About Twitter feed @PassengerForum

[whole diary]

[LiskeardRich]

The sheer volume of tweets is just making it impossible to follow any other meaningfully. So the twitter feed is of no use to me.

Agreed there are too many tweets. They've taken over my feed on a very grand scale. I have even accessed the forum from a mobile device for the first time!

[TonyK]

That is a bit of a fringe disbenefit, I agree. E-mail notifications stop until you visit the site itself - is that an option available with Twitter?

[grahame]

I'm feeding the subject of all new public posts, and the start (excluding quotes) of follow ups ... but that's just an initial test and the feed is tailorable based on what's best for people.

At present, you'll see around 60 messages per day.   What could be different:

New subjects only - that would drop to 5 to 7 messages per day. The disadvantage is that strong running subjects simply wouldn't appear

Selection on a per-board basis.  That could drop traffic to just about any level - "ad absurdum" just tweet about Reading to Basingstoke, and you may see one tweet per week.  The problem here is everyone will want different board selected and that would mean lots of separate feeds.   Lots of work, not sure about twitter's policy on that.  Some sort of grouping may be possible.

Content-related tweets. "Only tweet is there's a substantial quantity of unquoted text" or similar rules.  Would miss "breaking news" headlines.

Limit per-thread tweeting to initial topic that at most (say) two tweets a day.  Gives stale updates, artificially selective, harder to code.

As you'll see, I've not come up with anything that I thinks's going to be ideal for most followers based on the initial comments already made.   Other suggestions gratefully received - depending on how that goes, I many go ahead with one idea or another, I may put it to a vote, I may fine-tune what we have at present, or I may let the thing quietly slip away and describe it as a "learning experience", which it has been already.

I open the floor to comments ...

[bobm]

I'd like the idea of a "new topic" tweet.  I can keep up to date with existing topics via the email notifications.

I know you can asked to be emailed about new topics but a tweet would draw my attention more and not be diluted by a barrage of other tweets regarding existing topics which don't interest me so much that I need to look straight away.

[Network SouthEast]

How about @GWPassengers

I like the above one. That or @GWForum

Great Western is the term used by the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)/NR^» (Network Rail - home page) and other to describe the route (regardless of TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company)), so I think it is a pretty safe long term name.

As a long term Twitter user, one piece of advice I would dispense is that there needs to be some kind of post limit because otherwise you may end up with your account in Twitter jail for suspected SPAM^▸ (unsolicited advertising emails or forum posts, usually sent out in bulk) (as sometimes happens with NRE^▸ (National Rail Enquiries)/TOC Tweets).

[grahame]

I am experimenting with @GWPassengers ... new topics only.   Also pulling back on @Passengerforum though I think we're quite a long way short of jail.    The idea is that follow ups will go to @Passengerforum so that there's no duplication.

[grahame]

The following feeds should now be available from the forum:

@gwpassengers - which announces all new public threads (subjects now starting re:)
- short messages - just the title and a link to the post
- typically around 5 or 6 tweets per day

@passengerforum - all follow ups to public threads
- subject, and the start of the content (excluding quoted sections)
- typically this feed will tweet 3 or 4 times an hour at busy periods

Messages should not tweet on both feeds, so you will not get duplication if you take them both

Each post includes a short URL link to the thread

We have a few boards such as "frequent posters club" and "the rumour mill" which are available only to established members who have posted a certain number of times or more, these boards are not available via twitter.

[TonyK]

I've got used to it now, and like it. A quick scan of the tweets is quicker than any other way of hearing about current hot topics, and it doesn't really flood the Twitter stream.

Leave it as is.

[grahame]

I've got used to it now, and like it. A quick scan of the tweets is quicker than any other way of hearing about current hot topics, and it doesn't really flood the Twitter stream.

Leave it as is.

It's staying as it is ... almost. I have registered another short URL and have switched to using that.    This post is really just a test to make sure I've gotten it right!