Usually I use contacts for a newsletter like functionality with the ability to put subscribers into the newsletter group. But now I need newsletters for communities (happen to be .LRN) and I thought about reusing forums for that.
Here is the szenario:
1) Members of the community can subscribe to the newsletter forum which is not allowing new threads to be started but members can post to existing threads
2) The notification for the forum will *ONLY* trigger the notification for the thread start, not for posting on an existing thread. I would probably make this a parameter.
3) An admin will send out the newsletter by starting a new thread
4) Users can comment on the newsletter by posting on the newsletter's thread.
5) If a user wants to be informed about the follow up postings to the thread he needs to specifically subscribe to the thread.
Does this make any sense to you? Do you find this useful or should I just fork (instead of making above an optional behavior).
Furthermore, as I would allow file attachments for the newsletter I would enhance forums to send the files attached to a posting via email / complex send.