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Email notification?

K_Meinhard

K_Meinhard

May
403
5
I may have missed something, or I may be doing someting wrong but...

I only get email notifications only for any "New thread in watched forum", but no follow ups. This has gone on for a while.

What have I to do to get all postings in a thread (again)?

Klaus Meinhard
 
I have the same issue and missed a whole bunch of things when the forum software was updated and prior settings cleared. I re-subscribed for each forum and each thread, but have to visit the forum for any subsequent updates to the threads that were made while I wasn't looking. It's quite annoying for someone who is used to and prefers to receive emails of each and every post (like we used to get). It may be a side effect of new forum software. Hopefully, it can be fixed to email each post again.
 
While the physical non-delivery is from the forum (mis)operation, but its foundation is the idle persons' browsing mentality - go check all hundred post offices that might have something interesting and new every few hour, but don't bother to keep your own copy that you can see even when you have no internet access... Personally, I want my own copy of the whole forum; I have the disk space, I want it automatically delivered to my system. Well, technically, email or newsgroup posts are not delivered, but collected by my local news client - but automatically, and as frequently as I want, even once every minute, and I can set up audible notification of new messages. Going to a browser, in contrast, is like my having to spend my own time to do what the corporate mailroom does. Setting up alerts does not help much, either...
 
Since there is no general outcry about this we may be last of the dinosaurs :-)

Generally I have the feeling that it is getting more quiet in this forum. So perhaps a few more of us are less outspoken about it, but like us visit the fora per browser only very occasionally?

All in all it would be nice if at least the basic functionality of email notification as it was could be restord.
 
I follow @Take_Command on Twitter, to find out when new messages are posted to the forum.

As I spend more time with Twitter, than I do with email, this works out better for me.

Your mileage may vary.

Joe
 
K_Meinhard said:
Generally I have the feeling that it is getting more quiet in this forum. So perhaps a few more of us are less outspoken about it, but like us visit the fora per browser only very occasionally?
Click to expand...
I wonder how many others were like me and did not notice when the forum was changed and all notification settings were cleared. It took me a while and I missed messages in the mean time. On a prior occasion when this happened, I missed almost a whole beta cycle. Messages are not always frequent. I don't want to go check a forum only to discover nothing has changed. When that happens too frequently, I stop checking. It's one of the reasons I prefer email. When there is something new I get it ... until I don't and then don't even notice.
 
I had had a facebook account, terminated it many moons ago. Those who know me send email. Those who don't send me junk mail. I'd rather play games than browse!
 
I used to get an email of every post also. Now, the email I do receive specifically says "You will not receive any further emails about this thread until you have read the new messages."
 
According to Larry Wall, the first of the three virtues of programming is laziness. I work hard on that, optimizing my process to reduce the effort required to complete it. The problem with the 'find new' is it is still a 'pull' action initiated and performed by the person while I prefer a 'push' action where I do nothing and new posts just arrive in my already open gmail. Previously, when a new message was posted, it was automatically emailed and I could see the unread counter on my JPSoft gmail label increase and I know without my having yet performed any physical action that there is something new to read and, two clicks later, I am reading it.

I think Rex's memory is not going back far enough. I remember a time, once we had forum software, when we were still able to both read and reply via email and never had to visit the forum. Sigh. I miss that.
 
TimButterfield said:
According to Larry Wall, the first of the three virtues of programming is laziness. I work hard on that, optimizing my process to reduce the effort required to complete it.
Click to expand...
Also known as automation, for which free software has long been available in the email/NG world, but not in the browser world.
TimButterfield said:
The problem with the 'find new' is it is still a 'pull' action initiated and performed by the person while I prefer a 'push' action where I do nothing and new posts just arrive in my already open gmail. Previously, when a new message was posted, it was automatically emailed and I could see the unread counter on my JPSoft gmail label increase and I know without my having yet performed any physical action that there is something new to read and, two clicks later, I am reading it.
Click to expand...
Here it's Outlook Express on one system, Thunderbird on another (OE's replacement requires you to open all your mail for Microsoft to see). But ease of access is the same, and it is stored on my local system, so I can view it when the internet is not accessible.

