Reset subscribed threads for all threads after a visit

RAther then reset a thread for email notify only when the user actually visited that particular thread I suggest to reset all the users subscriptions to allow a notify when any new post is made to subscribed threads after their session is over.

For example. It is my understanding that now if you subscribe to a thread and a new post is made you will receive a notify email. You can then visit the board every day for a year and as long as you never visit that one thread again you will never receive another email notifying you of new posts to it since your last visit to the board.

This is not condusive to forum stickiness though. A users visit to the board (not the thread) should be the action which resets all their subscriptions so if a new post is made to any subscribed threads since their last visit to the board (not the thread itself) then they will receive another email notify of the new post(s) to that thread.

This is the behaviour of VB which I think is better from the user perspective. It skirts the risk of the user missing that email or overlooking it and thus never receiving another notice of new posts since their last visit to the forum

However, one side effect of the VB behavior that I absolutely hate is that if you get a notification in e-mail and click on the link to visit the thread, you have to then go visit all of the forums on the board, otherwise they won't be marked as having new messages the next time you return and you'll miss things.

I'm not sure what the ultimate solution is, but I wanted to point that out.

ORIGINAL: paulwoods

However, one side effect of the VB behavior that I absolutely hate is that if you get a notification in e-mail and click on the link to visit the thread, you have to then go visit all of the forums on the board, otherwise they won't be marked as having new messages the next time you return and you'll miss things.

I'm not sure what the ultimate solution is, but I wanted to point that out.

Same thing with aspg. If you click a subscription link and go to the board that starts a session. If you leave and come back 2 hours later everything was marked read after the last session timeout so you are in the same boat here. I don't see any way around that for aspg or vb without disabling the automatic "mark forums read" behaviour. However doing that will create chaos since nobody will remember to click it before they leave.

Ah... okay, thanks. I guess it's obvious that I don't have my forum up and running yet! Sorry if I confused the issue of your original request.

bump - any thoughts on this samuel? this significantly helps increase the activity of a forum. We watched our forum actually lose traffic as a result of the current behaviour. VB2 and VB3 does it the way I described above. Users prefer it that way because many are forgetful. Once you forget to visit the thread and dump the email you may never catch it again. At least if you reset all a users subscribed threads after their last session then any new post to them will generate an email when the first new post is made to it. Any chance of this making it into 2.4.

I estimate the loss of additional traffic from the current behaviour to be from 12% to as high as 23%

It is going to cause confusion to other forum users if samuel were to change the behavior. I suggest that you find the best behavior for your community and code the change yourself because it is relatively easy (just a simple update upon login).

Any change to any behaviour temporarily confuses members. Temporary confusion is never a reason for an improvement such as this. We can custom code this ourselves but all sam's customers would be better served with this change as well. I've seen the effect of both behaviours and the stock aspg one isn't the right one to go with to put it bluntly. At least not if you want to grow your board and page views.

What is right for you is not necessarily right for everyone. I pointed out that you could custom code it yourself because it is relatively easy and so far you are the only one complaining.

If the stock behavior was so bad as you put it, we would have heard from others already. However I believe it will be an improvement for asppg to make it as an option in the profile. I just hate dictating for all others.

An option would be fine. I'm not dictating but I'm sure that 95% plus of those board owners who tried it the VB way would keep it that way. I run a board with almost 2 million posts and over 100,000 users so I have a very large sample size to understand what users like and what works. When you get 3000 to 4000 posts a day the dynamic is quite different than a smaller board and anomalies tend to show up a little bit "brighter".

The stock behaviour isn't so bad as you put it but it is costing board owners views and return visits for a fact.

How did you measure the effect of the two different behaviors?

The stock behaviour isn't so bad as you put it but it is costing board owners views and return visits for a fact.

and

I estimate the loss of additional traffic from the current behaviour to be from 12% to as high as 23%

thanks for your inputs, both Marc and Freddy. I just added it as an option in our alpha version.

Samuel,

thanks VERY much. This is a great option to have.

FreddyD - I statistically tracked our growth in page views on the old VB platform and compared them year over year and in a linear fashion over this forums activity. I track how many people return to the site from subscription emails before and after. You can see the dropoff with the current behaviour. Both our members and moderators asked us about this and have often felt our subscription function was actually broken because they don't get a new email after returning back. Again it is not huge in terms of 40% or higher but even if it was just 5% that compounds rapidly and does make a difference. I'm just trying to help Samuel, other aspg owners and of course myself. I mean we can hack it in but I'm putting it out there because I think it makes a difference.

The notify should explain it something like this "There has been a new post to xyz thread which you have subscribed to. There may be other replies to this thread but you will not receive another notification until you have visited the forums again."

great going Sam and I do think this helps coming back to the boards more.