[thelist] CivicSpace, Drupal or Typo3?

[Mike]

Hello,

I have asked this question before with some helpful responses however I 
am still undecided and I would like to be able to ask this question 
again on this newsgroup for some new opinions. Thank you.

I need to set up an online collaboration website where users can pool
together their views and ideas on particular political issues. It would
be a "think tank" created by collaborative authors and the outcome will
be to construct a political platform for a political party. I need to
control user access to only certain people or certain groups of people.
CivicSpace (a Drupal based system) seemed to be the perfect CMS for this 
purpose however I am concerned that it would be more valuable for me to 
learn a broader system such as Drupal or Typo3 that I may also be able 
to use for my other websites that require a CMS, mailing lists, calendar 
features, discussion list features as well as other features. Early in 
my selection process, I questioned whether to use CivicSpace, Drupal, 
Type3 or Scoop. I need the chosen CMS for this project to have a future. 
I did not wish to invest significant time into something that may not 
have a future - Drupal and Typo3 seemed to be a technology that will be 
supported well into the future. My requirements for the political 
platform site may include a wiki, a discussion forum and online polls 
and whatever additional online
collaboration tools may be necessary to bring people's views together. I 
considered Scoop as well however I would prefer a php-based system and 
Scoop is Perl-based.

Then I spend some time on the typo3 website and I am strongly considering
typo3 for several reasons. Typo3 seems to be able to have more uses.
Although CivicSpace may be the perfect tool for this particular single
website I am working on today, typo3 might be more useful for all my
websites now and in the future. Of course I would like to learn both
(CivicSpace and Typo3), however if I could solve all my issues with just
one product it would be ideal. Typo3 seems to be more versatile,
flexible, scaleable and have an excellent workflow for the end user -
although it has a steeper learning curve. And so my question is, can I
configure Typo3 to play the same role(s) as CivicSpace? Or is it not a 
good idea to try to make one tool attempt to duplicate another? Which 
Typo3 modules could be used to mimick CivicSpace reasonably closely? Or 
should
I learn both CMS systems - both CivicSpace and Typo3? Should I stick to 
Drupal and only use Drupal modules that enable Drupal to be similar to 
CivicSpace so that the advantages of learning a broader system may be 
applied to other websites? I am also concerned
that learning Typo3, Drupal and CivicSpace would simply take too much time
and if I could just use one CMS to fullfill all my requirements that
would keep the learning curve more reasonable. To summarize: CivicSpace
may fulfill my current project needs but may not be enough to solve the
needs of all my websites. On the other hand Typo3 may fulfill all the
requirements of all my websites - but I need advice whether it can act
sufficiently as a political "think tank" such as CivicSpace. I am trying
to save time and it would be ideal to only have to learn one system.

Should I learn:
1. Typo3 and Drupal
2. Typo3 and CivicSpace
3. or just Typo3?

If Typo3 would suffice, which modules would make it similar to CivicSpace?

Could someone offer any advice?

Thank you

(I have researched many CMSes before I narrowed my selection down to
these three.)


-- 
Mike