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Thread Alert Algorithm

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Bald Rick

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I didn’t know where to post this, so have gone ‘General’.

Over the 8/9 years I’ve been on the forum I have contributed to hundreds if not thousands of threads. Some of these threads are long running serial dramas, others are one hit wonders - here today gone tomorrow.

I get alerts to tell me when someone has quoted a post of mine, or I am tagged in a thread, or there is a reply to a thread I have also contributed to. However, for the last of these, some replies to threads don’t generate an alert. Originally I thought this was because it was a thread I hadn’t contributed to for a long time. However sometimes replies to threads that I have recently contributed to don’t trigger an alert. This has caused me to miss updates to threads I have an interest in, most recently @Techniquests Sticky Digits. (J - Sorry to hear you are having a tough time if the algorithm puts you through and are reading this. Keep the faith).

Therefore, I’m interested - what is the algorithm (or similar) that determines when you receive an alert? Is it set by length of time since you contributed / number of contributions / recent views / something else?

Does anybody even know?
 
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yorkie

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If you have a question for the volunteers who administer the forum software, the best thing to do is use the 'contact' form (link at the bottom of each page); alternatively contact @Mojo & @Mike395 by direct conversation message and they can hopefully advise.
 
DynamicSpirit

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Bald Rick said:
I didn’t know where to post this, so have gone ‘General’.

Over the 8/9 years I’ve been on the forum I have contributed to hundreds if not thousands of threads. Some of these threads are long running serial dramas, others are one hit wonders - here today gone tomorrow.

I get alerts to tell me when someone has quoted a post of mine, or I am tagged in a thread, or there is a reply to a thread I have also contributed to. However, for the last of these, some replies to threads don’t generate an alert. Originally I thought this was because it was a thread I hadn’t contributed to for a long time. However sometimes replies to threads that I have recently contributed to don’t trigger an alert. This has caused me to miss updates to threads I have an interest in, most recently @Techniquests Sticky Digits. (J - Sorry to hear you are having a tough time if the algorithm puts you through and are reading this. Keep the faith).

Therefore, I’m interested - what is the algorithm (or similar) that determines when you receive an alert? Is it set by length of time since you contributed / number of contributions / recent views / something else?

Does anybody even know?
Click to expand...

I'm not certain, but I suspect possibly it depends on whether you respond to previous alerts. In other words - if someone replies to a thread I'm following, I'll get an email to tell me. It seems to me that, if I click on the link in the email to actually go to the railforums website and read the reply, then I'm likely to get further alerts. But I also get the impression that if I don't go back to the website - for example because I just read the text of the reply inside the email), then after a while I stop getting notifications for that thread.

As I say I may be wrong as I've not really tried to test it, but that's the rough impression I get of when I receive alerts.
 
krus_aragon

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In the first instance, it may be worth checking that your alert preferences match what you think they are.

Also:
Bald Rick said:
This has caused me to miss updates to threads I have an interest in, most recently @Techniquests Sticky Digits.
Click to expand...

The way you typed this would give an alert to user "Techniquests" (if they existed), as opposed to "Techniquest". You'll need to make sure there's an apostrophe or space after the user name for it to be parsed correctly by the forum software. And the "@" before the name, of course.

Here are three examples, using your profile name:

@Bald Rick will see this alert.
@Bald Rick's going to see this one too. See how it's been highlighted in blue?
@Bald Ricks not going to see this one, though.
 
MikeWh

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DynamicSpirit said:
I'm not certain, but I suspect possibly it depends on whether you respond to previous alerts. In other words - if someone replies to a thread I'm following, I'll get an email to tell me. It seems to me that, if I click on the link in the email to actually go to the railforums website and read the reply, then I'm likely to get further alerts. But I also get the impression that if I don't go back to the website - for example because I just read the text of the reply inside the email), then after a while I stop getting notifications for that thread.
Click to expand...
That's quite a common approach. Once an email has been sent you won't be spammed for further updates until the forum software knows you've read the thread again. It does actually explain this in the small print at the end of the alert message.
 
Mojo

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DynamicSpirit said:
I'm not certain, but I suspect possibly it depends on whether you respond to previous alerts. In other words - if someone replies to a thread I'm following, I'll get an email to tell me.
Click to expand...
Sorry. Not seen this thread before now. Yes this is correct. You will get an alert if someone replies to a thread that you have replied to, but you will only get one, until you read the thread. The exception is, if someone quotes you then you will get an alert for every time someone quotes you.

This is based upon the default settings; people might choose to “opt out” of watching a thread if they reply to it, in which case they will never receive a notification.
 
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