What's up with email notification?

[vefatica]

Apparently I'm now getting email notification of everything regardless of whether I visit the forums. If you, Rex, did that on purpose, thanks. Now if you could only ...

... get the subjects to be just that, "the thread title" or "Re: the thread title"
... get new thread notifications to include the body (they still say just "message")
... get "From" to be the poster's userid
... get rid of everything up and including to "this is the message they posted"
... and get rid of everything after "to view this thread ..."

:)

 

[rconn]

I did that several days ago; I was waiting to see if anyone noticed. (I did something else that several people were ranting about not having, but nobody's noticed that yet. Apparently it wasn't so critical to them as they claimed.)

I cannot change the headers or contents of the emails; those are coming from XenForo.

There is no new thread notification that doesn't include the body of the message -- unless you've subscribed to the RSS feed, which is WAD.

 

[vefatica]

There is no new thread notification that doesn't include the body of the message -- unless you've subscribed to the RSS feed, which is WAD.

None of my new thread notifications have ever included the body (I mentioned that previously and posted a screen shot). They all say "message" where the body should go. In contrast, reply notifications do contain the bodies of the posts.

 

[rconn]

None of my new thread notifications have ever included the body (I mentioned that previously and posted a screen shot). They all say "message" where the body should go. In contrast, reply notifications do contain the bodies of the posts.

None of my new thread notifications (or apparently anybody else's) has not included the body. I think you've blocked the html email somehow & you're getting the text version.

 

[TEA-Time]

Vince, it appears as though you have your e-mail client set to show you the plain text version of e-mails. I can understand wanting to do that as "formatting" is often better described as making it annoying to read. Heh Might it be possible for you to set e-mails from *just* [email protected] to display as HTML?

Rex, in looking at a raw new thread message, it looks like what's being used for the {message} macro might be incorrect. Instead of being processed, the macro name itself is coming through in the plain text section of the e-mail.

 

[rconn]

Rex, in looking at a raw new thread message, it looks like what's being used for the {message} macro might be incorrect. Instead of being processed, the macro name itself is coming through in the plain text section of the e-mail.

Not my code; that's coming from XenForo.

 

[TEA-Time]

None of my new thread notifications (or apparently anybody else's) has not included the body. I think you've blocked the html email somehow & you're getting the text version.

Yeah.. what he said. Heh

On the other hand, the plain text section of reply notifications *do* contain the message body like they should.

 

[TEA-Time]

Not my code; that's coming from XenForo.

Yeah.. how responsive are they to bug reports?

 

[vefatica]

None of my new thread notifications (or apparently anybody else's) has not included the body. I think you've blocked the html email somehow & you're getting the text version.

Everything from the forums, notifications of new threads and of replies wind up in the same place, in the same "folder" in Agent. I see bodies (in plain text) for replies and I don't see bodies for new threads. I don't know how to make Agent show me HTML (and I'm not sure I want to see it anyway). Are new thread notifications formatted differently from reply notifications?

 

[TEA-Time]

Vince, maybe this'll help? This item is in the v4 section of their FAQ, but I imagine they kept it basically the same in subsequent versions...

How do I turn HTML rendering on or off?
http://www.forteinc.com/agent/faq.php#31A9D287D8D6B148852571D100737DC4

 

[rconn]

Are new thread notifications formatted differently from reply notifications?

Completely different.

 

[Steve Fabian]

Apparently I'm now getting email notification of everything regardless of whether I visit the forums. If you, Rex, did that on purpose, thanks. Now if you could only ...

... get the subjects to be just that, "the thread title" or "Re: the thread title"
... get new thread notifications to include the body (they still say just "message")
... get "From" to be the poster's userid
... get rid of everything up and including to "this is the message they posted"
... and get rid of everything after "to view this thread ..."

