Topic Notification and Reply emails

Bart,

Without the "New Topic Notification" emails how are people to know when there are new topics have started or replies to topics they have posted in? It means that users will have to scan all the boards in turn to find the new postings - unworkable! It will kill activity on the site! If the boards acted as an ordinary mail-list (where subscribers receive all emails posted) this wouldn't be a problem. The old (yesterday's!) bulliten board system is clunky enough already (not my favoured medium, as you probably know!) but loosing the Topic Notifications is a bad move (I've turned mine back on already!)

Bart, please don't take this as undue criticism as I very much appreciate all the time and effort you have put in to the site.

Thanks,

Phil.

PS - Replying to an email is also a major curse as users have to go to the boards, locate the message on-line (I'm still on dial-up, with no prospect of eircom supplying broadband out here in the sticks) and then compose and post before the connection times-out. This is hair-pullingly annoying... and I have little enough hair as it is!

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Original Message

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From: boards@irishastronomy.org [mailto:boards@irishastronomy.org]
Sent: 13 January 2007 01:24
To: boards@irishastronomy.org
Subject: Change to New Topic Notification system


The following is an email sent to you by an administrator of " www.irishastronomy.org ". If this message is spam, contains abusive or other comments you find offensive please contact the webmaster of the board at the following address:

boards@irishastronomy.org

Include this full email (particularly the headers).

Message sent to you follows:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From now on the default setting for new topic notifications is for users NOT to receive them. I have turned off New Topic notifications for all users. If you want to continue receiving these notifications you MUST visit the user control panel at: www.irishastronomy.org/userCP/index.php and re-enable the option.

This has been done to cut down the amount of pointless emails our server sends out. It is hopped that this will increase the speed of the boards when starting a new topic.

Clear Skies,

Bart B.,
IFAS Web Team.

You have sent a mail to an address that should not be replied to because no one checks it. If you were attempting to contact the webmaster for www.IrishAstronomy.org please re-send your email to webmaster@irishastronomy.org. If you have sent a message to this address in reply to an automatically generated email from the boards on www.irishastronomy.org please note the following: 1) Instructions for removing your self from the New Topics notifications list are included at the bottom of every email sent out by that system. 2) The boards are a bulletin board system not a mailing list so you MUST visit the boards to reply, replying by email only sends the email to this address which should be considered a black hole! Clear Skies, The www.irishastronomy.org Staff.

Bart,

Without the "New Topic Notification" emails how are people to know when there are new topics have started or replies to topics they have posted in? It means that users will have to scan all the boards in turn to find the new postings - unworkable! It will kill activity on the site! If the boards acted as an ordinary mail-list (where subscribers receive all emails posted) this wouldn't be a problem. The old (yesterday's!) bulliten board system is clunky enough already (not my favoured medium, as you probably know!) but loosing the Topic Notifications is a bad move (I've turned mine back on already!)

Hi Phil,

The notifications are not gone, like you said you just turned them back on (as did I!). All that has changed is that we have switched from a default of on to a default of off. The reason for this is that we now have too many members on the boards to email everyone. New Topics were taking about 2 minutes to create which is why a lot of people were giving up and re-submitting the same topic over and over again. This way we only have to send out emails to people who really want them, not to everyone, now new topics can be posted in a reasonable time again and people who want new topic notifications can get them.

PS - Replying to an email is also a major curse as users have to go to the boards, locate the message on-line (I'm still on dial-up, with no prospect of eircom supplying broadband out here in the sticks) and then compose and post before the connection times-out. This is hair-pullingly annoying... and I have little enough hair as it is!

I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that. You don't need to locate the message because there is a link in the new topic notification so you just click on that and enter your message. If you want you could compose the message in any program you like, then connect, copy and paste in the text, and disconnect.