Robin Good has published an extensive (93 page) review of group blogging software. He very clearly identifies the features and functionality that is important to group blogging as well as several scenerios where group blogging is used. He clearly understands the field and is in a good position to make meaningful comparisons. His review of Drupal is mostly positive and his criticisms are, in my opinion, very just. It is also important to read his reviews of the other software presented to see what is being done better elsewhere.

Despite the fact that the prose section of the review is favorable, the numerical rating he gave Drupal in the end has it tied for last place, while software like Silkblogs, which had comments like the following, got more points:

• No plugin support
• No blog portal aggregation
• No approval workflow
• Poorly documented

It seems unfair, looking at the final points chart, that Robin gave Drupal zero points in the following categories:

• Simple multi-blog support
• Automated blog sign-up
• Archiving
• Blog aggregation

In fact, now that I think about the disparity between the prose section of the review and the points table at the end, I'm sure that these are mistakes.

What I take away from the review, as a Drupal developer and enthusiast, is this: our good work is being recognized and a person like Robin Good, with all of his technical skills, may well choose Drupal over the other software he reviewed. However, we have lots left to do if we want to be best-of-breed when it comes to useability and ease of configuration.

Thankfully, lots of smart people in the Drupal communitiy are working on precisely these things, so this analysis is not news.

The Drupal version reviewed appears to be a 4.5.x variety.

UPDATE
Here is the link to the story:http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2005/05/16/group_and_multiuser_blog_p...

And here is a link to the PDF of the report:http://fiskbooth.com/report-full.pdf