# Urgent: help troubleshoot missing notifications for watched categories

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/urgent-help-troubleshoot-missing-notifications-for-watched-categories/32339
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [August 20, 2015, 4:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/urgent-help-troubleshoot-missing-notifications-for-watched-categories/32339 "2015-08-20T16:26:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 20

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### 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, 2:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/urgent-help-troubleshoot-missing-notifications-for-watched-categories/32339/20 "2015-08-27T02:56:44Z")

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> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> Ok so if you add someone to a group that is five years old, they will suddenly be watching 5,000 old topics in the category associated with that group? Maybe even topics created before they had an account on the site?

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 likely to happen because this group is only truly interested in about 1/10th of the traffic happening on the site and it would be a lot of muting
- Set all topics in the category to auto-close within XX days so that folks can’t reply to old posts forcing them to create new posts so that any new users watching the category will get properly notified
- Our most viable option, though since many of them send in replies via email, I’m sure it will lead to some confusion when their messages are bounced back due to a closed thread
- Have new users go into each topic in a category and watch any topics they might be interested in
- Probably not feasible because although we’re low volume, we still have a couple of hundred topics in there

Of course this issue just happens to be manifesting itself with the category that our C-level folks use for their mailing list which makes troubleshooting and suggesting workarounds a bit of a delicate tap dance.

@tobiaseigen does [my scenario](https://meta.discourse.org/t/urgent-help-troubleshoot-missing-notifications-for-watched-categories/32339/18) sound similar to what was happening with your users?

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