I just updated my Gmail filter to send traffic from the new polls.wikidot.com project to my Wikidot Community label. Gmail said, "Updating 17,000 conversations". That's the number of conversations (not emails, but threads) that have happened on the various Wikidot community sites since I started following them all about three months ago.
Email notifications have changed the way I use Wikidot. They are still a blunt instrument and raw. Those edit notifications (each time a page changes, another email gets sent) can be overwhelming. There's no way to refine what we watch (like, this blog but not comments). There's no way to watch people, only sites. And so on.
But blunt or not, it's turned Wikidot projects from slow polled forum-style groups into hyperactive event-driven parties. It used to be that a spam comment could linger on a site for weeks or months before someone noticed it and deleted it. Today, spam comments hardly have a chance: moments later, an admin has clicked on the link, read the comment, and deleted it.
The notification system is, as I said, raw and unfinished. So tell us your experience with the system, and what would you like to see added, or changed… Perhaps reply by email, or a "stalk Josh" feature that lets you watch a person's activity, or maybe seeing the diffs for an edit notification?
Why it can't be as it is in any other normal forum? To subscribe or unsubscribe to the thread that interests you, and that's it?
In the beginning, when you changed to email notification, I started to get the email for ecah edit at each site I am a member, including this site and its forums, so I started to get tons of emails per hour, which was unacceptable. I tried to unsubscribe from all of them and to subscribe only to those threads I am interested in, but there was no way. Then something strange happened: I couldn't stop emails, even though I thought I unsubscribed from all. Then I had to make a filter in my email so everything from wikidotmailer goes directly to the bin. Then, I saw you put the options to follow page, thread or forum, so I deleted my filter and started to subscribe to some threads where I posted, but then I started again to receive email notification for every and each cnange in Community site and its forum. I unsubscribed, then after some time, I subscribed again, but now I don't receive anything, just a notification if I have new PM and I am not on Wikidot.
Sincerely, I don't have a clue how email notification works at Wikidot, so I just come from time to time to the Community site and check last posts to see if there's some answer to my questions, then have a quick look to all other forums, and that's it.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
This is how it should work. You can watch the site, category, page (=thread). If you comment on a page you automatically watch it too.
I'm not sure what state your notifications are now: you're not shown as a watcher on this page, anyhow.
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I am not, because I did not subscribe, but I don't get the email notifications from anywhere now, even thogh I suscribe.
Also, I noticed that if I mark "watch this thread", I suddenly watch not only that tread, but all the threads in the forum, and I am sure I did not mark "watch the forum"…
I makred now to watch this thread. Let's see if I get the notification when some one posts..
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Nope. I have varous threads in Community forum watched, but I don't get any notification mails.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
We'll check what's going on with your notifications.
Portfolio
Any news on this issue?
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Nope. Sorry. It's in the queue.
Portfolio
Interesting. I got this one, but I still don't get any from the forums….
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Well, this is considered to be part of blog.wikidot.com's forum — it'd be the "Per page discussion" section (aka. Comments)
Maybe try unsubscribing, then subscribing again to the ones that don't seem to be working?
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
I meant, forums from the Community site…. I don't get any … I got this one, too.. But from Community site forum, I don't get any…
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Which is why I suggested unsubscribing, and subscribing again =X
This is a different website (blog.wikidot, not community.wikidot), so getting notifications for the blog doesn't make much difference to whether or not you'll get them for the community… :)
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
OK, I know that my second name is Sharon :D, but this time it is not my fault, since I did what you suggested, and nothing changed…. ;)
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Go to your profile, https://www.wikidot.com/account:you/start/watching
and if you see any sites it says you are watching, but for which you do not get notifications, please tell me which ones. If you are sure you're watching a site and it's not on the list, tell me which one.
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No, I do not watch any site, BUT I don't want to watch ANY WHOLE site. I want to watch just some pages, to be more precise, just forum discussions, especially those I start, since I usually start threads with some questions, and it would be nice to be informed when someone answers, but I really do not want to watch ANY whole site…
In short, no, I don't have there anythjing marked.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
So it works for sites, categories, pages, but not for forum threads? Can you provide me a specific forum thread where you posted a comment and did not get a notification? Thanks.
Portfolio
OK, it starts to make sense.
Which is your case. I'd advise you to watch the whole community site, it's worthwhile. For other case, we're slowly moving away from the old forum structures towards category/page based ones (as on the opensource-template project).
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How come? Didn't you say in this post that I can? You said:
My bold.
I really do not want my email box flooded with emails informing me on some threads that don't interest me and Community forum is pretty active.
On the other hand, it still doesn't explain how come I receive the emails from this blog only from the threads I posted in?
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
I was wrong. You cannot selectively watch forum threads and pages are not threads except conceptually, as in this blog. Pages in fact contain hidden forum threads but watching applies to the page, not the thread.
My apologies for giving a confused and incorrect explanation.
Portfolio
Thanks. I've posted a howto on the community site regarding this: http://community.wikidot.com/howto:email-notifications
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For me it is really interesting to be noticed via e-mail of every change in “my” wiki. The problem is that some user-editors do not use the preview option before saving, so they press edit & save each time they see some error, and this actually causes a lot of useless e-mails.
One approach is to add -in the editing page - an option saying “ Remove e-mail Notification” (it can be a checkbox unchecked by default), in this case the user-editor can –for example- fix some orthographic bugs and check the “Remove e-mail notification” ensuring that nobody will be notified of this minor change.
Somebody could not want their user-editors to decide whether the e-mails are sent or not… in this case I suggest that this “Remove e-mail Notification” checkbox only appears when the administrator activates this option in the Administration menu.
I like this feature a lot, but I wish there was a way to disable emails for comments. For instance, I watch this site, blog.wikidot.com, so I can see when a new blog has been uploaded, but I also get emails for various edits and comments from everyone.
I don't mind the edits so much, it's the comments that I don't care much for. Otherwise, I haven't had any problems with the email system. Keep up the great work, Wikidot!
There's an easy way to get the posts, and no comments - use the RSS feed. See the sidebar.
However when you comment on a page you will get all further comments on that page unless you explicitly unwatch that page.
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