Email Notifications

June 18, 2004 12:08 PM

VanityFilter: would it be a good idea to have the option to be emailed or otherwise notified whenever someone posted in a thread you created?
posted by Capn to Feature Requests at 12:08 PM (15 comments total)

That might lead to moderation by the thread's original poster, which gets annoying. Plus, what happens if you post a controversial thread that gets 200+ comments? 200+ e-mails?
posted by BlueTrain at 12:20 PM on June 18, 2004

might make sense for Ask though.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 12:42 PM on June 18, 2004

True, although if you're able to get e-mail, aren't you just as able to view the thread?
posted by BlueTrain at 12:45 PM on June 18, 2004

There's plenty of software out there that you can get for yourself that will do this for any arbitrary page.
posted by badstone at 12:58 PM on June 18, 2004

I don't exactly crave more e-mails in my box, but maybe it's just me
posted by matteo at 1:00 PM on June 18, 2004

This is only a good idea when then thread gets nice and ripe. I know I've thought about posting to a thread that was just about to slip off the front page, and didn't, because who would ever see it? Turn on notification while the thread is active, and it's just more crap in your inbox, as noted upthread.

And in these cases, it makes sense to offer the email notification option not just to the poster, but to any interested party.

Great idea.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 1:17 PM on June 18, 2004

Whenever someone posts might not be a good idea, but combine it with the "there have been X thread and Y comments since your last visit" info and it's manageable. Plenty of other sites have that, notifying you once that a thread you've subscribed to has been updated since your last visit. Second and subsequent messages in that thread are ignored until you check into the thread again and reset the notification. Don't know how easy that would be to implement, though.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 1:27 PM on June 18, 2004

I could see the use of a sunset feature, notifying you about the updated thread if it's more than, say, two days old. But if you need this feature to keep track of all the threads of yours, then you post too much.

Perhaps a single daily email each night, saying:

X comments have been made on this post today. (Turn notification off for this post)

That way you could turn it off once you started to get daily zeros.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 1:36 PM on June 18, 2004

It would be nice to have a tickler for threads in Ask and in MeTa, both, especially since stuff can scroll off the front page so fast. Visiting MeTa can be horrible, but it would be nice to be able to, optionally, get notifications as meetup plans evolve and when the pix get posted. The value for Ask questions seems obvious, too.
posted by caitlinb at 2:04 PM on June 18, 2004

"I don't exactly crave more e-mails in my box, but maybe it's just me"

It is just you. None of you people ever write me any more. I'm beginning to wonder if you forgot my address.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:57 PM on June 18, 2004

I think it is a good idea, one that I would never use.
posted by Quartermass at 5:59 PM on June 18, 2004

RSS/Atom feeds for individual threads make much more sense to me.
posted by gleuschk at 5:25 AM on June 19, 2004

Indeed. Much, much more sense.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:23 AM on June 19, 2004

In a word, no.

Yes to RSS, but no to the original question.
posted by ashbury at 5:48 PM on June 19, 2004

MeFi already has the "sort by my comments" feature, which would be useful for MeTa and AskMe as well, enabling a very quick check of new comments in threads you have already pissed in to mark your territory.
posted by dg at 3:24 PM on June 20, 2004