[Mediawiki-l] NEWS: E-Mail notification on page changes (watch-listed pages and user_talk page)

[Thomas Gries]

NEWS:
We have developped a reasonable scheme for page change notifications.


HOW IT WORKS:

User X gets a short E-Mail:

- when a page listed in user X's watch list changes
- when the user_talk page of UserX changes


Addtional features:

- The notification message body and subject texts can easily be adapted 
to your needs. They are pages in the MediaWiki: namespace and have 
parameters such as $PAGESUMMARY and $PAGEEDITOR

- Further notification messages are suppressed until UserX visits the 
changed page(s) !

- "Own" changes (to a page in your own watchlist or to your own 
User_talk page) do not trigger the sending of notification mails.

- The notification flags can be reset together for all watchlist pages 
with a function (button) on UserX Watchlist page

- We will introduce some global flags to enable or disable the two Mail 
Notification modules if the code keepers allow so (Brion).

Please be patient. Allow for some days of further tests.
The mail programs have been developped in the last two weeks and are now 
fully integrated into to 1.3.1 version.
A documentation follows soon; by the way, the patches are not too 
complicated, finally.


Tom Gries and friends
Berlin/Munich

---

Example of a notification mail:

Subject: MyMediaWiki page change notification
Dear UserX,

 the MyMediaWiki page Main_Page has been changed on 16.08.2004 02:55 by UserABC,
 see http://myserver/mywiki/index.php/Main_Page .

 Editor's summary: chic

 There will be no further notifications for other changes unless you visit this page again.
 You could also reset the notification flags for all your watched pages on your watchlist.

             Your friendly wiki notification system
 
 --
 To change your watchlist settings, visit 
 http://myserver/mywiki/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&magic=yes

 Feedback and further assistance:
 http://myserver/mywiki/index.php/WikiHelpdesk