In fact, I did my search again and found a whole bunch of stuff. Looks like I need to RTFM a bit closer.

One drawback I can see with this "bot" is that I have to tell it what nodes to watch - my laziness means I would like something that watches any node I create, without being told to do so explicitly.

but note that the watcher bot is currently down for maintenance.

Update: Now that perlmonk.org (the host on which watcher's bot was being developed) has crashed and burned, I think it's safe to say that it is gone with the wind. Maybe some day I (or someone else) will attack this problem once more.

What is the sound of Windows? Is it not the sound of a wall upon which people have smashed their heads... all the way through?

"One drawback I can see with this "bot" is that I have to tell it what nodes to watch - my laziness means I would like something that watches any node I create, without being told to do so explicitly."

Perhaps this would be a nice user definable feature, and/or the option to click a link within a thread to indicate you wish to follow it.

Sorry, I wasn't aware watcher was down, thanks jdporter for mentioning it.

I have a watch button in my free nodelet:

<br>
<form method="post" action="?" ><input type="hidden" name="message" va
+lue="/msg watcher watch `id`" ><input type="hidden" name="op" value="
+message" ><input type="hidden" name="node_id" value="`id`" ><input ty
+pe="submit" value="Watch" ></form>  
<form method="post" action="?" ><input type="hidden" name="message" va
+lue="/msg watcher unwatch `id`" ><input type="hidden" name="op" value
+="message" ><input type="hidden" name="node_id" value="`id`" ><input 
+type="submit" value="Unwatch" ></form>
[download]