Setting a user to watch first post on a category

[csmu (Keith John Hutchison - Ceiteach Seán Mac Úistin)]

Context: I’ve discovered setting watching first post on a category pretty much sorts out the request we have from one local community group to only have replies going to the author of the topic. There are over 200 members in the group so changing the watch first post for each member would be tedious using the UI.

I’m looking for pointers on how to achieve that in the ruby console.

[csmu (Keith John Hutchison - Ceiteach Seán Mac Úistin)]

Does setting default categories watching first post achieve the same result as setting each member to watch the first post for a category?

https://{site}/admin/site_settings/category/user_preferences?filter=watch

[csmu (Keith John Hutchison - Ceiteach Seán Mac Úistin)]

This post pretty much sorts out what I wanted to do.

How do I set category tracking level defaults historically

Following the release of Discourse v2.4.0.beta7 (or if you have this commit), admins now have the option to set the category tracking levels of all existing users when setting the default category tracking levels in their site settings: Add a category to one of the following site settings, then select the green checkbox button. [10%20PM] A modal window will pop up with the following options: [10%20PM]

The old way using the console

Discourse allows you to specify default…