YW Forums now on Twitter!

[Lee Enfield-Burke]

The YW forums now have their own Twitter account at http://twitter.com/YoungWizForums .

Follow the Forum's tweets and you'll be advised when new message content is posted. But more than that, as the release date for A Wizard of Mars approaches, people following Forum tweets will be the first to hear about the new Harcourt-sponsored promotions and contests leading up to the release!

Since this service is just starting, it may be take us a few days to shake out any bugs: please bear with us. Forum members can help us out by following YoungWizForums at Twitter and letting us know if the initial "main section" tweets are appearing correctly.

Thanks!

[Space Cadet]

What types of posts have you set to automatically show up on Twitter? Recently something someone posted to tToGR has shown up in the Twitter feed, and I'm wondering if that is intentional. It might not be wise, since around the time that AWoM comes out, tToGR is likely to be quite busy indeed.

[Lee Enfield-Burke]

Right now Twitter is pulling the tweets from the main section RSS feeds. No problem with this at the moment, as things are fairly quiet.

If the ToGR starts heating up next year, there are a couple of ways to handle it: (a) Insist on AWoM messages being posted in the proper AWoM forum instead of the ToGR... which is the way it should be anyway. (b) Move the ToGR out of the Crossings and into its own section, which won't go to the Twitter feed (there are actually four different feeds passing message titles and teasers to Twitter, via Twitterfeed).

In any case, we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

[kk]

This isn't that much of a post on the topic, except to say that the fact that the feed is on Twitter is cool.

I'm mostly posting because the phrase "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it" really sounds amazing here, and I just had to comment on that. It's an awesome quote!

[Lazy Leopard]

Spoiler avoidance is tricky at times, especially if folks put the spoiler in the subject, so it's always going to be a "do the best we can" rather than a "guaranteed spoiler free" situation. The occasional spoiler will, inevitably, leak out from time to time. I guess it should be sufficient to insist that spoilers are posted only in the appropriate "Spoilers Ahoy!" sub-forums (I guess only "A Wizard of Mars" and "The Big Meow" need them at present), and ensure those don't go to Twitter.

[Lee Enfield-Burke]

I think we can work around this by exempting the spoiler sections from the regular "group" forum structures, when the time comes. Or by changing the feed management a little so that each section's RSS is specifically opted into the YW tweets via Twitterfeed. That way the spoiler forums won't be able to turn up on the YW Twitter by any means.

[Space Cadet]

I've found that since I've been following the forums on Twitter, I've been posting here a lot. Well, a lot for me. The updates in my Twitter stream are a good reminder to come and be sociable (usually an effort )

It was a great idea to get the forums a Twitter account. I hope more people will be using the resource in the future.

Thanks!

[Lazy Leopard]

The Twitter feed's been surprisingly quiet today, considering. I think the only message I've seen today was the ARC winner announcement...

[Space Cadet]

I've noticed that, too. Not everything shows up over there. I've been trying to figure out what the pattern is. Is the RSS stream set to only send one post in a thread over to Twitter in, say, a 24 h period? That way, if we are all hanging out in the same few threads then the feed would look quiet. Also, I think sometimes there is quite a substantial lag between when people post here and when those posts appear on Twitter. I've noticed a lag of up to 3 h.

[Lazy Leopard]

Yeah, there's not been a new tweet from the forum since very early yesterday morning (by my time zone). That's thirty-something hours ago. Question is where's the blockage. I'd guess (from past experience) it's at Twitter's end of the process, as that's the system most likely to have been swamped. If so, then there's nothing to be done, and we'll just have to wait 'til it's feeling a little less overwhelmed....

[Lee Enfield-Burke]

I'll have a look at this and see if I can figure out what's going on. There may be a problem with the way Twitterfeed parses what it's seeing.

ETA: Twitterfeed suggests they've been having problems secondary to a data migration at their end: see here.