# Set category notification state historically

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [June 14, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979 "2015-06-14T02:02:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 7

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![wesochuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/wesochuck/32/108706_2.png) [@wesochuck](https://meta.discourse.org/u/wesochuck)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979/7 "2015-08-27T15:29:50Z")

</div>

> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> I think this has to be a pop up dialog that is triggered by setting the notification state for the category.
> 
> It should probably be something like
> 
> Category Notifications  
> You will begin watching any newly created topics in the bugs category.  
> Do you want to watch all 3,906 existing topics in the bugs category, too?  
> Yes, watch all No, just new cancel
> 
> So this would also let you reset watch state on a category, e.g. set all topics in that category to “regular” when you had it set to “tracked” for a few days.

Bumping this feature request in light of the fact that I just now realized this is why some of my users weren’t getting notifications:

> [@Urgent: help troubleshoot missing notifications for watched categories](https://meta.discourse.org/t/urgent-help-troubleshoot-missing-notifications-for-watched-categories/32339/20):
>
> I guess I was the idiot that thought the answer to this question would be Yes. Even though I’ll admit that the label clearly says otherwise: You will automatically watch all new topics in these categories. You will be notified of all new posts and topics, and a count of new replies will appear for these topics. So for our low volume list, I guess our options are: Put the user account in mailing list mode (Send me an email for every new post (unless I mute the topic or category)) Not like…

I wonder if instead of burdening the user with a choice regarding Watching all previous topics, if this couldn’t be a decision for the Forum admin? I presume that one of the reasons for having it only Watch **new** posts for users is performance related on large forums.

Maybe the admin could set an option that when the Watch option was selected on a category it also sets the user to Watch any topics that are NN days old. To simplify both the coding and the admin of the feature, I would be fine if it was a global setting and not a per category setting. So the UI drop down in those cases would read:

> You will automatically watch all new topics in these categories **and any topics that are NN days old**. You will be notified of all new posts and topics, and a count of new replies will appear for these topics.

It seems to me that this could help more quickly on-board users into conversations as well. So they wouldn’t feel “left out” by not getting notifications on more recent topics that had active conversations they might want to participate in.

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-category-notification-state-historically/29979)._