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Testing: Persistent Alerts

paul

paul

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Jul 20, 2000
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#1
One of the most common complaints we get is that users are "missing alerts" for threads that got new replies. The cause of this is the default forum software behavior of not sending the user any additional alerts for the thread, unless the user actually clicks through and reads the thread. Often the user does not, if for example the reply is from a someone that user doesn't want to read.

I have installed a new add-on extension that changes this behavior and sends an alert for every reply to watched threads, regardless of whether the user has viewed the thread since the last alert or not. The potential downside of this might be too many alerts (if a watched thread has 20 replies since your last login, you'll get 20 alerts...). So we'll see how this goes....
 
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#2
It's way too many alerts. I logged on today to 60+ alerts, which were all replies to only 3 or 4 threads. It becomes almost impossible to see if someone quoted you, and then there were 20 more replies to the thread (or other threads) before you log on again.

I understand the issue you were trying to solve, but now I have to go unwatch all of the threads that I lost interest in (in addition to the issue mentioned before).
 
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#5
I don't know how much you are able to customize the alerts, but maybe like if the number of alerts stayed the same (the current, high number), but when you scroll over the alerts, identical alerts are condensed into something like "12 new people posted in such and such thread."

Not sure if it's even possible ... just spit-ballin' here.
 
#6
Luke19Boarder said:
I don't know how much you are able to customize the alerts, but maybe like if the number of alerts stayed the same (the current, high number), but when you scroll over the alerts, identical alerts are condensed into something like "12 new people posted in such and such thread."

Not sure if it's even possible ... just spit-ballin' here.
Click to expand...

I was just thinking the same thing :). Will check into it.
 
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#10
paul said:
One of the most common complaints we get is that users are "missing alerts" for threads that got new replies. The cause of this is the default forum software behavior of not sending the user any additional alerts for the thread, unless the user actually clicks through and reads the thread. Often the user does not, if for example the reply is from a someone that user doesn't want to read.
Click to expand...
As I posted in a "Suggestion Box" thread some time ago, I think the primary cause of this problem is that there is no way to tell, when looking at your Alerts list, which ones you've already clicked on/through and which ones you haven't. Sometimes I log in to find a dozen or more alerts, and although I try to click my way through them systematically, I often overlook one.

When you first open your Alerts list by hovering the mouse over "Alerts" (on a PC), the new alerts all appear highlighted in yellow -- as if to indicate "this is a new alert" -- but then the highlighting disappears within a few seconds. I think the ideal solution would be if all new alerts remained highlighted until you clicked on them (and then clicked through the rest of the thread, when appropriate), after which time they would be un-highlighted. That would make it easy to tell which alerts you've responded to and which you haven't.
 

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