# When changing category watch state, prompt to also change state of all topics in that category at the time of change
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-changing-category-watch-state-prompt-to-also-change-state-of-all-topics-in-that-category-at-the-time-of-change/46767
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [3 ביולי, 2016, 9:29am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-changing-category-watch-state-prompt-to-also-change-state-of-all-topics-in-that-category-at-the-time-of-change/46767 "2016-07-03T09:29:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [4 ביולי, 2016, 10:52am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-changing-category-watch-state-prompt-to-also-change-state-of-all-topics-in-that-category-at-the-time-of-change/46767/21 "2016-07-04T10:52:37Z")
It is 100% clear to me that in the current state of affairs there are no winners.
Nobody wants to “start watching a category BUT only new topics in the category”, nobody … ever.
I don’t want to have to backfill 200k rows of topic tracking state when you watch a category, cause it hurts perf, I always don’t want to really leak size there on topics that a user never visits.
I will have a look at just having the notifier directly check the category users table (excluding explicitly set stuff), that way it can notify without having explicit state in topic users.
A minor annoying edge case is.
- Watch category
- Track topic
vs:
- Track topic
- Watch category
I am not certain what is desirable here, I can have state explicitly change on existing topics on watch, cause we now have a proper undo.
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### Author:  [@alehandrof](https://meta.discourse.org/u/alehandrof)
#### Post date: [4 ביולי, 2016, 12:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-changing-category-watch-state-prompt-to-also-change-state-of-all-topics-in-that-category-at-the-time-of-change/46767/22 "2016-07-04T12:24:21Z")
2 more cents about the edge case:
It’s possible to start tracking a topic without explicitly choosing to track it. I would prefer that category-watching trumps topic-tracking, as it demonstrates explicit intent.
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### Author:  [@watchmanmonitor](https://meta.discourse.org/u/watchmanmonitor)
#### Post date: [4 ביולי, 2016, 3:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-changing-category-watch-state-prompt-to-also-change-state-of-all-topics-in-that-category-at-the-time-of-change/46767/23 "2016-07-04T15:38:42Z")
My overall goal here is for new members to get an email, with context, from any of 5 categories we deem Important. And only “track” 4 other categories which might be too noisy.
Once they join, we want our users to be able to customize this per their own desires.
Mailing list mode doesn’t allow the per-category controls, as far as I know.
What we need is mailing-list-mode per category, with the ability for a user to easily opt-out of a given topic, as they can now.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [8 ביולי, 2016, 7:10am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-changing-category-watch-state-prompt-to-also-change-state-of-all-topics-in-that-category-at-the-time-of-change/46767/24 "2016-07-08T07:10:12Z")
Prompt is gone and system is simplified per:
> [@Watching and tracking implementation for tags and categories](https://meta.discourse.org/t/watching-and-tracking-implementation-for-tags-and-categories/46987):
>
> I just revised the implementation of “tracking” and “watching” of tags and categories: Watching categories and tags has always been a rather limited feature. When you started watching a category you would only watch topics in that category from that time on. (with an edge case that allowed you to also watch recategorized old topics) This limitation was … hmm … limiting. Start watching #Bug and you would not be notified on a large amount of current #Bug discussion on historic topics. T…
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