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Out of date watched notifications thread

Update here: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=5684378


Hello everyone,

We want/need to test the watched thread notification functionality to get some data about how it works and how it affects the forum. With the aim of investigating options for making them more useful in the future. We are going to turn it on for 24 hours - from around 10am today until 10am tomorrow. Then we will turn it off again.

Basically, this is a very early investigation to see how they work and how they impact the forum, which we need to do if we want to improve them in the future.

We know that for people who have a lot of watched threads this means you are potentially (definitely) going to get a ton of notifications. We understand that this might be a bit crazy.

But:

WE NEED YOUR HELP.

If possible, please don't just unsubscribe from your threads. We need to know the details of the impact of these on users.

We would be extremely grateful if you could:

- Let us know how many notifications you are getting
- How many threads you're watching
- Give us screenshots of your notification list so we can see what the user experience is like
- Give us feedback on any bugs/weirdness etc.
- As much feedback as possible - what do you think would be useful? Weird bugs? Etc.?

This is just an early investigation/test - it is NOT a permanent change and we won't be turning them on full time at the point. This is an early investigation to see how they work, and if they might be useful. We won't be turning them on in the future until we've definitely seen that they are helpful and found a way to make them more useful for everyone and not create too many notifications (i.e., if we decide to go down this route it will take some development time, probably by making them more easily customisable).

If you see people making threads/asking about this can you please point them in the direction of this thread or tag me in? Then I can chat to them.

Thank you so much for any help/support with this - it is really appreciated and I know it's going to be a bit mad for some of us today in notification world.

:bl:
(edited 5 years ago)

Scroll to see replies

Quoting some folks in who posted in the other thread - please see above

Spoiler

Just some early ideas - a lot of people will be 'watching threads' automatically, because their user account is set up to do this. Maybe it would be a good idea to tell people that this can always be set to 'off' and you can manually watch threads - this would make the notifications much more relevant, and less intrusive.

For those people who just end up 'watching' threads by default whenever they've posted in them, the notification functionality is of no use and is an irritation. A way perhaps of being able to opt in or out of receiving notifications on watched threads globally (with an option to turn it on and off on an ad hoc basis) would also be useful.

I think people generally use notifications to alert them to when someone's quoted them or repped them. Constant notifications about any old Tom, Dîck or Harry posting (usually rubbish) in a thread you've happened to contribute to is not at all useful.

(yes, the swear filter actually stars out Dîck...)
(edited 5 years ago)
Understood, I am watching 100+. Don’t know how to turn it off.
Update: we've found a bug during some last minute testing - going to fix this before turning this on so this will be delayed by a couple of hours.

Will let everyone know when we turn it on.
Original post by Reality Check
Just some early ideas - a lot of people will be 'watching threads' automatically, because their user account is set up to do this. Maybe it would be a good idea to tell people that this can always be set to 'off' and you can manually watch threads - this would make the notifications much more relevant, and less intrusive.

For those people who just end up 'watching' threads by default whenever they've posted in them, the notification functionality is of no use and is an irritation. A way perhaps of being able to opt in or out of receiving notifications on watched threads globally (with an option to turn it on and off on an ad hoc basis) would also be useful.

I think people generally use notifications to alert them to when someone's quoted them or repped them. Constant notifications about any old Tom, Dîck or Harry posting (usually rubbish) in a thread you've happened to contribute to is not at all useful.

(yes, the swear filter actually stars out Dîck...)

This.

A large chunk hunk of my posts are jokes, I do not need to know somebody hadn’t posted in a thread that I made a joke in once and never posted in again.
Hold on to your hats - they're live.
Original post by Puddles the Monkey
Hold on to your hats - they're live.

I’ve had 5 notifications in the last five minutes,
Original post by Andrew97
I’ve had 5 notifications in the last five minutes,

Please can you upload a screenshot of your notification menu? :smile:
Original post by Puddles the Monkey
Please can you upload a screenshot of your notification menu? :smile:

On, iPad. Won’t let me.
Reply 10
Avatar for w8d72
w8d72
10
10 notifications so far. Including threads I've never posted in.
Original post by w8d72
10 notifications so far. Including threads I've never posted in.

