[Not] receiving notifications

Steve Marak · April 25, 2022, 11:28:10 AM

I've been trying to get notifications and alerts configured, without success. In "Profile of Steve Marak" -> Notifications -> Notification Preferences, "Follow topics" and "Receive message body in email" are both checked. I started with "How Frequently" set to daily, but since that didn't seem to work, I changed it to "Immediately". "Notify me of" is set to "Replies and moderation". "When a topic I follow" and "When a new topic is created" have both "Receive Alert" and "Receive Email". (I can relate the things below those, if needed, but with a few exceptions [such as "Birthday"] they are also set to both "Receive Alert" and "Receive Email".)

Unfortunately, it seems to be necessary to set each individual board within a forum to "Receive email and alerts" manually. But I did that immediately, some weeks ago, for some boards ("Bulb and Seed Exchanges", for example). I've lately also set that for others, such as "General Discussion". But so far I've not received a single email or alert (when I click "Alerts" at the top left, it always says "No alerts"), ever. I've verified that the email address the forum knows is correct.

Must be something simple, but I seem not to be seeing it. Can someone help, please?

Thanks,

Steve

Martin Bohnet · April 25, 2022, 11:47:56 AM

On a first look into your profile, most configurations seem the same as I have (I have a few more things to receive notifications about, but that's all admin stuff) - biggest difference is I didn't have the message body include active - I've changed that in my profile now, so let's see if that makes a difference.

Steve Marak · April 25, 2022, 02:19:40 PM

Hi Martin,

Interestingly, I did receive an email with your reply to my post - the first and only email I've received from the forum. (And it did contain the body of your reply.)

Thanks for looking into this for me.

Steve

David Pilling · April 25, 2022, 05:58:27 PM

I've looked at the server mail log, seems to me three notifications have gone to Steve in the last day.

Steve Marak · April 25, 2022, 07:29:14 PM

Hi David,

Actually 4 now - 3 "topic reply" emails in the last 7 hours, and the first ever "new topic" email about 4hours ago for the "General Discussion" board.

For "topic reply" that seems correct, since I've only posted 3 times today (or recently, for that matter) and I got one email each for the next post in whatever thread after mine.

For "new topic" ... well, I wish now I'd logged each time I changed my profile settings while playing with this; I was trying not to turn on a flood of email alerts. I was pretty sure I'd turned those on for the "Bulb and Seed Exchanges" board prior to the last new topic being created there, since that was a board in which I knew I didn't want to ever miss anything, but sadly I have no way to verify that now.

While on the topic of notifications, is there a way to be notified about the creation of new boards that I'm missing somewhere?

Thanks,

Steve

Martin Bohnet · April 25, 2022, 07:58:13 PM

One could speculate, the curse has moved on - now I don't receive notifications about this topic - there's not even the glasses-symbol in the topic list...I'm keeping an eye on this...

David Pilling · April 26, 2022, 03:58:07 AM

Quote from: Steve Marak on April 25, 2022, 07:29:14 PMWhile on the topic of notifications, is there a way to be notified about the creation of new boards that I'm missing somewhere?

Not that I know of.

General discussion, notifications are difficult, all the problems of email and then some more. It is a rare day that the PBS list does not get bounces and of the posts that get through many will be routed to spam folders.

There is a job here, someone to monitor the server email log and sort out the bounces, we monitor bounces for the list because the list sends most bounces back to the list moderators. Here bounces just vanish.

Steve Marak · April 27, 2022, 12:09:24 AM

Thanks for checking, David. That's a shame, creation of a new board is something I'd think a lot of us would like to be sure we didn't miss, rather like BX/SX notifications.

Yes, I've moderated a mailing list for decades, so I've spent a lot of time following up on bounces, automatic discards generated by changing email addresses, etc. etc. But I've about got it down to a science at this point. Spam settings of end users, both under their control and not ... it's a problem, but I've never found much to do about it.

Since I've only been a user of forums and not an administrator, I'm not familiar with the interface from this or any forum software to the mail server, but bounces really just disappear and it's not configurable? Not even basic mail client functionality in the forum?

Steve

David Pilling · April 27, 2022, 03:32:43 AM

Quote from: Steve Marak on April 27, 2022, 12:09:24 AMbut bounces really just disappear and it's not configurable?

You've made me think, and I was wrong. Notification emails will still have the return address of the 'list, and we get to see them bounce. We're no worse off in this area.

Steve Marak · April 28, 2022, 10:09:41 PM

A slight tangent on the original thread, but still related to notifications. Here's some text from a "new topic" notification I received:

"A new topic, 'Nurseries Exporting Tecophilaea Corms to the USA?', has been made on a board you are watching.

You can see it at
https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbsforum/index.php?topic=130.new#new

More topics may be posted, but you won't receive more email notifications for this board until you return to the board and read some of them."

