Alerts for watched threads are randomly not being issued

[RandomEar]

My settings set all threads I commented on to "watched" without e-mail notifications automatically. Additionally, I watch a couple of threads I didn't participate in. For a long time now, I will not receive some "alerts" (the bell symbol in the topmost nav pane) when a thread I watch gets new posts. It seems to happen randomly.

Sometimes I'll get an alert and see that I missed weeks or more of posts because I wasn't alerted of any activity. Sometimes I'll see new posts under "what's new" (lightning symbol in nav pane) and realize that I'm watching that thread and didn't get the alert but there has been recent activity I didn't look at, yet.
The list of watched threads under "Menu"->"Forum"->"Watched threads" seems to be up to date and lists some activity for which there definitely was no alert.

Is this only affecting my account, is this a known bug, or am I missing something here (other than those alerts )?

 

[AdamG]

I am still getting the alerts I have set. If I may suggest a few things to check. Reboot your computer/tablet. Clear your cache and try to load a fresh version of the Site. Log out completely and close your browser and delete the cache. Reload the site and log back in.

If none of the above helps fix your alerts. Go to your Avatar pulldown menu at the top right of the page. Select “Account Details” and then go to the “Alerts” menu. Confirm your selections are correct. If you still have problems. Go to this same page and unselect all the alerts you have selected and log out of your account (take a screenshot first so you remember what you had selected). Reboot your tablet and reload the website and log back in. Go back to the Alerts page and reconfigure your alerts.

Do you have any new plug ins ? Some plugins have been reported to cause behavior problems with the site. One I know of is the Duck Duck plugin has caused issues.

Hope some of this helps resolve your issues. Good luck Sir.

 

[somebodyelse]

I've noticed the same thing. It seems to happen to threads if I didn't act on the notifications, but I haven't done any experiments to check this and may be imagining it.

 

[RandomEar]

Thanks for trying to help, @AdamG.

I am still getting the alerts I have set. If I may suggest a few things to check. Reboot your computer/tablet. Clear your cache and try to load a fresh version of the Site. Log out completely and close your browser and delete the cache. Reload the site and log back in.

I have done all of those things many, many times. This problem has been going on for months. Probably over a year, I can't even remember when it started.

If none of the above helps fix your alerts. Go to your Avatar pulldown menu at the top right of the page. Select “Account Details” and then go to the “Alerts” menu. Confirm your selections are correct.

There does not seem to be such a page under "Account Details". All I can find is a list of all alerts, where I could potentially turn them off/on individually.

If you still have problems. Go to this same page and unselect all the alerts you have selected and log out of your account (take a screenshot first so you remember what you had selected). Reboot your tablet and reload the website and log back in. Go back to the Alerts page and reconfigure your alerts.

There's only about 20 or so of the latest alerts on that page. I could disable and re-enable those, but I must have hundreds of threads watched at the moment. That would therefore not solve the vast majority of problems, even if it did help.

Do you have any new plug ins ? Some plugins have been reported to cause behavior problems with the site. One I know of is the Duck Duck plugin has caused issues.

Hope some of this helps resolve your issues. Good luck Sir.

Good question. It's been so long that I can't really say if I installed a new plugin around the time this started. But I also don't see how this would affect the alerts in this way - as far as I can tell, this is 100% a forum problem: I can see the alerts panel and it shows many of them. But some just randomly get "overlooked" by the system. My alert list may show one reply from two days ago and one "like" from one hour ago, but the reply from a watched thread from yesterday is missing in the list. And I only realize that it's missing because I randomly check that thread and start to wonder why the forum didn't "alert" me of the latest replies.

 

[danadam]

Is this only affecting my account, is this a known bug, or am I missing something here (other than those alerts )?

It happens to me sometimes too. My vague impression is, that it's somehow connected with posts being moved between threads.

 

[danadam]

It seems to happen to threads if I didn't act on the notifications,

Hm... I consider that a normal behavior.

 

[somebodyelse]

Hm... I consider that a normal behavior.

We have different expectations then. I don't expect it to silently change behaviour for reasons that I'm having to guess, and with no way to find out which followed threads have which behaviour.

 

[danadam]

We have different expectations then. I don't expect it to silently change behaviour for reasons that I'm having to guess, and with no way to find out which followed threads have which behaviour.

I agree it may be an undesirable behavior but at least it is under user control, i.e., you know when you didn't click on the notification. What I described in my first post happens without user control. I think just recently some posts were moved to "Serious Question: How can DAC's have a SOUND SIGNATURE ..." and this didn't trigger notification and new posts since then also haven't triggered any notification.

Re. "no way to find out", I think you can find threads you follow but for which you won't get new notifications by going to watched threads. As RandomEar mentioned it the first post, that list properly shows which threads have unread content and those are the threads which won't trigger new notifications until you read them.

 

[Soniclife]

I've noticed the same thing. It seems to happen to threads if I didn't act on the notifications, but I haven't done any experiments to check this and may be imagining it.

That's the behaviour I see, it also does that if you don't read to the end of the thread after a notification, I assume the logic is you are no longer interested in that thread.

 

[somebodyelse]

I agree it may be an undesirable behavior but at least it is under user control, i.e., you know when you didn't click on the notification. What I described in my first post happens without user control. I think just recently some posts were moved to "Serious Question: How can DAC's have a SOUND SIGNATURE ..." and this didn't trigger notification and new posts since then also haven't triggered any notification.

