I have answers for you.
I proposed this exact same thing in the Forum Feedback Thread that @towelkingdom rightfully suggested:
It’s nice we can follow (“Tracking,” “Watching,” etc) different forum categories (Beta, News From Wyze, Ask the Community, etc). Similarly, I would really love if we could have the ability to do the same for certain Profiles. Then I could select the bell icon and say “Tracking” on all my favorite users (All Wyze Employees, All Mods/Mavens, and a few other Community accounts). Another option would be to allow us to simply set “Watching” to anyone who is a member of group “WyzeTeam” or group “Foru…
I also brought it up again here: Forum Redesign - 8/12/21 , and got some great responses and information on it in that thread. I’ll quote the most relevant sections below for you:
I still wish we could “follow” specific accounts though. I’d like to tell the forum to send me an alert/email/notice any time you or certain other employees make comments (and some other forum members that often have great insights, etc), but I don’t know if Discourse allows that or not. It would be at the top of my forum wishlist if it was possible though.
I’ll mull this over, I promise. Since we’re flipping stuff around, this is a good time for the conversation!
Making it harder for people to harass does actually limit the likelihood (many people are generally lazy and a threat is easier than follow-through). If we do try it, we can remove it again if it becomes a problem. I’ll bring it up with the Mods since I was the emergency brake on this idea.
I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this with me!
Alright, so we looked into this following tool further. Turns out that since it isn’t officially supported, it would take many thousands of dollars to get it to a point where Discourse would feel comfy hosting it and then there would be a couple hundred dollar maintenance fee every month after to keep it going. They are now aware of our interest so if it ever becomes more standard, we can check it out then. But that isn’t a direction that we’re going to pursue at this time.
That said, we still appreciate you bringing this up and having this conversation with us.
What would be awesome is if Discourse built in a personal setting where each individual could select whether or not they wanted to allow others to be able to “follow” them. Then if someone is being harrassed, they can just deselect the follow option for a while on their own, while some employees could allow it for our convenience. I might throw in my 2 cents to discourse about considering such a thing which would resolve a lot of the hesitation if people have the option to allow it or not on their own (maybe default to disabled but allow it to be turned on).
Anyway, thanks again for looking into it. I am not hurt by the outcome at all, but it has given me some good ideas to bring up as suggestions to them on a personal level.
Oooh! Yeah, you should totally say that! It would fix the concern I had about easier cyber-stalking.
And I can’t take credit for putting all the work in. I delegated to Loki and he was kind enough to report back. He’s the hero in this story (and many others)!
Our mods here are the best. They keep this place a good environment with good balance, still allowing people freedom to voice concerns and complaints (respectfully), while not letting things get so out of hand that I just want to leave (as happens in other places. Keep it up mods, and thanks Loki (and others) for looking into other options to continue improving things for the community and such here. It’s appreciated.
Okay, that last one wasn’t really necessary to quote, but I still believe it and wanted to shout out to our great mods again. I said this before I was a Maven, and I didn’t know they are even so much better than I even realized back then! Thanks for all you do Mods.
I am hoping this will be an option in the future because as can be seen, I too have really wanted this feature for a long time, so I am highly supportive of this idea!
Implement the idea @Newshound suggested above (this one actually works now, and I use it all the time. For example, to track Wyze employee comments , I go here: Link to all comments made by Wyze Team Employees in chronological order of most recent up top and it shows me all activity from all Wyze Employees.
Bug Discourse devs in their main forums to add support for this. Add a wishlist to Discourse and rally support for them to support it, and then Wyze would probably implement it if there are safeguards from harassment issues.
That’s basically where we’re at.
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That way I don’t miss anything said by employees.