Forgetful Alerts

[Syncretic]

Hi. First, thanks for all your work keeping the forums functioning. I know it's usually a thankless job, so thank you.

My issue: I currently have 23 threads in my "watched threads" list, both from posting and from explicitly selecting "watch thread." I have alerts turned on, but email notifications turned off. Most of the time, this works well - I get a red badge on the bell icon, I can see and choose the threads that have new posts (unrelated suggestion: the highlight color in the Alerts popup is very close to the background color, at least in dark mode - I'd love to see a greater contrast there). It all works as it should...

... except when it doesn't. It appears that after a time, the system seems to "forget" that I'm watching a given thread. It still shows up in my "watched threads" list, but I get no notifications - instead, I'll either notice it bubble to the top of its forum, or realize that I haven't seen any activity on that thread in a while and I'll go back and manually click on it. Today I discovered I hadn't gotten any notifications since mid-March for a somewhat active thread, so I had several pages of posts to catch up on. (This has happened to me perhaps 5-10 times, on different threads. I haven't been keeping notes.)

I'm fairly certain this problem pre-dates the recent forum changes. I have verified that my Account Preferences are correct, and as I noted, my "watched threads" list is complete (I don't recall ever having to manually re-watch a thread; I simply stopped getting new post notifications).

Am I doing something wrong, or might there be a little glitch somewhere in the notification system? Any additional data I can provide (other than alerting you the next time it happens, before entering the un-notified thread)?

 

[WildCowboy]

It will only alert once for a given thread until you come back and visit it, so is it possible you missed an alert at some point?

Like the mid-March thread you mention...if there was an alert at that time and you didn't go visit the thread, you would have received no further alerts for it over the past couple of months, even if 100 people posted in it. Once you visit the thread, you should then receive an alert the next time someone posts in it.

 

[Syncretic]

It will only alert once for a given thread until you come back and visit it, so is it possible you missed an alert at some point?

While I am usually fairly meticulous about keeping up with all the threads I follow, I can't rule out the possibility that I overlooked a notification. Given the infrequency of this problem, that is a plausible explanation.

Is there a way for me to enable notifications for all activity on a thread? That would, of course, create a lot more notifications, but would keep things from "slipping through the cracks..."

 

[WildCowboy]

I don't believe it's possible with out-of-the-box software, but that's something @arn would probably be able to better answer.

But you are correct that it would typically generate a heck of a lot more notifications, which I'm sure is why the system is set up the way that it is. A busy thread could generate a notification every few minutes (or less) for an extended period of time, multiplied by however many threads you're watching.

 

[Syncretic]

OK, thank you for your time. I'll just try to be more diligent in the future - and perhaps visit my "watched threads" list every few days, just in case.

 

[arn]

there is a plugin that we can add that will allow this to happen. I was looking at it before. and it's user configurable

Let me look into it more.

arn

 

[Syncretic]

Two related suggestions/requests/grumbles:

1. As noted in my first post above, the contrast between new alerts and old alerts is fairly subtle; it would be very helpful if that contrast could be increased (either per-user or system-wide). Right now, it's easy to miss the distinction.
2. As presently implemented/configured, clicking on the bell icon shows the list of alerts, with the "new/unread" alerts highlighted. However, that action (clicking on the bell) seems to mark the alerts as "seen," meaning that the red badge disappears, and subsequent clicks on the bell show the list without the highlights. This becomes an issue when there are multiple alerts - having clicked on one of them, then returning to that list, it's not obvious which ones remain unread (which is likely the source of my original issue that started this thread).
   
   It would be nice if the items in the list of "new alerts" would remain highlighted/marked as "new" until the thread is actually clicked on/read, so that processing multiple alerts would be less error-prone (right now, it's very easy to miss one or more when there are many in the list).

Regardless of whether or not you can address these suggestions, thanks for your time.

 

[Syncretic]

Hello again. First, as always, thank you folks for what you do; your work is appreciated. These forums run smoother than many that I use.

Notifications have been working well since my last posts, so thanks for those changes.

The one issue I still have is with the contrast - in dark mode, clicking on the bell icon shows a list of read and unread notifications; the difference in contrast is only about 3%, which is very difficult for me to discern. It would be really nice if you could increase this contrast, even by a little bit (or, ideally, make the colors user-selectable (although I know that's unlikely to happen, but it can't hurt to mention it)).

Again, thanks for listening.
</grumble>

 

[arn]

Hello again. First, as always, thank you folks for what you do; your work is appreciated. These forums run smoother than many that I use.

Notifications have been working well since my last posts, so thanks for those changes.

The one issue I still have is with the contrast - in dark mode, clicking on the bell icon shows a list of read and unread notifications; the difference in contrast is only about 3%, which is very difficult for me to discern. It would be really nice if you could increase this contrast, even by a little bit (or, ideally, make the colors user-selectable (although I know that's unlikely to happen, but it can't hurt to mention it)).

Again, thanks for listening.
</grumble>

Yeah, we can work on that. But there is also a "dot" that shows unread state that might be easier to tell.

 

[Syncretic]

Well, that's just embarrassing. How long have those dots been there? Had I noticed them, I wouldn't have complained; while I'd still like to have better contrast for the whole notification, the dot is a perfectly adequate indicator even without further changes.

Sorry for the misguided grumbling!

EDIT: For anyone else as oblivious as I apparently was, you can also mark posts "unread" by clicking on the empty circle where the dot once was - another feature I occasionally wanted, but not badly enough to ask for. Seriously, have those dots been there the whole time? I never saw one until @arn mentioned it! (How do you draw a red face on this thing? ;-)