Leveraging the Watch/Unwatch feature
From sasCommunity
[edit] Revisiting Watching Pages
It is time to revisit this topic (a Main Page article in 2007) to alert sasCommunity.org participants to make sure you are watching pages of interest, especially pages you wrote or edited.
Why is this important now?
As sasCommunity.org is becoming more popular, we are seeing more users editing pages in ways that they shouldn't (and sometimes didn't intend!). There are at least two broad classes:
- Users are naively editing pages and putting things in the wrong place, or not fully leveraging the features of the wiki.
- Users adding advertisements and sales pitches for non-SAS related content on certain pages. Thanks to the WATCH facility, one of our sysops was notified when a vendor added content to the discussion page for FORUMS about their eCommerce product; we took action to permanently remove that content.
For the first case, anyone can help by doing some gardening..
For the latter case, any user can do that clean-up. Or, if the content is not SAS related, email the webmaster a link to the page along with a description of the problem and one of the sysops may be able to permanently delete it.
-- The sysops - July, 2008
Watching a page: How do I watch a page, and why would I want to do this?
- HOW
First, you must be registered and signed in to sasCommunity.org. To watch a page, simply click on the watch tab at the top of the page. The tab name watch will then change to unwatch. Once the option to watch a page is selected, each time that page is changed you will be notified by email with the page name, the date and time the page was changed, the user name who changed the page and a message that you will not be notified again until you visit the page. - You are notified of changes by either or both of:
- Visiting your watchlist (my watchlist link in the upper right corner)
- An email which is sent to the address provided when you created your id or updated it using the my preferences link. This choice is enabled on the User profile tab of my preferences.
- WHY
- If you've posted a question or comment, you would probably want to watch that page to follow more comments.
- Or, if you are the original author, you might want to know if anybody is changing it.
- Or, if there is a topic or User Group you're interested in and by watching the page you will be notified immediately that it changed and you would get the update immediately.
- Or, if this is an area where you have some expertise, you might want to watch the page to make sure the content is correct (here at sasCommunity.org we call this Gardening).
Watching the page eliminates the need for you to check the page for updates! You're notified by email automatically!
[edit] A sample scenario higlighting some of these issues
Consider the following email exchange (the names have been changed to protect both the guilty and the innocent J).
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 9:16 AM
Subject: XXXXX User Group on sasCommunity (from User Group XXXXX)
I am excited about sasCommunity and that this could possibly be a long term solution about the XXXXX website. However, one specific issue: we want to be able to have multiple email distribution lists that would be PRIVATE for a user group and have control over who, what and how it can be used.
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 12:33 PM
Subject: RE: XXXXX User Group on sasCommunity (reply from sasCommunity rep)
I look forward to discussing this with you. One of the features of the entire Web 2.0 concept upon which this site is built is to eliminate the need for externally maintained mailing lists. Users simply watch pages that they are interested in and are notified whenever they change. So XXXXX could have a page that is updated to reflect meeting dates, times, places and agenda. Whenever the page is changed, any users who are watching the page are notified according to their preferences.
Sent: Mon 5/14/2007 1:05 PM
Subject: RE: XXXXX User Group on sasCommunity (reply from User Group XXXXX)
This would work provided our current membership signs up for this feature, and over time that will probably suffice. But when certain things happen such as inclement weather just before a meeting we would need a way to let those who signed up for a meeting that the meeting is cancelled or is still going to be held. Now, I know we could get this info from the registrations but there are times when having a list (email) of registered XXXXX members, the steering committee might wish to contact its membership for special events or last minute changes, etc etc and without a mailing list, XXXXX would be at a disadvantage without such a feature.
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 2:52 PM
Subject: RE: XXXXX User Group on sasCommunity (reply from sasCommunity rep)
Simple using the new technology - just update the page to say that the meeting time has changed due to inclement weather and everyone who is watching the page is notified. You just tell your members to watch that page. And then if they change jobs, and thus email addresses, they can update their email securely at sasCommunity.org and then all the pages they are watching (e.g., the XXXXX page, thier in-house UG page, the NESUG page, and so so on) are all updated to use the new email address.
And if someone else wants you to notify them, once again, just update the relevant page.
I recognize that it will take a while before folks stop thinking about mailing lists. The watch feature does absolutely everything that a mailing list does (except register folks without their agreement) with none of the maintenace headaches.