It it NOT under user control if the user has to guess what the hell it's doing. IF it behaves as it seems to, it means that in order to keep getting notifications about a thread that has given rise to multiple notifications since you last looked (say several likes, a couple of quotes and a reply) you have to follow ALL of the notifications. For the same <frustrated swearing> thread!

Re. "no way to find out", I think you can find threads you follow but for which you won't get new notifications by going to watched threads. As RandomEar mentioned it the first post, that list properly shows which threads have unread content and those are the threads which won't trigger new notifications until you read them.

That's frustratingly indirect and still relies on inference about how it works under the skin, because it doesn't have (say) a column to indicate whether or not you'll still get notifications for that thread. It also frustrates the intent of asking for a notification in the first place if I have to check the list of followed threads anyway to find out which ones it's decided not to tell me about.

 

[RandomEar]

Honestly: If this is intended behaviour by the forum software and not a bug, it's just 100% intransparent and bad human interface design. Nothing amir or anybody else here would be responsible for, but annoying nonetheless. I still hope it's some hidden setting that can be changed by the admins.

 

[danadam]

It it NOT under user control if the user has to guess what the hell it's doing.

Ok, let me rephrase it: To me it feels like it is under my control.

IF it behaves as it seems to, it means that in order to keep getting notifications about a thread that has given rise to multiple notifications since you last looked (say several likes, a couple of quotes and a reply) you have to follow ALL of the notifications. For the same <frustrated swearing> thread!

From my experience it is enough to click on one notification and read the thread until the end.

 

[danadam]

That's the behaviour I see, it also does that if you don't read to the end of the thread after a notification, I assume the logic is you are no longer interested in that thread.

Quite useful actually. If there's a hot thread, you can ignore the notification and it will pause them. Then, after a day or two, when hopefully mods cleaned up the mess , you can go to "watched threads" and resume reading. It would be nice if the "watched threads" page could be filtered to only show unread threads or sort them so that unread are first, not a big deal though.

 

[Old_School_Brad]

The way this function seems to work is sporadic, I have no way of seeing which posts I’ve missed without going into "watched threads" and manually reviewing the list. And I haven't even been here for very long.

 

[5onderling]

I recently joined the Head-Fi forum for one thread and it seems to use the same forum software. I noticed that the notification/mail behavior is different, I get a notification/mail for every new activity in a watched thread, regardless if I visited that thread or not. That of course results in a lot more mails/notifications but maybe it is a safer option. In their settings is the option: "Generate new alerts without reading threads", and it is enabled by default. It doesn't seem to be available here on asr though. Maybe it could be added to asr and be disabled by default so it doesn't change for everyone but some can enable it if they want. I would also like to have it. I rather get many notifications than not being notified at all about thread updates. I have that problem too, basically since I joined the form and watched a bunch of threads.

 

[Doodski]

I recently joined the Head-Fi forum for one thread and it seems to use the same forum software. I noticed that the notification/mail behavior is different, I get a notification/mail for every new activity in a watched thread, regardless if visited the forum or not. That of course results in a lot more mails/notifications but maybe it is a safer option. In their settings is the option: "Generate new alerts without reading threads", and it is enabled by default it doesn't seem to be available her on asr though. Maybe it could be added to asr and disabled by default so it doesn't change for everyone but some can enable it if they want. I would also like to have it. I rather get many notifications than not being notified at all about thread updates. I have that problem too basically since I joined the form and watched a bunch of threads.

When selecting to watch a thread the option for email is there.

 

[5onderling]

When selecting to watch a thread the option for email is there.

But that is not what I was talking about. I was using mail/notification interchangeably for any sort of alert. Maybe I can go more in detail.

When I watch a thread in asr I get a notification (can be email or not) for the first new message. After that I don't get notifications for further new messages, until I have read the thread. Only then I get once again only a notification for the first new message since reading the thread.
I assume this is set to reduce notifications, but maybe this sometimes doesn't work correctly and thus our problem.

On Head-Fi when I watch a thread I get a notification for every new message. So I get a notification for the first new message, and I don't click on it/don't read it directly on the site. I will still get another notification if a new message is added to the thread. It doesn't matter if I read a thread or not in this case, I just get notified for every new message. This is not the case on asr as described above. It can be controlled in the user settings with a checkbox called "Generate new alerts without reading threads". I assume that if I uncheck it I get the same behavior as on asr.

This checkbox doesn't exist in the asr user settings though and so can't be enabled for oneself. My question is if we could maybe add that checkbox here on asr (unchecked per default).

 

[Doodski]

But that is not what I was talking about. I was using mail/notification interchangeably for any sort of alert. Maybe I can go more in detail.

When I watch a thread in asr I get a notification (can be email or not) for the first new message. After that I don't get notifications for further new messages, until I have read the thread. Only then I get once again only a notification for the first new message since reading the thread.
I assume this is set to reduce notifications, but maybe this sometimes doesn't work correctly and thus our problem.

On Head-Fi when I watch a thread I get a notification for every new message. So I get a notification for the first new message, and I don't click on it/don't read it directly on the site. I will still get another notification if a new message is added to the thread. It doesn't matter if I read a thread or not in this case, I just get notified for every new message. This is not the case on asr as described above. It can be controlled in the user settings with a checkbox called "Generate new alerts without reading threads". I assume that if I uncheck it I get the same behavior as on asr.

This checkbox doesn't exist in the asr user settings though and so can't be enabled for oneself. My question is if we could maybe add that checkbox here on asr (unchecked per default).

IC... Thank you for your detailed explanation.