In a discussion titled ‘Disable notifications for watched words link,’ users explore the issue of unwanted notifications triggered when watched words automatically link to blog posts. Don explains that while watched words are useful for guiding users to helpful content (like blog posts), the automatic notifications to post authors are often irrelevant and disruptive—especially since users typically don’t intend to notify the author when using such terms. Isaac questions the logic of watching a word but disabling its notifications, while Moin clarifies that notifications occur whenever a post is linked—whether via watched words or otherwise—and points to similar feature requests. Don emphasizes that watched words serve as an unintentional knowledge base, helping new users navigate topics without needing to @mention or directly link authors. The workaround of changing post ownership to ‘system’ was ruled out since author attribution is important. Ultimately, Don reports that the issue was resolved by appending ?silent=true to watched word links, a solution implemented via commit 27301ae, which suppresses notifications. JammyDodger praises the solution and plans to adopt it. The feature request is marked as completed.
We started use watched words (link) to link words to our blog category. It seems it always send notification to the blog author when someone post watched words. It’s most of the time not relevant and not necessary to notify the author because it contains words like an instant knowledge base if some users not known that phrase then they can jump to the relevant blog post section.
Now we disable the email setting for the author to prevent sending these unnecessary emails
Email me when I am quoted, replied to, my @username is mentioned, or when there is new activity in my watched categories, tags or topics
I think that would be a useful feature if the watched words (link) notifications could be disable.
Overall I think this is a fantastic recommendation as having more control over your notifications is a must.
I do think that toggling (off) notifications for a watched word is somewhat counter intuitive to the purpose of watched words, as why would you choose to “watch” a link (with the intent to be aware of new instances) and then choose to ignore the notifications for said link… What do you think @Don?
I think it most of time important for users who see the linked word and they unfamiliar with that. These sharing and linking often happen unintentionally on the part of the users, because the system highlights (link) those words after the post is published. So the user does not necessarily intend to notify the author. They actually just posting a thing that may help. In my opinion, one of the main potentials of watched words is that it is not actually necessary to mention the author always or link the post in which it is written down in detail.
One more important thing is that these words are usually popular terms that it is good for everyone to be aware of. So even newly joined members can easily find them and thus understand the conversations more easily and can join to the conversation. So the goal with these are rather to set the members on the right path and if they have more questions in this regard, they will receive them on the linked post. Which makes these notifications unnecessary for the post author.
The workaround changing post ownership to system is not an option in our case because this is mostly the blog authors work so it’s important for us to keep these posts, topics to the author.
Thanks @sam, This is genius and really useful feature. I’ve changed all of my internal Watched Words, added ?silent=true to the ends of the links. Works great! Also great for AI generated topics etc… I think this feature request has been completed with this solution. Thanks again!
I’m going to use that now.