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Please take note of Snap’s announcement:
http://www.windstoneeditions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6010
Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.comVolunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.comThe answer to that can be found here
http://www.windstoneeditions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3238
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Quote:There have been complaints regarding ‘not receiving watched topic notifications’.
Due to the excessive amount of watched topics in the database, they are not all being processed. This is a direct result from 115 members who have the “watch every topic I post in and notify me of replies” option in their profile.
The forum scripts are granted a specific timeframe to function in (so that one particular script or website doesn’t crash the server) and they cannot scan all 11,887 watched topics everytime someone makes a post.
Watched Topics was never designed to function in this manner – it’s meant for specific topics of interest like a for sale item or a discussion.
You can always see on demand who has replied to your posts by using the “View my posts” link on the main forum page.
As a result, the watched topic list has been blown away like a rooster in a tornado and the ability to automatically watch topics removed.
Now, don’t fret, you can still watch/unwatch topics that you truly want to keep tabs on by using the watch link at the bottom left of every topic.
I have also added the ability to view a list of all your currently watched topics, and manage them from one place by clicking “View watched topics” — located right below “View my posts”.
The caveat is you will have to re-add any desired watched topics to your list. There were way too many to possibly figure out which were genuine.
This will put the system back on track for what it was designed to do, and should restore the notification emails.
still confused but I’m NOT a computer person and did not even know you could watch a topic so I’m fine I guess
twindragonsmum wrote:Out of curiosity…. what constitutes ‘abuse of the watch topics system’? thanks
This was hashed out back in May in this announcement
A group of roughly 20 members having 1200+ combined topics in their lists.
This basically equates to a handful of people getting an email every time someone on the forum made a post.
Watched topics are meant to notify users of important posts such as those on an item listed for sale. It is not meant to give people a personal diary copy of the forum into their email.
There is a link on the main forum page labeled “View my posts” which gives members a complete list of all the posts they’ve commented in, which have had new comments made upon them.
It may not seem like a big deal to some people, but it’s a serious impact on my business – Verizon placing me on a blacklist for excessive e-mail delivery prevents all the forums and clients I host from being able to route e-mail through one of the largest ISP’s in North America. Right now there’s about 750 emails from this morning alone that are backed up in queue, not being allowed out.
I’ve talked to Melody and she obviously doesn’t want to see the watched topics system disappear as it is a valuable tool when used correctly. I am going to work on programming a hard limit into it. Until then, the system remains disabled.
Perhaps a better solution would be to provide forum members with a way to search for new posts within a given time frame in the search feature. The new posts link goes away as soon as someone logs off. Not everyone wants to view just those topics that they posted to in the past. A lot of us like to look at new post/topics too and as soon as you log off for a few mins, the ability to easily find those is gone.
Thank you for the update. I may have contributed to the problem inadvertently, as I joined the forums after May. I apologize if that is the case. I absolutely do NOT want to harm you or your business in any way, shape or form. Thank you for the service you provide to the forums.
Respectfull,
twindragonsmumtdm
starbreeze wrote:Perhaps a better solution would be to provide forum members with a way to search for new posts within a given time frame in the search feature. The new posts link goes away as soon as someone logs off. Not everyone wants to view just those topics that they posted to in the past. A lot of us like to look at new post/topics too and as soon as you log off for a few mins, the ability to easily find those is gone.
I second this idea. I am also frustrated by the fact that to check a private message, I have to have time to read all the new posts or have to hunt for them later.
I tried the “watch topic” feature once, but received too many emails. 😆
starbreeze wrote:Perhaps a better solution would be to provide forum members with a way to search for new posts within a given time frame in the search feature. The new posts link goes away as soon as someone logs off. Not everyone wants to view just those topics that they posted to in the past. A lot of us like to look at new post/topics too and as soon as you log off for a few mins, the ability to easily find those is gone.
I had the same problem, and about a year ago I had discussed with Snap the possibility of implementing that kind of feature in this thread.
Since the requested feature hasn’t been implemented so far, I’ve been using the workaround that I mentioned in that thread if I want to see the “new posts since last visit” again after I’ve logged off. Namely, I do “Search For Any Terms” with the following phrase in the “Search For Keywords” box:
tha* OR the* OR thi* OR *ing* OR *and* OR *ear* OR *one*
Since nearly 100% of the posts contain at least one word which occurs in the search string, the search results will consist of essentially all posts in the forum, listed in chronological order. The most recent posts are listed first, so if you know the date/time of the last post that you read when you logged off, you can just read the threads from the beginning of the list to the thread with a date/time which occurred after the post that you last read.
Yikes! I didn’t realize it was that much of a problem. I do like to use that feature, but I’ve not had more than two or three conversations earmarked. Hopefully we’ll be able to moderate our Windstone discussion frenzy to keep ISPs happy. 🙂
Windstone collector in remission. 😉
mimitrek wrote:I had the same problem, and about a year ago I had discussed with Snap the possibility of implementing that kind of feature in this thread
You forget that we had a lengthy discussion about how complex it would be to reprogram the forum code to make that happen.
However, I can offer a compromise that will help most people. I can reprogram the session IDs to expire in 12 hours instead of 1 hour. If you move to another computer (browse at work then go home) that will still reset as it counts as different session ID’s, but at least the casual “peek-in” won’t cause your last read counters to reset. This will work so long as you don’t close your browser or log off… most people don’t, so it should be fine. 12 hours should be long enough to get you through the day without me ending up with thousands of non-expired ID’s in the database.
The Session ID’s are there to prevent account hi-jacking. Without them people could sniff out your ethernet traffic and perform man-in-the-middle or SQL injection / cross site scripting attacks. Woooo. Big deal right? It is if it’s done to an administrator account! Forum could be wiped in a matter of seconds. So they are a necessary evil.
Taking already programmed code and reforming it is very difficult. I didn’t write this forum, and it costs time and money to re-write it. So I do what I can. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s free code (open source software), and if it really was that hard to use, there wouldn’t be 157,373 messages on it.
It will never do everything you want it to do – neither does your husband. Do you reprogram him? Probably. With a frying pan. So go easy on it and me and let’s all enjoy it.
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