Is there a way to follow a user?

[bitmover]

Is there a way to follow a user? Like add him to watchlist?

It can be a suggestion, if impossible.

[EthanB]

I always assumed this would be possible when you go to Watchlist and select the Watch Board option and input the users recent post link as a board. I have never tried, so I might be way off base and this sort of encourages unsavory behavior if you ask me. Whenever I see the posts of someone I know to be reputable I find myself more likely to open their threads, but I can see a lot of people abusing this to follow and bother specific users. Not that this is a difficulty now, but it would seem redundant to add such a thing.

Might I ask for what reason you're suggesting such a thing? It could be helpful to know specifically what your potential use-case would be.

[bitmover]

Well, the reason is that I am trying something like "customize my feed".

When I click on "Show unread posts since last visit" it's 90% ANN posts.
When i click on "show new replies to your posts" it's better, but still many ANN threads and a bunch of things that I no longer have interest...
When i click on some board i see a lot of posts that don't interest me as well, and i have to slowly read one by one looking for a one that interests me...

In reddit for example I can subscribe to subreddits that I have interest. In facebook i can follow people that have the same interests that I do.
I know this place works differently, just trying to understand how it does.

Still learning, few weeks here...

[EthanB]

Ahh, I understand what you're trying to do a little better now. The forum is currently running on some old-school SMF programming, which has been customized very extensively, but is still lacking in many respects. There is new forum software being developed for a "New and improved" forum; they are constantly taking suggestions and looking for feedback on what's going on. You can get involved in discussions, read more, make suggestions and see what's been developed here, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=167.0 I wouldn't expect any crazy changes until the new software is implemented.

[Regana]

As per my understanding 'Watchlist' has content based on your historical activity rather than other users. What you are looking for is listing into your feed what the people you follow a.k.a your 'BitcoinBook' friends post.

This requires an algorithm that takes into consideration the activity of these you follow, I'm not aware of the technical limitations of this forum current implementation but shouldn't be impossible, furthermore a newer version is under development so I wouldn't be surprised if a similar feature is implemented in the short term.

As for use cases what comes to my mind is:

• Being able to 'suscribe' to good contributors and subject matter experts in different topics.
• Creating a way to track users popularity which actually does translate to the effort one puts to improve posts quality to gather more 'followers'

And a long etcetera, I know you all are social media users so use cases are gazillions.


Nonetheless this is a forum, old fashioned forum, although there is a lot of brain juice moving around to make this a better place, good suggestion mate I would definitely use that feature.

[popomaru]

I think that there is probably no such function.
There is just an ignore list.

I think that it will be a stalking act and I do not think that it is necessary.
If necessary, I think that it is good to use Discord or SMS.