Wikidot Community

I'll probably learn that when I find some time to learn enough CSS to produce a class for the buttons, but I'm just wondering: is it possible to use an image for a join button?

yes

.join-box{
background-image: url(yourimage.png)
}

Great! Thanks, Rhombus!

@Rhombus, thanks for the tip, I added that to the Join module doc.

Jesus H. Christ, I've been unknowingly inviting my colleagues to a spam trap! That's embarassing, and rather annoying. Automatic watching is a bad, BAD idea.

They can cancel at any time by opening the site and changing their watching settings on one of the pages, as I'm sure you know.

But yes, I agree with you. Auto-watching for the site creator, perhaps, but not needed for anyone else unless they explicitly ask for it.

I haven't read the TOS lately, as I believe Wikidot is not one of those places where important things are hidden somewhere in small print. So I don't know if anywhere in the sign-up process is mentioned that you'll become automatically a watcher of the site, being notified of every single comma or dot that's typed. So, although I do understand that people can sign off from watcher status, their first impression of my site (and of Wikidot as a whole) will be one of disorganization at best

Imagine yourself innocently clicking the "Join" button and joining a site seamlessly (thanks to our wonderful new join module) and, upon opening your mailbox the next morning, finding a bunch of irrelevant messages. That would be disappointing, irritating, and a good reason to not ever trust the site again. People just don't have time to waste like that.

I've been unknowingly inviting my colleagues to a spam trap! That's embarassing, and rather annoying. Automatic watching is a bad, BAD idea.

Notifications are not spam, they are essential to any kind of collaborative work. Automatic watching is what works best for most people. We have a design proposal for more refined watching, but until that is built, it's about managing the notifications we have today.

1. Every notification has a link to a page where the recipient can cancel further notifications. This is instant and easy and I use it often to stop watching sites I don't want to.

2. Put a Watchers module on the main page so people can stop/start watching with one click.

3. Add some explanation on the main page above the watcher module if you still think that's needed.

Could you take a second to review http://blog.wikidot.com/design:2 and make sure it gives you what you need? Thanks.

Thanks, Pieter, for your response. I don't know what the "technical" definition of spam is, but I believe that any mass mailing for which you didn't explicitly sign up is junk mail, and thus something to be avoided. And I do understand the importance of notifications for a collaborative work — I just don't think they should be automatic. They should be customizable on a per-group basis. Of course I want admins (maybe moderators too) to be always aware of what's going on in the site, but not every single site member needs (or wants) to be told about every single housekeeping activity. And admins should be able to choose what counts as a notifiable event — fixing a typo, maybe not; a major content edit, certainly.

I'll study the new design carefully when I get some time, but based on what I've seen in past discussions, I'm sure it will work perfectly well for me. Meanwhile, I'll try your suggestions to minimize the undesirable effects of automatic watching.

Just another related thought: it would help if we could have a customizable automated message for new members (Pieter already made a design for this, I think)where things such as automatic watching could be explained.

It would also be great to be able to contact all the site members at once, to increase the community "feel" of the site. I think I've heard such requests before, and I do understand implementing them takes time. But I'm just mentioning — and hoping ;)

I agree. All it takes is to have a couple people hit that spam button to get blacklisted on a lot of email providers and that's not good for anybody, not just peoples individual wikidot sites, but the whole network.

Thanks, morningbird, for mentioning that risk. I'm afraid one reason why I haven't been getting complaints from all site members is probably that: with some of them, the notification emails may have been filtered as spam.

Following Pieter's suggestions, I created a page explaining the situation with the watchers module. I also removed the "join" button from my front page and added instead a note inviting people to join while referring them to the explanatory page. For those of you with similar concerns, the page is http://www.etnolinguistica.org/membros, so you can have an idea of what I did.

(By the way, morningbird: the domain "Witchipedia.Com" is a brilliant idea!)

Thank you Kawina!

I put a little blurb above my "join" button that looks like this:

Please note that when you first join will will start getting updates for every page we change. If this annoys you, you can discontinue these updates by clicking the link in the email or, after you log in, click on "my account" and "watching" to adjust your settings.

