In a support discussion titled “Are emails always sent for watched categories?”, tophee asks whether email notifications for watched categories are overridden when a user is also notified for another reason (e.g., being linked in a post). They expect watching a category to take precedence and trigger a full email for new topics, regardless of other notification triggers. sam suggests testing the behavior, while pfaffman confirms that emails are not always sent — this is expected behavior, influenced by a profile setting like “don’t email me if I saw it on the site.” tophee clarifies that their concern is not about seeing the post, but about being linked in a post potentially canceling the watched-category email — possibly to avoid duplicate emails. They propose that when a user is both linked and watching the category, the system should prioritize sending the “new topic in watched category” email over the “you’ve been linked” email. They’re willing to test only if the community agrees this behavior is unintended.
Are emails always sent for watched categories? I’m asking because I’m under the impression that this may not be the case for a user that is not only watching the category (first post) but is also notified about the post for other reasons (e.g. because the post links to one of the users previous posts). Can someone confirm this behaviour? And if so, is this intended?
I would expect that if I’m watching a category, that would trump all other notifications so that when a new topic is created in that category I will definitely receive the full post as an email (rather than just a notification about the post linking to one of my earlier posts).
I know, and it’s obvious that if the user has seen the post, no email should be sent, i.e. seeing the post cancels email. But my suspicion is that being linked to in topic also cancels the user watching email, probably because we don’t want to email about the same post twice.
If this is indeed what is happening, then my suggestion is that instead of sending the “you have been linked email” we should send the email “there is a new topic in the category you’re watching”.
Not at the moment. And only if we agree that this is not expected behaviour. But that is implied in your question, right?