TimButterfield said:
I think Rex's memory is not going back far enough. I remember a time, once we had forum software, when we were still able to both read and reply via email and never had to visit the forum. Sigh. I miss that.
Click to expand...
Oh, he remembers Lyris OK, but the software was always week. It had allowed browser AND email to receive and to post; it also provided a digest service. But it stopped often, and it was expensive. It is now an email marketing tool; not sure how it would serve as a user forum. There were problems with the previous replacements of Lyris as well.

As apparently all of us in this thread, who do not like the current M.O. of the forum, there are two changes we desire in its operation - 1) email ALL posts to email subscribers; 2) accept posts that are emailed by authorized users. The ability to use email to modify or delete a previous post is not necessary, on the rare occasion it would be of benefit I can certainly use my browser.
 
Steve Fabian said:
As apparently all of us in this thread, who do not like the current M.O. of the forum, there are two changes we desire in its operation - 1) email ALL posts to email subscribers; 2) accept posts that are emailed by authorized users. The ability to use email to modify or delete a previous post is not necessary, on the rare occasion it would be of benefit I can certainly use my browser.
Click to expand...
For me, #1 far outweighs #2. If I am going to be typing a reply, I don't mind doing that on the forum. My biggest gripe is always having to go to a forum, any forum, on a regular basis just to check Is there something new yet?, Is there something new yet?, ad infinitum ad absurdum.

I haven't explored it yet, but just noticed the RSS feed icon in the bottom right of the page. If that feed contained the full text of every new post, an IFTTT recipe might work.
 
In replying to a thread with multiple posts, I have one quibble with the XenForo implementation: the "Reply" button quotes everything that's new in that specific post without context, i.e., suppressing everything that post quotes. To create a response wihich tracked the evolution of the topic I had to manually copy each previous fragment from its original post, and add author indication. Of course, if the thread contains only a single issue, quoting is not needed at all.
 
K_Meinhard said:
I only get email notifications only for any "New thread in watched forum", but no follow ups. This has gone on for a while.

What have I to do to get all postings in a thread (again)?
Click to expand...

You can't (and you never could). The email notification sends the first unread message in a thread; it does not (and never did) send all the unread messages.
 
rconn said:
You can't (and you never could). The email notification sends the first unread message in a thread; it does not (and never did) send all the unread messages.
Click to expand...
Maybe not since the switch to XenForo, but all previous Forum incarnations did. We do not like losing features we had gotten accustomed to utilize.
 
Steve Fabian said:
Maybe not since the switch to XenForo, but all previous Forum incarnations did. We do not like losing features we had gotten accustomed to utilize.
Click to expand...

The previous forum software (vBulletin) didn't support that either. We used a custom hack to get part of that capability, which was going away because vBulletin was forcing an upgrade that would (permanently) disable it. (That was one of the reasons for switching to XenForo -- see my dozens of responses to you on this topic during the XenForo conversion.)

The forum system before that (Sparklist) supported email notifications, but since SparkList hasn't existed for several years (thus the switch to vBulletin) that's not particularly relevant or useful.

So the real-world options are:
  1. No email notifications with vBulletin
  2. No email notifications and no forums with the no-longer-in-existence SparkList
  3. Some email notifications (new threads and the first new message in watched threads) with XenForo
If you'd rather have #1 or #2 (your much longed for but mythical past), turn your email notification off in XenForo. Then you'll have exactly what you'd have if we hadn't switched to XenForo.
 
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Rex. Is there another forum software that could email notifications of every post made to the forums, even if it was necessary to be necessary hack?
 
Charles G said:
Rex. Is there another forum software that could email notifications of every post made to the forums, even if it was necessary to be necessary hack?
Click to expand...
I'd bet that, if there is, it won't be around long. I suspect those who buy forum software don't want it. They want to do less and get more hits.
 
Charles G said:
Rex. Is there another forum software that could email notifications of every post made to the forums, even if it was necessary to be necessary hack?
Click to expand...

Yes, there are a couple of forum packages that will do that. (This was discussed in exhaustive detail a couple of years ago when we switched to XenForo.)

The cheapest one is $25,000. Thus far, the dozen or so users (< 1% of the forum) who want email notifications have declined to pony up $2K apiece for the feature.
 
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