# Notifications when a topic is recategorized
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079
**Category:** Bug
**Created:** [May 20, 2017, 11:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079 "2017-05-20T23:13:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2017, 11:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/1 "2017-05-20T23:13:43Z")
On this forum I am watching the support/wordpress category. A few times, I’ve noticed topics in that category for which I haven’t received notifications. Here’s an example of one: [WP + Discourse SSO Continuity Issue](https://meta.discourse.org/t/wp-discourse-sso-continuity-issue/62897)
Looking at the edit history of that topic, it has been recategorized from extras to wordpress. Possibly this is a regression from [https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-watch-preferences-not-honored-on-recategorization/19441/7?u=simon\_cossar](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-watch-preferences-not-honored-on-recategorization/19441/7)
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2017, 12:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/2 "2017-05-21T00:04:02Z")
What do you think @sam? Relevant only to old prefs?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2017, 12:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/3 "2017-05-21T00:25:03Z")
yeah we do not add a watch on recategorization, its a bit tricky cause we would have to “unwatch” strategically when you remove a category.
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2017, 1:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/4 "2017-05-21T01:37:15Z")
This could cause problems for a forum that is being used for customer support.
A non-technical solution is for the person who recategorizes the topic to add a reply to the topic that explains that they have moved it to the appropriate category. People watching the category will then get a notification. (I’ve only tested this on my local setup.)
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### Author:  [@tophee](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tophee)
#### Post date: [May 21, 2017, 8:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/5 "2017-05-21T08:04:36Z")
> [@simon](#):
>
> A non-technical solution is for the person who recategorizes the topic to add a reply to the topic that explains that they have moved it to the appropriate category. People watching the category will then get a notification.
Though this will only work for “watching”, not for “watching first post” (which is one of the big plusses of a discourse forum).
But it might work if you use the topic timer to republish into a new category. Or so I thought. Apparently it only works under certain conditions? Or does a scheduled publication _never_ trigger notifications because the post has technically already been published?
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### Author:  [@SquareTheBase](https://meta.discourse.org/u/SquareTheBase)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2018, 1:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/6 "2018-03-30T01:32:22Z")
Anyway to at least implement Watching First Post so those users get notified when the topic is new to them? It wouldn’t seem to be affected by the “unwatch” trickiness.
Most of our uses never add tags on topic creation and it’s a triage effort by staff which means all users that are watching tags will never get notified. 😢
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2018, 2:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/7 "2018-03-30T02:44:40Z")
This is an edge condition we should patch @tgxworld
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### Author:  [@tgxworld](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tgxworld)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 9:30am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/9 "2018-04-17T09:30:16Z")
@simon Are you stil able to reproduce this problem? I tried to reproduce this locally but I’m getting the correct notifications even after a topic is re-categorized.
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 5:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/10 "2018-04-17T17:55:19Z")
> [@tgxworld](#):
>
> Are you stil able to reproduce this problem?
Yes, I’ve just tested it on a hosted instance. I have three users, user\_a, user\_b, and user\_c. I have set user\_a to watch the ‘scratch’ category.
When user\_b creates a topic in the ‘scratch’ category, user\_a gets a notification about it when they login to the forum. This works as expected.
When user\_b creates an uncategorized topic and then user\_c recategorizes the topic to ‘scratch’, user\_a does not get a notification when they login.
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### Author:  [@tgxworld](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tgxworld)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2018, 2:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/12 "2018-04-20T14:35:26Z")
What I tested is that notifications are correctly delivered when a new post is created in the topic that has been re-categorized. Do you mean we should resend the notification when a topic gets re-categorized?
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2018, 4:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/13 "2018-04-20T16:11:44Z")
> [@tgxworld](#):
>
> Do you mean we should resend the notification when a topic gets re-categorized?
Yes. The case where this comes up for me is that I’m watching the #Support > WordPress category. WordPress support topics are sometimes created in the wrong category and then moved by a staff member. When that happens, it would be good to get a notification.
A notification would probably be sent in this case if recategorizing a topic created a moderator post.
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### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2018, 6:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/14 "2018-04-20T18:39:29Z")
I think this is the same issue discussed here:
> [@Does reassigning a category send a new email out to the group watching the new category?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-reassigning-a-category-send-a-new-email-out-to-the-group-watching-the-new-category/39249/8):
>
> On my dev instance I just tried these steps: User1 sets “Announcements” category to “Watching” User2 performs these actions: Private message (publish timer) Create a private message with self, set timer to publish to “Announcements” Staff only topic (publish timer) Create a topic in a staff only category, set timer to publish to “Announcements” Private message (manual publish) Create a private message with self, click Make Public Topic [(screenshot here)](https://meta.discourse.org/t/chatroom-integration-plugin-discourse-chat-integration/66522/29) This creates a public “Uncategor…
I wonder if this also applies to publishing topics created using the shared drafts feature…
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### Author:  [@tgxworld](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tgxworld)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2018, 1:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/15 "2018-05-07T13:40:32Z")
@simon I fixed it in
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/ee1eb1a5bd834ed49e7efe2ee58bb567556a8c7c](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/ee1eb1a5bd834ed49e7efe2ee58bb567556a8c7c)
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2018, 11:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/16 "2018-05-07T23:25:34Z")
OK, tomorrow can you verify this is working as you expect here on meta @simon?
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2018, 4:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/17 "2018-05-08T16:30:59Z")
I just tested it on [try.discourse.org](http://try.discourse.org) and it worked as expected. When a topic is recategorized, users who are watching the recategorized category get a notification.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2018, 11:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notifications-when-a-topic-is-recategorized/63079/18 "2018-05-08T23:13:22Z")