:)

I wholly concur. Email should be "short and sweet". The current email format is much worse than the less than ideal format used by VBulletin. Except in new thread notification it does not identify the forum, a requirement by all mail clients to automatically move it to the appropriate forum; likewise even the human reader does not have that information. Originator is only identified in the message body. The mail recipient is also identified in the message body - a duplication from the email header. New thread notifications' subject line does not include the thread title. Reply message emails include the thread title 3 times: in the subject line (GREAT), in the introduction banner where it is incorrectly referred to as the name of the watched forum (reordering the banner would make it refer to the thread), and once again as a highlighted title. When I read mail, I don't need to see the title 3 times! Redundancy is NOT beneficial.

Rex, do you dislike identification of the specific forum where the thread is in replies? Do you dislike thread identification in new threads? Do you dislike seeing the name of the poster in the "From:" field of the email header?

 

[rconn]

I wholly concur. Email should be "short and sweet". The current email format is much worse than the less than ideal format used by VBulletin.

There was/is NO email notification in vBulletin. There was a non-functional third-party mod (hack) for a very old version of vBulletin that I had heavily modified so it would work with vBulletin 3.8. It could never, ever, work with vBulletin 4 because the underlying architecture had changed (and every patch update of vBulletin 3.x broke it).

Rex, do you dislike identification of the specific forum where the thread is in replies? Do you dislike thread identification in new threads? Do you dislike seeing the name of the poster in the "From:" field of the email header?

I dislike the first and third, and have no idea what you're referring to in the second. And I would find them useless and annoying. (Which is also apparently the opinion of the XenForo developers and all of the XenForo users, because nobody has requested the email notifications be changed.)

If you actually look at the URLs, you'll see that there is no forum ID in the URL for any thread / post. So you're requesting a change that will break the underlying architecture and invalidate every existing link to threads & posts. Nobody's likely to be excessively enthused about that prospect.

If you don't like the email notifications, don't use them. I don't like them, and supporting them wastes an inordinate amount of my time for the benefit of an inconsequential number of users.
There are two choices: use email notifications in their current format, or don't have any email notifications of any kind, ever again. If I continue to get complaints about them, I'll take the easy way out and drop them completely (and permanently this time).

 

[rconn]

Yeah.. how responsive are they to bug reports?

We'll find out, but not for 2-3 months. (They don't post updated versions more frequently than that.)

 

[Steve Fabian]

I dislike the first and third, and have no idea what you're referring to in the second. And I would find them useless and annoying. (Which is also apparently the opinion of the XenForo developers and all of the XenForo users, because nobody has requested the email notifications be changed.)

My 2nd question was: Do you dislike having the title of a new thread in the SUBJECT line of the email notification? Currently it has the name of the forum, but not the thread title. Cf. replies: No forum name, but thread title. Nothing whatever to connect the opening message with responses so the mail client could build email threads...

Your dislike of identifying both the forum AND the thread in a response (my 1st item) and your dislike of using the name of the poster as the "sender" in the header (my 3rd item) did not reflect on how you adopted the 3rd party software to VBulletin 3 for email notification. All messages had included both the forum name and the thread title in the SUBJECT, and the poster's name in the FROM field. One of your last posts had "Subject: [Support-t-3427] Forums under repair this evening" and "From: rconn <[email protected]>". Did that violate your own preferences?

Anyway, any email that includes the actual post is better than none - I can read the post, and decide whether or not to go to the browser, and respond.
Steve

 

[samintz]

If I continue to get complaints about them, I'll take the easy way out and drop them completely (and permanently this time).

Please keep it. I find it very acceptable and useful. Please don't remove it on account of a couple squeaky wheels.

 

[rconn]

My 2nd question was: Do you dislike having the title of a new thread in the SUBJECT line of the email notification? Currently it has the name of the forum, but not the thread title. Cf. replies: No forum name, but thread title. Nothing whatever to connect the opening message with responses so the mail client could build email threads...

