Help talk:Followed pages

Is 'Bold text' supposed to be appearing at the top? Seems like the New Features Template isn't working as expected...

&mdash; Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk &bull; contribs &bull; email) 20:48, May 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * i assume the exlusion bracketing new feature will be removed on the 5th.  Dr. F  21:57, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

Distinguish watch from follow
The associated page here implies that it will no longer be possible to Watch a page without also Following the page. That is, that while the "special: Watchlist" page will still exist, anything I put on my (former) watchlist will start spewing email to my email address when changed. This is highly distressing to me. I have a very large number of pages watched. I maintain them (when I do) manually. I have absolutely no desire to "spam myself" with change messages.

The wiki I edit most often does not (yet) have a preferences setting for opting out of Follow. If the choice is between removing everything from my watch list, or removing my email address, I will be doing the latter. --Eirik Ratcatcher 21:51, May 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * It follows exactly the same preferences for emailing as watching - it's all shared. It is basically just a new on-wiki front-end. (No duplicate email or anything, though we will be making some updates to the text of the emails of course.) Kirkburn (talk) 21:53, May 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * ... and I discovered an option near the end of the list of preferences "E-mail me when a page I'm following is changed", which contradicts my assertion above that there wasn't such an option. I can live with that.  I'd already had Watchspam turned off.  The thought  not being able to turn "followspam" off was ... overpowering.  Speaking of preferences, it's odd that "Hide patrolled edits from the watchlist" is in Misc, instead of under "watchlist" preferences. --Eirik Ratcatcher 21:59, May 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * Good question, probably a bit of custom code there. I'll look into it :) Kirkburn (talk) 22:11, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

Making privacy opt-in is BAD
Allowing people to broadcast their watched pages is fine. Making this behavior the default is not. This reeks of the Google Buzz contact-sharing incident. Also, someone needs to learn how to spell "summary", they misspelled it "summery" in a couple of the names of the new system messages. --Pcj (T&bull;C) 23:14, May 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree; I don't want to know what pages other users watch, and I certainly don't want them knowing what I watch. If they wouldn't do this in Wikipedia, they shouldn't do it here. Will-Girl 03:25, May 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Also agree. This could create issues for various wikis that attract vandals, if certain users (be they admin or whatever) watch a group of pages then vandals who might have beef with a user could attack a group of pages that are watched by that user. --Tangerineduel 12:15, May 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * This type of stuff is one reason why I rarely edit any wikia wikis anymore. Their views on privacy are lacking.--Rockfang 12:52, May 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Option should be to opt-out of privacy, not opt-in. There are several issues with optin privacy, many of which were just enumerated. --Sky 18:23, May 4, 2010 (UTC)

Viewing changes to followed pages
The example screenshot shows only that you can see a list of pages you're following. How can I see a list of changes to those pages, like the current watchlist? Powers 00:28, May 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * There is a "Followed pages" (Watchlist) tab on Special:MyHome that filters recent activity, or there is still Special:Watchlist. Kirkburn (talk) 11:31, May 4, 2010 (UTC)

Bad idea
Even before I read (and trust me, I wrote this even BEFORE I read the above), who thought of the idea of being able to see other people's watchlist? What if another user got hold of the information, and deliberately vandalised the pages on a specific users watchlist to spam their e-mail account?-- 15:52, May 4, 2010 (UTC)

OMG!
It's the same god-danged thing! 16:03, May 4, 2010 (UTC)

Questionable
What exactly does this improve, beyond changing the word watch to follow? Aside from automatically violating users' privacy without their consent, of course. Normally I would use the phrase "fixing what isn't broken", but I feel this is more towards "breaking what works". Pardon my...hostility, but I fail to see how this improves the current system. Auguststorm1945 18:18, May 4, 2010 (UTC)