17,000 Threads Later

by pieterh on 28 Jul 2009 08:17

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?

Comments: 22

Add a New Comment