The discussion centers on a proposed feature to automatically set a topic to ‘Watched,’ ‘Tracked,’ or ‘Normal’ when a user is @mentioned, quoted, or invited — with ‘Normal’ as the default. mcwumbly suggests this would benefit trusted, login-required communities familiar with such behavior, citing parallels with other platforms and a related feature request. codinghorror expresses concern that this could force users into high notification levels against their will, noting no customer has requested it. jomaxro counters that if the feature defaults to off, users knowingly opt in — and highlights its value in mailing-list-style setups where mentions might otherwise go unnoticed. sam agrees it’s reasonable for private, trusted instances but risky for public ones. erlend_sh adds that upcoming UI improvements — like changing tracking levels from the sidebar — would let users quickly adjust after being mentioned. downey advocates trusting the community by default, letting admins disable it if abused, but codinghorror insists safety should be the default, with risky features opt-in. Finally, appeltaartje, new to Discourse and migrating from Slack, shares a practical use case: in their 50-user private community, tagging is used to flag important topics, and they’d like mentions to appear under “Unread” to simplify navigation for forum novices — asking if the feature is still planned.
On some other systems, once you are “mentioned” you are automatically watching that topic.
I think this would be useful for communities who are used to such behavior, and/or where login is required and the members already have a high level of trust with each other.
Here’s my proposal for this feature:
Other
When someone quotes me, mentions my @username, or invites me to a topic, set that topic to [ Watched | Tracked | Normal ] default is Normal.
This seems rather extreme, as anyone could force you into a rather high level of notifications on a topic, basically against your will. I can’t recall hearing any custome ever ask for this?
Assuming the preference defaults to off, the user should be consciously aware of that when turning this on. From the description, it is clear that other users trigger the bump in notification level.
I can see where this is useful, particularly in mailing-list mode. Say I watch the cat category. I get emails for all posts there. A user mentions me in the jaguar category, which I don’t watch. I’ll get the email about that post, but nothing afterwards. This would fix that.
This edge use case will be further mitigated by having the track-status changeable from the always-visible sidebar menu. Once you follow that mention, quote or invite to a post mid-stream, you can immediately decide whether to start watching this topic or leave it be.
We’re new to Discourse and are currently moving from Slack to a private Discourse community for our business. There are about 50 active users, and a lot of topics created and messages are being posted.
Since many messages are sent and topics are created, no one will be able to keep up with everything. That’s why we currently tag people when there’s a topic they shouldn’t miss.
One challenge we’re facing is making it as intuitive as possible for users who have little to no experience with forums / Discourse.
We have added “Unread” to the sidebar. It would be helpful if messages where someone is mentioned also appeared under “Unread.” That way, people only need to check one place.
For users unfamiliar with how forums work, relying solely on the “Unread” tab would simplify their experience and ensure they don’t miss important discussions.
Sorry for posting in an old topic — if this is inappropriate, feel free to remove this message. But I was wondering if there are still plans to add this option?
