In a feature discussion about enhancing email digests, FichteFoll suggests including a brief overview or count of unread topics — especially those the user has shown interest in, such as “tracked” or “watched” topics — to help users quickly identify updates without relying solely on direct reply notifications. codinghorror initially notes that users already receive email notifications for direct replies, but FichteFoll clarifies that tracked topics (not just watched ones) often don’t trigger such notifications, and users may miss updates unless they manually check. codinghorror corrects that direct replies do trigger emails if notifications are enabled, but FichteFoll reiterates that many users (including themselves) rely on tracking topics — which don’t generate emails — and would benefit from a digest summarizing unread activity in those threads. The core request is for email digests to reflect unread activity across tracked topics, not just direct replies, to improve user awareness and reduce the need to manually revisit threads.
As far as I can see Discoruse only sends me “recent activity” but I’d also like to know if there are updates to discussions that I have shown my interest for.
Be that either a list with all unread threads (maybe limited to e.g. 10) or just a notifier a la “There are 10 discussions with unread posts. Click [here] to go directly to the Unread list.”
Possibly, but note that for anyone who directly replied to you in those topics, you would already have an email notification for.
Only for watched topics, not tracked.
It could be possible to not include watching topics with direct email notification in that list, but I’d rather prefer posts to be marked as read when they are read in an email. I remember reading that here 1-2 days ago but can’t seem to find it (so no link).
No, not true. If someone replies directly to you in a topic, you will be notified via notification panel, and email (if you are not active on the site when it happens). Only exception is if you have explicitly muted the topic, or otherwise disabled email notifications.
Okay, this is the other exception which I realized later. However, I have marked several threads as “tracked” (because I’m interested in them or I read the thread for 4 minutes after which they are automatically marked). Of course I wouldn’t get a reply directly to me if I never made a post there, or maybe I am just interested in other posts as well that are not replies to me.
The only way I currently see whether my tracking discussions have new posts is when I get the digest email and would like to read on on a specific thread. And then I still have to go back to the topic list page to be able to see “Unread (N)”.