This suggests (states?) that I won't get any notifications of additional new topics on that board until I go look not just at the overall board, but actually look at some (unspecified number of?) topics that I haven't read in that board. That's exactly the opposite of what I want, and seems very user unfriendly and not very helpful. The whole point of new topic notifications is to let me know when something new shows up in a board I follow, and to give me some idea of whether I'm interested. I can see not sending any more notifications about that one topic until I read it, but why should I have to go look at topics I know from the subject or included text that I'm not interested in seeing in order to be notified of additional new topics which I am interested in seeing? With the mailing list I can ignore/delete/archive any thread I wish very simply and still see every new thread that comes along without fear of missing anything. How can I replicate that behavior on the forum, please?

Steve

David Pilling · April 29, 2022, 04:23:58 PM

I spent a long time trying to follow the SRGC forum using email notifications - the fact that one only gets one notification per topic is not a surprise. I am more surprised about the described airy fairy nature of notifications per board - I wonder what actually happens.

But whatever, this is the software we are using. PBS knew about the limitations from the start.

I get the impression there is little enthusiasm for email notifications from forum software authors. If you're going to send out emails for everything, you might as well have a mail list. We have talked about the problems of emails - bounces, spam blocks etc.

jshields · May 01, 2022, 01:26:12 PM

I haven't gotten any notifications from the SRGC Forum for quite a long time now. Something may have changed there. Someone could ask Maggi Young if it really matters.

Jim

Steve Marak · May 02, 2022, 09:50:53 AM

Quote from: David Pilling on April 29, 2022, 04:23:58 PMI spent a long time trying to follow the SRGC forum using email notifications - the fact that one only gets one notification per topic is not a surprise. I am more surprised about the described airy fairy nature of notifications per board - I wonder what actually happens.

But whatever, this is the software we are using. PBS knew about the limitations from the start.

I get the impression there is little enthusiasm for email notifications from forum software authors. If you're going to send out emails for everything, you might as well have a mail list. We have talked about the problems of emails - bounces, spam blocks etc.

I'll take this as meaning you also have frustrations with the way forums in general, and apparently this one in specific, work. Though I'm not a fan of forums for many reasons, I'm trying to make this one work decently for me.

I'm not really trying to follow the forum by email. I'd be perfectly happy with a once-a-day email that listed every new topic created in every board I'm following and every reply to a topic I'm following with just one or two lines per entry. My goal is to make sure I don't miss something in which I'm interested without having to constantly check the forum and click on things in which I'm not interested - which seems like a very reasonable thing.

I haven't tried the daily summary option for notifications on the PBS forum, for two reasons. One is that I assume it's rather like that of other forums of which I'm a part, and it hasn't worked very well for me on those. But the main one is that the PBS forum shows two options for immediate notification - "Immediately" and "Immediately, but only for the first unread message". Immediately for all messages was ideal for me, so I chose the former, and that's what appears in my profile under notifications, but the emails I'm getting sound like the latter. I'm not sure now what the difference between the two is.

Does anyone know if the daily summary includes more than just the first reply to a topic, or the first new topic created in a board, and if you continue to get them even if you don't check in for a day or two? If it does, I'll switch over to that.

(I understand what you're saying, David, and it's a topic I've avoided, but I feel compelled to note that I don't think PBS as a whole did know about the limitations of this software from the start.)

Steve

David Pilling · May 03, 2022, 07:02:43 AM

I've found a possible extension for the forum, in the docs it says:

Actual state:
User will get notified of new posts if subscribed to the corresponding topic.
User will get notified of new topics if subscribed to the corresponding board.

Target state:
User will get notified of new posts if subscribed to the corresponding topic.
User will get notified of new topics and new posts if subscribed to the corresponding board.

Points being, it thinks the starting state is different to what was described previously, and would the result of adding it be more palatable.

Steve Marak · May 05, 2022, 10:23:07 AM

Quote from: David Pilling on May 03, 2022, 07:02:43 AMI've found a possible extension for the forum, in the docs it says:

Actual state:
User will get notified of new posts if subscribed to the corresponding topic.
User will get notified of new topics if subscribed to the corresponding board.

Target state:
User will get notified of new posts if subscribed to the corresponding topic.
User will get notified of new topics and new posts if subscribed to the corresponding board.

Points being, it thinks the starting state is different to what was described previously, and would the result of adding it be more palatable.

Hi David,

If it really does what the straightforward interpretation of that wording suggests, with no unmentioned exceptions, then it's what I'm after. Of course, I thought that was the case with the existing options and found they don't really work the way they're described.

Again, I'd be quite happy with a one or two line summary for each new topic or post; I only selected "Immediately" and "Receive body in email" because they were there and, had it all worked as the descriptions seemed to imply, that would have saved me a little time.

Steve