Mail notifications

[Mikey Brass]

Hi moderators,

"Check this if you wish to be notified of replies to this topic."
Is there a way of improving this function ? After posting we receive a notification by e-mail giving the url of a subsequent response, which brings up two different queries & suggestions:

a) On using the notification service, I've found I only get a notification message for the first subsequent response to a message. How is one able to receive a notification for all subsequent reply messages?

b) The benefit of yahoogroups was that people were able to save informative replies to their postings in the e-mail program's archives. Is it not possible to set up this forum's notification message to also include the text of the reply (ala the phorum php system) ?

Mike.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Dear Mikey,

Everything you're talking about (i.e, your questions1suggestions) has already been dealt with before. I agree with you that a direct email capability would be very nice. But it just happens, that this costs a lot in terms of server space/bandwidth use and programming time. So please, unless you know of $$$ resources that could be tapped in the near future and that would allow us to set up such a capability in a jiffy, give us time.

As for your problem with the "Notification", I don't understand what it is all about. By clicking off the " Receive topics email notification ONLY in 1st unread reply", you will automatically be informed that a new message (dealing with whatever thread you are interested in) has  been posted. By licking on those "notifications", you are  automatically taken to the last message(s) of the thread(s) you are interested in. And on any given thread, you are given access to all previous messages, presented in sequential order. In other words, the entire history of any given thread is available to you at the click of a button. Something that Yahoo certainly does not provide.

Finally, I would just like to note that our reasons for leaving Yahoo have been made clear. And I would also like to remind you that this Forum is not your run of the mill discussion list but an integral component of Palanth (the Journal).

Jacques

[Greg]

What I have already found personally with notifications is that I am just as interested in new posts possibly in new topics as anything else, therefore the notifications are not that useful anyway.  I make heavy use of the "newly posted" feature.  By glancing down that list I can see where things I have not looked at begin.

For emails, I agree as I have said before that this would be a good thing, and eventually it will probalby come true one way or another.  However, another thing may be considered:  An archive other than the current format may be useful.  What I'm thinking of is   taking selected threads (i.e., all of the substantive threads that are not about forum management, etc.), doing a bit of editing, and turning them into documents i.e. pdf files, which are of course indexible, searchable, and downloadable.  

[Mikey Brass]

Hi Jacques and Greg,

Thanks for your replies. I realise the time and effort which is going into this project and it's no mean feat. The "In the Hall of Ma'at" anti-pseudoscience website I am involved with this month clocked over 18GB of traffic and is taking up lets just say a significant amount of disk space, so please don't take anything I say the wrong way as criticisms - merely suggestions or inquiries.

I find the "newly posted" feature to be useful and I'm glad it was incorporated.

I have clicked off the "Receive topics email notification ONLY in 1st unread reply", thanks.

With regards to the e-mail inquiry of mine, I suspect there is a crossing of wires in understanding of what I was asking about. I wasn't asking whether the moderators will be setting up an e-mail facility like yahoogroups. Instead I was inquiring about somethign else which doesn't, to the best of my knowledge as Ma'at incorporates it, take up much bandwidth or server space. Perhaps it'd be best if I give an illustrated example:

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[Palanth]
A reply, has been posted to a topic you are watching.

View it at http://www.palanth.com/forum/index.php?board=21;action=display;threadid=35;start=new

Regards,
The Palanth.Forum team.

-----------

[Ma'at]

This message was sent from: In the Hall of Maat.
<http://www.thehallofmaat.com/maat/read.php?f=1&i=56560&t=56396>
----------------------------------------------------------------

(text of message).

Best Regards,
(name of poster)

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So basically what I am saying is that I appreciate the mail notification, but was also wondering if there were any plans (whether now or six/13 months down the line as time and money permits) to modify the notification e-mail to also include the text body (different to yahoogroups' mail storage, etc.) ?

On a related matter regarding financing, if a reader of this board wanted to contribute funds towards its running what is the means to do so?