Ordinary users cannot reply to the topic, so everyone who is watching it won’t get unnecessary spam.
Why?
You can effectively create targeted mailing lists for very specific topics, or shared work or projects. Others in the community can discover this activity and start watching the topic to keep up to date, and also read previous announcements and information to get up to speed with the work.
Limitations
This only works for Trust Level 4 users, moderators and admins. If you need this capability then message the admins group and ask for your Trust Level to be set to 4.
If people turn off their email notifications and don’t visit the forum they won’t see the information. I guess they didn’t really want to follow the topic after all if they do this.
Other community members can’t ask questions about the topic in the topic, so best to make the first post as informative as possible: explain the purpose of the post, who it is for, how it operates (who updates it and approximately how often).
When you pin a topic a preview is displayed under the topic in the topic list view:
By default it grabs a fixed amount of text from the post, strips out all the formatting and uses this as the preview. You can control what is used for the preview by using an html element, e.g. in this post it looks like:
<div class="excerpt">How (and why) topics can be used like mailing lists.</div>
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
2
Let’s say I create such a topic, what is the way for ordinary users to ask clarifying questions? Send me a DM?
aidanheerdegen
(Aidan Heerdegen, ACCESS-NRI Release Team Lead)
3
That is one way. Or create their own topic asking about how it works. I would suggest it is worth having a relatively informative top post for this reason. I will add this to the original post.
aidanheerdegen
(Aidan Heerdegen, ACCESS-NRI Release Team Lead)
Pinned
4
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
5
I have a question about using the forum as a distribution list. Zoom has enforced passwords on meetings to avoid random people joining in on meetings and make meetings more secure. So would posting a Zoom link or any VC link on a public forum be something we shouldn’t be doing?
I haven’t checked if the University has any restrictions about it.
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
6
At least for ANU, it only advises avoiding sharing links to meeting publicly. But it isn’t unallowed.
aidanheerdegen
(Aidan Heerdegen, ACCESS-NRI Release Team Lead)
7
It is an issue to consider. I think it is fine to do until it is a problem. Some work arounds
Use a URL shortener like bitly.com, but you’re giving them tracking data
Have an image with the link details, but this is cumbersome and error prone to type
Use a QR code which points to the zoom meeting (only really works for mobile)
Use the spoiler tag
[spoiler]spoiler tag[/spoiler]
or details
put the link in here
I think the latter two are still vulnerable to scraping. As scraping is probably the biggest risk URL shortening is probably the best option for avoiding this.
There are also options when setting up the zoom meeting to only allow authenticated users and/or employ a waiting room:
Neither are preferred defaults, but could be turned on if issues arise.
I’m happy to amend the original post with some suggestions if we can agree on one or two.
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
8
Thanks. The image and QR code options are unwieldy, so I think we can scrap this.
ANU has a guide for Zoom meeting hosts (only accessible to ANU employees). It goes through the same ideas of the waiting room and authenticated users etc. It’s also possible to lock a meeting once all participants are in. We could add a link to that. And see if people at other institutions have similar resources.
aidanheerdegen
(Aidan Heerdegen, ACCESS-NRI Release Team Lead)
9
Could just make a “best practice for zoom meetings” topic and summarise all this, and link to that.
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
10
@aidanheerdegen Why do you talk about pinning the topic at the end of the initial post? Should “pin the topic” be in the list of steps after “Close it”?
aidanheerdegen
(Aidan Heerdegen, ACCESS-NRI Release Team Lead)
11
Yes. I will fix that. Thanks.
aidanheerdegen
(Aidan Heerdegen, ACCESS-NRI Release Team Lead)
12
Note that pinning a topic doesn’t mean it will always stay at the top of a category. We can change the default for this, or you can bookmark a topic and view it in your profile
clairecarouge
(Claire Carouge, ACCESS-NRI Land Modelling Team Lead)
13
And the feature to sync bookmark reminders with a calendar could be just what I was missing. That would allow people to get their meetings in their calendars without a manual step.