OpenWetWare:Feature list/Pushing information to users

=Brief description= At the moment the only "push" technology on the wiki is the watchlist. Better information about changes that of interest to a particular user will help them better navigate the wiki, as well as hopefully encourage contribution (as you are more likely to post if you think it will be read).

=Detailed description=

=Previous discussion=

Tell user about this edit

 * Jasonk 08:46, 23 April 2007 (EDT): One of the more annoying things about the wiki is that when I post a reply to someone on a random talk page I don't know for sure that they will notice it. A lot of time I end up emailing them "I replied to your comment, follow this link", just to be sure.  Would be nice to include a feature on the edit page that had a box to type in the username of anyone you wanted to get an email telling them about the edit. (would include a link, etc). People could opt out of receiving the emails in the their preferences, and the email itself could explain how -- so don't think it would bother people too much or anything.

Page watch function
Smeister 08:20, 17 July 2006 (EDT)  I love the "watch page" function and would like to organize more activities in the lab, taking advantage of it. However, there is no way of knowing who in the lab is watching a page at any moment. You basically never know if anybody is paying attention at all. Would a query page for this be very hard to incorporate? It sure would enhance overall transparency and I guess it would also be useful for some of these OWW discussion pages...
 * --Johncumbers 13:14, 17 July 2006 (EDT) I agree, I don't use the page watch as much as I'd like.  I like your idea Steven, It would be also nice if it had a little number like 'my watchlist(44)'  to let you know what's inside there each day and encourage you to click on it.
 * Jason R. Kelly:Having the RSS feed button for the history come up on the actual page would be good. (and X people have subscribed to this feed being shown on the page would also help motivate contribution I think).

RSS digests

 * So we have the capability to provide RSS feeds of labs or projects (see Endy:Screening plasmid RSS feed.), though it's not especially obvious how to set it up. However with every edit showing up it overwhelms the ol feed reader -- would be nice to provide a daily digest.  LifeHacker does this so might be model there on how to implement.

=Interested community members=
 * Jason R. Kelly