Thoughts Weaver Experience

The bottom of each page now has a field: "?RegisterInterest in this page." If you click on it, it takes you to a simple form that asks:

You can track changes to the previous page on a page of your choosing. You want notifications to appear at the bottom of what page? We suggest something like ?JimCoplienRecentChanges. You can also choose to receive notification by mail with something like mailto:j.coplien@bell-labs.com

The content of this message can be tuned on an instance-by-instance basis ($WIKIFILES}/?NotificationForm.html)

You can have ThoughtsWeaver deposit the notifications on your home page, or on a special page you set aside for this purpose -- a private RecentChanges page. Or you can have ThoughtsWeaver send you mail right when the changes take place. Or, you can do both.

The mail option is kind of interesting. For normal ThoughtsWeaver users, it acts as it always has -- a shared bulletin board. For those who register for mail notification, ThoughtsWeaver suddenly acts like a mail reflector list, except you must respond by editing a ThoughtsWeaver page instead of replying to mail. That is, ThoughtsWeaver sends the text of the modified page to all who have registered to receive mail when the page changes. Thought it functions as a mail reflector, it also keeps a permanent log of the changes -- on the page itself.

If you deposit the changes on a page of your choosing, you can delete the list at will, or keep it as a permanent log of changes. You can even create a separate log for each of several pages.

This is how I've always wanted netnews to work, anyhow.

I consider this a prototype, subject to change, based on your input and experience. Let me know. Gosh, I hope it works this time... If you other clone admins want me to set up your instances to work this way, let me know.