The discussion revolves around enhancing Discourse’s notification system to allow users to track categories or tags with notifications when new topics are posted. AstonJ initiates the thread, seeking a way to be notified of new topics in specific tags without fully watching them, emphasizing the need for a simpler ‘unwatch’ option via email. codinghorror suggests that while watching tags is possible, the current unwatch process requires visiting the site, which is inconvenient. downey confirms that watching categories and tags is already supported, and cpradio notes that the unwatch functionality via email is currently missing. AstonJ clarifies that the goal is not to watch topics but to receive notifications and then decide whether to follow them. watchmanmonitor references a related feature request, and mcwumbly mentions a user setting for considering topics new. codinghorror adds that Discourse 1.5 allows downgrading notification states via email links, but the unwatch feature remains a key concern. Pad_Pors briefly suggests merging notifications as a broader improvement. The consensus is that a streamlined, email-based unwatch option would significantly improve the user experience for tag and category tracking.
Wonder if anyone else agrees it would be handy to be able to track categories or tags and just be notified when a new topic is posted in one.
So for example on a dog breed forum you get a notification when a topic is posted about a certain breed of dog (the tag). Or on a gaming site you get notified when a topic is posted about a certain game (the tag) you might be following and interested in. People can then review the topic/thread and decide whether they want to watch or track it.
On Xenforo there is this - which I think works really well:
That works great if you get emails. However, I turn off emails all the time. So I’d still get bombarded with notifications in the notification bubble for topics I’m watching for a given category/tag that have zero interest in me until I go and mark said topic as Regular/Muted.
I think based on @AstonJ’s screenshot, he isn’t as concerned with emails as he is with the notification bubble.
I think you have misunderstood me Michael, I don’t want to watch that in the way the current watch system is set up - I only want to know when a new thread/topic is posted about a tag I am following (and then I want to decide whether it’s worth watching or tracking or not).
I’m not so sure Jeff because after a while I think it will become annoying and probably lead to people just unfollowing the tag.
I’d guess that about 10% of topics per tag will be of relatively high interest, and then perhaps just 10% of those the user will actually want to ‘watch/track’ without replying to it. That’s a tiny percentage of all new topics per tag.
It’s like on the main forum now - only a small percentage of all threads will actually interest most regular users (to the extent of wanting to ‘watch’ them without replying) it would be annoying then if we had to unwatch all the threads that we didn’t want to watch to begin with even tho we are interested in the ‘Discourse’ tag (which is basically this forum).
FWIW, the way I do this with email notifications is watch the category (tag) then (in Gmail) hit m to mute the topic in my inbox if I don’t care to see any more about it.
I think a much larger percentage of people would be interested in getting an email for all new threads/topics, rather than hundreds and hundreds of posts.
