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Re: "Notify" working intermittently?

Palinurus said:
No Megan, you're not the only one. I've noticed similar occurrences.

A tentative explanation I've constructed for myself based on several observations would be that one has to be logged in when inspecting notification links in order for later notifications for the same thread to be send to you. Being logged in while reading other threads is also helpful especially when your own posting has been quite a while ago in any particular thread.
There may be other explanations and/or strategies involved of which I have no knowledge, so fwiw.

Just read the posts of Jason(ocean59) while typing and concur with him.
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It's possible that this could have happened to a few topics when I was checking notifications with my phone, since the phone browser did log off of the forum unexpectedly last week. I usually notice right away if that happens, though, since the theme changes from green (my theme) to blue (the default). It hadn't occurred to me that being logged off would have that effect. Thank you!

One change I made around the time the problem became apparent was to switch to using the new Google GMail app on my phone to follow the forum. It saves a "tap" or two for each message, because it shows the browser inside the app and a single tap returns to the message list. I will watch it more closely to make sure that I stay logged on to the forum.
 
Subscribe options

Hello.

I was thinking it would be very convenient if I had the option to subscribe to a forum or even the whole forum, and receive notifications or even "digests" on the currently running topics. I know other forums have the option to receive digests and subscribe to forums. It would be nice to have all the new posts and topics in one place rather than having to navigate around a bunch of links.

Is everyone already doing this or am I just missing something?
 
Re: Subscribe options

Well there is the "View Most Recent Posts" link by your avatar. That's usually what I use if I want to see the newest threads. There is also "Show Replies to your posts" and "Unread Posts since last visit". There is also a button to "Notify" you of any activity going on a certain thread. Those are the things I use most of the time. Hope it helps.
 
Re: Subscribe options

monotonic said:
Hello.

I was thinking it would be very convenient if I had the option to subscribe to a forum or even the whole forum, and receive notifications or even "digests" on the currently running topics. I know other forums have the option to receive digests and subscribe to forums. It would be nice to have all the new posts and topics in one place rather than having to navigate around a bunch of links.

Is everyone already doing this or am I just missing something?
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There is also a RSS feed available, where you can subscribe for the whole forum, boards and topics and could be read out with a RSS reader.
 
Re: Subscribe options

Try this: http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?type=rss;action=.xml
You can also use thread specific feeds if you want to follow a discussion without using the email notification service.

I used the board's RSS main feed once but gave it up shortly after because I couldn't catch up on following and reading every new item appearing in my inbox.
But this is basically the feature requested.
 
Re: Subscribe options

Thanks. I have to wonder, how fast the discussions are nowadays, if I will be able to keep from missing something.
 
Re: Subscribe options

Anyone else have trouble with NOTIFY? For me, it usually works for a few posts then stops working. If I unnotify and notify again, it works again, for from zero to a few posts.
 
Re: "Notify" working intermittently?

Several years ago forum notifications universally worked. Then suddenly many forums seemed to just stop sending notifications reliably. This has always ticked me off but I've had to live with it. As I understand most forums have some incarnation of phBB or whatnot, so it could be that the base software package most forums use is buggy. Or perhaps it is simply a setting who's default value was changed in an upgrade years ago.
 
Re: "Notify" working intermittently?

monotonic said:
Several years ago forum notifications universally worked. Then suddenly many forums seemed to just stop sending notifications reliably. This has always ticked me off but I've had to live with it. As I understand most forums have some incarnation of phBB or whatnot, so it could be that the base software package most forums use is buggy. Or perhaps it is simply a setting who's default value was changed in an upgrade years ago.
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There is indeed something interesting going on with the SMF "notify" feature. I don't know if it inherited the problem from an earlier product or not, but it definitely has issues.

Some time ago I noticed that some notify messages contain a link that starts with http:, while others contain an https: link. Recently, however, I have noticed that some notify messages contains a link that contains an IP address in place of the hostname! I wasn't able to find an example easily, but I will mark it the next time I see one. I can't remember now if these links even work -- I don't think they do.

I suspect that the notify feature is somehow sensitive to who it is that posts the message, and I wonder if under some circumstances the message generated might be undeliverable. If that happens, you will cease to receive notifications for that particular topic or board.
 
Re: "Notify" working intermittently?

Then toss in the fact that e-mail deliverability is basically impossible to guarantee these days, and there you have it.

Notification e-mails are usually all mostly the same text, with a few little modifications. This kind of repeated e-mail from the same source very quickly can become labeled as "spamming", and suddenly your dear e-mail provider will block them and/or dump them in the spam folder.

In some cases, adding "forum (at) cassiopaea.org" to your address book may help. Or maybe not...
 
Re: "Notify" working intermittently?

Mr. Scott said:
Then toss in the fact that e-mail deliverability is basically impossible to guarantee these days, and there you have it.

Notification e-mails are usually all mostly the same text, with a few little modifications. This kind of repeated e-mail from the same source very quickly can become labeled as "spamming", and suddenly your dear e-mail provider will block them and/or dump them in the spam folder.

In some cases, adding "forum (at) cassiopaea.org" to your address book may help. Or maybe not...
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I agree that lost email is the simplest explanation for lost notification messages. This business of IP addresses in links in the email message, though, is fairly new and points to something going on with SMF itself. I haven't been able to imagine a scenario for reproducing it, as yet. I would like to try to locate all the notification messages I have received lately that contain links with IP addresses in place of cassiopaea.org/forum, but I haven't figured out how to find them yet.
 
Hello 'Smart Guys',


I have been wondering (being a sort of 'in the know computer guy myself') is there any way to make the subscription to notifications more flexible? For example, I am currently subscribed to quite an active thread which is probably getting more than 20 responses a day. I get an email every time that happens. My question is, is there a way to tell the system "give me one summary email a day for this particular thread"? Also, as you can see, I am still quite a posting newbie so I wonder if there will be more privileges in this regard once I make my 50th post i.e. once the "Force is strong with me".


Thanks.


Kevin
 
kevin2themystic said:
I have been wondering (being a sort of 'in the know computer guy myself') is there any way to make the subscription to notifications more flexible? For example, I am currently subscribed to quite an active thread which is probably getting more than 20 responses a day. I get an email every time that happens. My question is, is there a way to tell the system "give me one summary email a day for this particular thread"? Also, as you can see, I am still quite a posting newbie so I wonder if there will be more privileges in this regard once I make my 50th post i.e. once the "Force is strong with me".
Click to expand...

Yup, just do this:

1. Click Profile (top of the page)
2. Click Modify Profile -> Notifications
3. Change the settings to whatever you'd like, and there you have it.

:guru:
 
Hi Scottie,

I've got an issue with mail I receive on my mail box about this thread: http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,19984.0.html

When I follow the link in the mail, I get this answer on the forum:
The topic or board you are looking for appears to be either missing or off limits to you.

But I've just checked by using directly the forum and I am able to access to this thread... :huh:
 
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