User blog comment:Sarah Manley/Followed pages - a new way to stay up-to-date on your favorite wiki pages/@comment-149-20100508070508

There have been several responses at c:help:Help talk:Followed pages that are worth considering.

I echo the privacy concerns. I think enabling this for users with existing watchlists with no notice to them unless they happened to login a few days before it happened shows - at best - a lack of forethought.

What next? You enter your address book, and Wikia searches its list of user emails for users to contact, revealing your identity?

There is no technical reason why sharing could not be set off by default for existing users. Asking people to turn it on would have been a great opportunity to publicize the new features (and the addition of category watching is an improvement). Instead, all you're going to get is admins telling their users to turn off a privacy violation.