it is that informative yet. We must make it pretty. It's like birds and shiny things. If we make it shiny they will flock to the website!
Yeah, I find it confusing myself.
I find it confusing myself, how subscriptions work here, or don't. It does seem like sometimes I have gotten email notifications. It might be that nothing happens until something called cron runs here, and then any pending emails get sent out. Only Michael knows how often cron is set up to run here. I haven't gotten any notifications of your posts here, but maybe it's just that cron only runs once a day or something, and it hasn't yet today.
On my sites, the emails really do get sent out pretty much immediately, independently of cron. The Subscriptions module does not seem to have any way to configure this that I can find. That's part of it, for me; I find the configurations for the Messaging and Notifications modules easier to understand and more flexible.
I agree that we could just shut it off and post a notice that people need to re-subscribe using the other method.