Admin ability to follow member w/o notification being sent

[chilihead]

Following is sometimes a moderation tool. Admins and mods (setting to determine if mods are allowed) should be able to follow a member anonymously, meaning do not send the notification. This is a great tool for monitoring members after a report, or watching a suspected spammer.

Of course there is the method of creating a stream for one member's content but allowing this would be great as well.

Also please consider changing the member following language:
"Let others see that I follow _______." This is deceptive because the member gets a notification. It makes it sound anonymous but you can't follow anonymously, the member is notified. Should be cleared up. Maybe add this at the end: "_______ will still be notified" and at the top make a general statement that the member will be notified.

If you add the setting suggested it could be a send notification checkbox for admins to simply deselect for anonymous following.

And since we're on language:
"You will receive a notification when _______ posts new content." I had to test this myself as it is unclear if this means every post/reply or content items only. It is all.
Please also clear this up for following areas (forums etc.), it is unclear if you follow for content items or replies. With following content items it is self-explanatory.

One last minor language one related to following:

a. Should be "replied to" as "commented on" is not used for topics. Also affects some status and profile language looking at language file.
b. You can't tell this is a topic. Like with regular notifications it says it's a topic. Should be telling us what type of content item this is.

IMO there should be one language used for suite continuity, reply or comment, there's discrepancies throughout with one here one there. Like the way you guys use topic not thread, pin not sticky. You should choose the best universally. "Replied to an image post" sounds fine to me. So does "commented on". I would just like to see one. FB uses both but reply is tier 3. Ex on FB: You have a status (content item), you have comments (tier 2), and you can reply to a comment (tier 3). Here they are all tier 2 so makes sense to choose one language.

Thanks

[sudo]

Tbh I also think streams need permissions and privacy then you could also create a stream to watch a user and they wouldn't discover it by tweaking the urls.