So it’s 4:30 in the morning and I am nowhere near ready to go to bed. So instead I did the final quality testing for my “add user widget” WordPress Mu plugin.
This plugin eliminates the question that I’ve been asked plenty of times “what if a student who is not in the class adds themselves to a course blog?”. I think the answer is simple (and I think Jim and Brian would agree with me)… just delete and/or ban the user. However, in order to eliminate this barrier on implementing course blogs I modified the plugin to allow professors to enter a list of student emails. If the student’s email is in the list they can then add themselves to the list. This means that in conjunction with my Add to BDP RSS widget that Professors or institutions can decide whether anyone can add themselves, subscribers to the WordPress Mu system or only users that are in a specific list. This will now work for all three of the course blog types that I created.
andremalan.com 
Andre,
You are awesome.! Also, I really like the new WordPress diggs, the aestheitcs of WordPress must never be underestimated.
I will be trying out your plugin shortly, and the ability to make any plugin that much more flexible and user-friendly (particularly to quell concerns of faculty) is not only a very welcome addition, but an important one to seeing this applciation through as a real alternatie. The work you have already done is this regard, both conceptually and programmatically, is amazing; I am blown away by your work!
Yeah, what Jimmy said… especially the “you are awesome” part.
And your supposition on how to address the ‘volunteered feed’ problem is dead-on, in my view. Now, all we have to do is change about 19,992 minds here at the institution.
I like our odds.