I realize updates are useful for collaborative sites, but not all the sites produced here are collaborative. If you want to be a truly flexible resource you need to think from different angles. Some people are only going to join because they want to participate in the forums not because they are part of the project itself in which case they might be interested in forum updates but not necessarily page updates.

Some ideas:

Most sites when you join have an option in the sign up form that is checked by default and you have to uncheck if you don't want to get updates.

Digest updates- if all the updates are bundled into a daily or weekly digest instead of sent individually, it will seem more like an update and less like unbelievable amounts of spam.

Updates can be good for the site because they encourage return visitors but you have to strike a balance to avoid getting a reputation as a spammer.

Now that I have been acquainted with the piles of email editing my site content generates for my members, I am more careful about editing, creating & proofreading drafts before posting, fewer "safety" saves halfway through, and my next site I will make sure I have as complete as possible before inviting members.

I too think that automatic watching for site members (as compared to admins and mods) is a bad idea. It should be on an opt-in rather than an opt-out basis for the reasons given above.

One of my sites is about to be made private while development starts seriously (it's the Lord Lieutenant one I've talked about before). But I want the people I am doing it for to be members and see progress when they want to. What I don't what them to know about are the hundreds of minor CSS tests and changes I will make on the css:theme page during the design phase. They don't need to know about that and they certainly don't want hundreds of emails flooding their inbox telling them that I've just changed the login-status to a slightly different shade of pink! (not that the notification would say that but yu know what I mean).

A way round it that I will use until http://blog.wikidot.com/weneed:12 is released is to set up a new account for each of them myself with a spare email account and turn the watching off. I just then need to give them their username and the password. The email account can be changed later. But of course this only works if you know who your members are going to be so it's certainly not a universal solution or even for most people a particularly useful one, but it does for me get round this issue of automatic watching for new members.

Rob

Could you take a second to review http://blog.wikidot.com/design:2 and make sure it gives you what you need? Thanks.

I reviewed it, and I see little improvement in terms of giving admins more control over their content (but I could have missed something). The design gives users more refined options as to how they want to watch stuff, but does nothing in terms of giving site creators more control over what should be watchable. An ideal solution would be something in the permissions switchboard, where you can chose which group (moderators, members etc.) can do what (edit, delete, watch etc.) to what category.

And I still see no reason why members would become automatic watchers of newly created pages. With a few exceptions, we are all grown-ups here who should be able to decide explicitly and voluntarily whether we want to watch something or not. Watching should be strictly and opt-in thing.

And I still see no reason why members would become automatic watchers of newly created pages.

The main reason is that for me (this is an opinion, not a decision) a site represents a workgroup and by joining, members are effectively subscribing to the workflow.

I don't see the reason of joining a site except to get notifications of at least new pages. Making it opt-in would create an additional barrier and most members would forget to do this (or choose not to), making notifications work less well.

To some extent it is forcing members to participate. If you Join the forum.wikidot.com, it is precisely to get the messages. It is like joining an email list.

For me this seems the 80% case, and thus should be default.

The fine tuning that I see is, for example, the ability to control the flow of messages (see http://blog.wikidot.com/design:3).

What role do you see for members in a site that allows them to participate without listening to the workflow, and why should this be the default scenario?

Can we distinguish, for example, between different access policies?

FWIW, the original idea of notifications was to allow wiki sites to replace email lists, because we found that projects systematically needed both wikis and email lists, which was painful extra work for admins.

The notification traffic on a wiki is roughly the same type and volume as an email list, which tells me that it's healthy in most cases.

But again, this is a certain collaboration scenario and does not necessarily apply everywhere.

That's a great idea. Then the world need not know that it generally takes me three tries to get my modules right!! :(

at least allow admins to decide which (if any) categories should be watchable.

For one site I am doing for a local community action group it would allow members to receive important updates without a blizzard of emails about back-end changes which they just don't need to know about. Hopefully we'll either get the ability to make specific categories watchable or we'll get weneed:61 (facility to email all members). I still don't like automatic watching being switched on by default as even sites with a lot of members are not necessarily collaborative.