Notifications of replies to topics

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Tom T.
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Notifications of replies to topics

Post by Tom T. »

When I logged on to email today, I had four notifications of replies to the "smilies" thread. Most fora notify you only once of replies to a topic you are watching, and advise you that you will not receive any further notifications until you have logged in and viewed the topic. This reduces clutter in the user's inbox, and reduces load on the forum's mail server and bandwidth. I don't horribly mind the present setup, but wouldn't it be more economical of your resources to configure the notifications in this way?
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Alan Baxter
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Re: Notifications of replies to topics

Post by Alan Baxter »

I think I've been getting only one, Tom. For example, I was notified of J_byt's latest post to the "Unable to use PayPal to donate" topic, but not notified of your subsequent posting. I'll let you know if I ever see what you seem to have experienced.
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GµårÐïåñ
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Re: Notifications of replies to topics

Post by GµårÐïåñ »

Tom T. wrote:When I logged on to email today, I had four notifications of replies to the "smilies" thread. Most fora notify you only once of replies to a topic you are watching, and advise you that you will not receive any further notifications until you have logged in and viewed the topic. This reduces clutter in the user's inbox, and reduces load on the forum's mail server and bandwidth. I don't horribly mind the present setup, but wouldn't it be more economical of your resources to configure the notifications in this way?
Agreed, it seems a bit excessive but not necessary for me or even you but the load on the system as the user base grows would be potentially huge. Also I asked Giorgio when he has time to see if he can add or edit the RSS feed setup to not list every post but rather just the threads. He said he will look at it when he has some time after his current stuff and maybe he can look at this too.
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Re: Notifications of replies to topics

Post by GµårÐïåñ »

Alan Baxter wrote:I think I've been getting only one, Tom. For example, I was notified of J_byt's latest post to the "Unable to use PayPal to donate" topic, but not notified of your subsequent posting. I'll let you know if I ever see what you seem to have experienced.
If I may add. Some forum software are setup that if you don't visit a thread after getting the notification, it will assume you have abandoned the topic and will not send any more. If you click on the link and access it, then it will sort of internally reset your notification to get the next hit and so on. I know some forum you can avoid clicking on the notification and still be notified. I think its a board setting by the admin or maybe that some forum software is built like that out of the box. I guess Giorgio can check and see on that.
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Nan M
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Re: Notifications of replies to topics

Post by Nan M »

Gentlemen,
It's a subscription which is, by definition, intended to keep a subscriber abreast of all developments in the subscribed-to item - - whether a topic or the whole board.
I'd not ask for any restriction on the full service (either in the web feeds or the mail feeds) - namely a notice of every single post because anything less than a full feed restricts others' utility. On the contrary for the web feeds, I'd prefer to see a feed for each board at least, because at several stages when I opened my feed reader, the refresh had run some few new posts out of the current screen before I'd seen them - making me feel obliged to open Fx to make sure I hadn't missed any spam.

The sunset feature should be the default and appears to be working that way for my post subscriptions, the same as for Alan.
I'd be inclined to let the owner decide what an overload is and when to fine-tune. He's in the drivers seat after all.

Tom T, I notice that you post quite regularly more than once to a thread.
Now, if your setting for the feature I described here
http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopi ... &t=15#p125
is on, then you're bound to get more than a single mail notice in threads you've posted to more than once, because the feature subscribes you again as soon as you post.
Could this be why you are getting more mail than you'd bargained for?

I've got the auto-subscribe feature on and the full subscription off, so that I can be alerted to reply to support stuff I've posted to.
For the rest, I rely on my newsreader, which is a lot quicker than firing up Fx.
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Tom T.
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Re: Notifications of replies to topics

Post by Tom T. »

Nan M wrote:Tom T, I notice that you post quite regularly more than once to a thread.
Now, if your setting for the feature I described here
http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopi ... &t=15#p125
is on, then you're bound to get more than a single mail notice in threads you've posted to more than once, because the feature subscribes you again as soon as you post.
Could this be why you are getting more mail than you'd bargained for?.
Actually, it's not. But you might still be right that If I multiple-post to Topic X to which I'm subscribed, it multi-subscribes me. If so, I think that's a glitch, and one that could easily be fixed.

And yes, I'd like to be kept abreast of replies to topics to which I've subscribed, but if I've been notified once, that should be enough to get me to the board, where I can review all replies, including those posted after my notification. Once I've viewed it from the email-link address, then it should notify me of any further posts.
If I don't respond to the first notification, four more aren't going to get me there any faster. Just wasting Internet routers.

I wasn't aware of "sunset", but it's a good idea. Is the sunset period user-configurable? Else it needs to be at least a week, I'd think -- people *do* go on vacations, get busy, have computer breakdowns, go in the hospital, etc.

As mentioned, it doesn't really bother me. "Delete" is easy. Just thought it would save the forum resources. As Guardian rightly pointed out, it could become quite a load as the user base grows -- which I'm confident it will.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. Incidentally, did you see that you are now officially my friend?
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Nan M
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Re: Notifications of replies to topics

Post by Nan M »

Tom T. wrote:
I wasn't aware of "sunset", but it's a good idea. Is the sunset period user-configurable? Else it needs to be at least a week, I'd think -- people *do* go on vacations, get busy, have computer breakdowns, go in the hospital, etc.
The 'sunset' I mean is where a subs is dropped if you don't reply to the notification email - the one you're not getting to work for your emails.
Apologies for confusion caused.

your board friend, cleaning out the inbox and logging off :-)
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Re: Notifications of replies to topics

Post by GµårÐïåñ »

Nan M wrote:I've got the auto-subscribe feature on and the full subscription off, so that I can be alerted to reply to support stuff I've posted to.
For the rest, I rely on my newsreader, which is a lot quicker than firing up Fx.
I have mine setup just like this and I apologize for not being more clear but I meant to say that either the board could make this setting default, of course if only Giorgio wants to never suggested otherwise other than just expressing a thought, or else it might put a huge load on the server as the load grows. I have mine setup so that I monitor in RSS feed reader the new posts and threads and I rely on the notifications to keep me posted on any followup to threads I have participated in.

The only itch I had was that usually RSS feeds return threads and not individual activity by post and currently I am getting say post 5 of thread 1 and post 6 of thread 2 and say post 6 of thread 1 and I just find that style of reporting a bit extensive and redundant, that's all. Although I do see how if you see a post once and you don't reply to it which puts you on notification, if it didn't report followup posts you may miss some other post that you might want to reply to, I see that totally too, so its a torn situation for me :ugeek:
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Re: Notifications of replies to topics

Post by Nan M »

GµårÐïåñ wrote: The only itch I had was that usually RSS feeds return threads and not individual activity by post
Understood now. We are on the same page I believe, just for different reasons :-)
Thus my preference in any forum is for each major category (in this case, for example, NoScript Support) to have a feed.
And, if it gets really busy, then a feed per thread for sure.
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Re: Notifications of replies to topics

Post by GµårÐïåñ »

Nan M wrote:Understood now. We are on the same page I believe, just for different reasons :-)
Thus my preference in any forum is for each major category (in this case, for example, NoScript Support) to have a feed.
And, if it gets really busy, then a feed per thread for sure.
Yes we are, agreed :lol:
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