Your dislike of identifying both the forum AND the thread in a response (my 1st item) and your dislike of using the name of the poster as the "sender" in the header (my 3rd item) did not reflect on how you adopted the 3rd party software to VBulletin 3 for email notification. All messages had included both the forum name and the thread title in the SUBJECT, and the poster's name in the FROM field. One of your last posts had "Subject: [Support-t-3427] Forums under repair this evening" and "From: rconn <[email protected]>". Did that violate your own preferences?

It's completely irrelevant what I or you would prefer. With vBulletin, I had no choice about the format; with XenForo I have no choice about the format. The format is different, but all-in-all I prefer the XenForo format. You detested the vBulletin email notification hack, and you sent me dozens of emails grumbling about every facet. Now you've got something different (and IMO vastly better) and you want the lousy solution you couldn't abide 2 months ago!

If you don't like the format, you can create your own XenForo addon to get whatever you want. It shouldn't take more than 5K-10K lines of PHP. I like the current format, so I'm not going to spend several months writing a custom addon for the benefit of three or four users.

The subject title is meaningless; I have rarely seen a forum thread that had an understandable or meaningful title. And after three or four followup posts, the thread subject typically bears no resemblance whatever to the original title. After six or seven, it doesn't even belong in the same forum. (Go back and search for the number of threads titled "Help nits" -- how could you conceivably order them in individual threads?)

 

[Steve Fabian]

If you don't like the format, you can create your own XenForo addon to get whatever you want. It shouldn't take more than 5K-10K lines of PHP. I like the current format, so I'm not going to spend several months writing a custom addon for the benefit of three or four users.

OK. I would still prefer that the name of the forum be included in the subject line of the header of replies as is done for new threads for automatic filing by mail clients.

The subject title is meaningless; I have rarely seen a forum thread that had an understandable or meaningful title. And after three or four followup posts, the thread subject typically bears no resemblance whatever to the original title. After six or seven, it doesn't even belong in the same forum. (Go back and search for the number of threads titled "Help nits" -- how could you conceivably order them in individual threads?)

You are correct. It's the reason my default setting is to order all messages by date, and use thread view very rarely, to find out message - response order when relevant due to multiple responses. And the main reason to file messages into different folders according to forum is for different products. Your old requirement for suggestions to go into a separate forum is virtually negated by the completely separate Feedback forum. So all in all I just wish the mails were smaller, and the poster's name were its most prominent feature. It is when you browse the forum on the web - why is it hidden in the middle of a line in the email? I wish you would make at least this one point a request to XenForo.

 

[vefatica]

Completely different.

Both new thread and reply notifications come with plain text and an HTML section. I can get Agent to show the HTML version, but it's really ugly ... with huge green text for the article's subject (and link to it); the body is in a small font but it doesn't wrap. To see all of http://jpsoft.com/forums/threads/can-this-be-possible-tcexit-is-not-executed.3542/page-2#post-19997
I must make Agent two monitors wide!.

Simply, the plain text version of new thread notifications is faulty; it's missing things. Here's the first part of the plain text section (raw, according to Agent) of the notification of krischik's recent thread. It's missing the authoir's name, the forum name, and the message body.

vefatica,=0A=0A posted a new thread in your watched forum "" at Take Com=
mand Windows command processor.=0A=0A"DEL *.htm"=0A=0AThis is the messag=
e they posted:=0A-------------------------------------------------------=
---------------=0A{message}=0A------------------------------------------=
----------------------------=0A=0ATo view this thread,

 

[rconn]

Both new thread and reply notifications come with plain text and an HTML section. I can get Agent to show the HTML version, but it's really ugly ... with huge green text for the article's subject (and link to it); the body is in a small font but it doesn't wrap. To see all of http://jpsoft.com/forums/threads/can-this-be-possible-tcexit-is-not-executed.3542/page-2#post-19997
I must make Agent two monitors wide!.

That's a bug in Agent, not in XenForo.