Are they threads you've chosen to watch...? Can you give me a link to the threads you're getting notifications for that you haven't posted in?
I've had about ten already. It's beyond irritating. And, as I suggested earlier, it's mainly new members and people I've never heard of going 'yeah' to some post which I have no interest in.

How is this a 'feature'? Having a cluttered notifications menu which most user will promptly ignore because its crammed full of useless notifications, thus missing the true value of the notifications menu as it currently is.

Unwatching all threads until this is turned off. I can't be doing with it. I do not want this:

Attachment not found


Surely TSR has pissed off enough users and driven them to Reddit as it is, without giving anyone over the age of about 11 further reason to leave?
(edited 5 years ago)
Screen Shot 2018-10-11 at 12.48.19.png145.8KB
Original post by Reality Check
I've had about ten already. It's beyond irritating. And, as I suggested earlier, it's mainly new members and people I've never heard of going 'yeah' to some post which I have no interest in.

How is this a 'feature'? Having a cluttered notifications menu which most user will promptly ignore because its crammed full of useless notifications, thus missing the true value of the notifications menu as it currently is.

Unwatching all threads until this is turned off. I can't be doing with it.

This is pissing me off as well, how do I do this?
Original post by Andrew97
This is pissing me off as well, how do I do this?


Go to the menu under your user name>customise my TSR>edit my account options. You'll find an option to turn off 'automatically watch threads' as you post in them.

You'll also need to empty the current watched thread folder, using the link at the bottom of the widget.
Original post by Reality Check
I've had about ten already. It's beyond irritating. And, as I suggested earlier, it's mainly new members and people I've never heard of going 'yeah' to some post which I have no interest in.

How is this a 'feature'? Having a cluttered notifications menu which most user will promptly ignore because its crammed full of useless notifications, thus missing the true value of the notifications menu as it currently is.

Unwatching all threads until this is turned off. I can't be doing with it.


Thanks for your feedback.

If you are watching a thread, it indicates to us that you are interested in it. This is the reason you are getting these notifications. We have no way of telling if you are no longer interested in a thread you are watching (we may need to add this feature to the site at some point).

If you don't wish to receive notifications for these threads because you are no longer interested in the thread, then please stop watching the threads - this will help reduce the number of notifications down to only threads you are interested in.

@Puddles the Monkey did mention that once we get some data on this we will be looking at making it easier for you guys to customise this experience properly, but we need to gather the data first to decide if this is useful / can be useful.

Thank you for your patience whilst we gather that data.
Instead of faffing about with this pointless 'feature', when are you actually going to get round to mending the image upload, so we can actually reliably upload images in posts, rather than nine times out of ten getting a blue link instead of the image which, upon clicking, saying 'Attachment not found' It's been years...
Original post by Reality Check
Instead of faffing about with this pointless 'feature', when are you actually going to get round to mending the image upload, so we can actually reliably upload images in posts, rather than nine times out of ten getting a blue link instead of the image which, upon clicking, saying 'Attachment not found' It's been years...


If I’m completely honest I wasn’t aware that was an issue. I’ve never had any issues uploading images to the site.

I will raise this as a bug and we will look into it.

Please, if there are issues like that affecting your use of the site, let us know so we can fix them. We can’t fix what we don’t know about! :smile:
Original post by richy8888
If I’m completely honest I wasn’t aware that was an issue. I’ve never had any issues uploading images to the site.

I will raise this as a bug and we will look into it.

Please, if there are issues like that affecting your use of the site, let us know so we can fix them. We can’t fix what we don’t know about! :smile:


Thanks, but the image upload problem has been going on for literally years. Even in this thread, Johan and I have had this 'blue attachment' link problem instead of the actual image, and the site is littered with them.

Surely you as a dev team must have known about this?
Original post by Reality Check
Go to the menu under your user name>customise my TSR>edit my account options. You'll find an option to turn off 'automatically watch threads' as you post in them.

You'll also need to empty the current watched thread folder, using the link at the bottom of the widget.

Thanks,

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