There needs to be a forum regarding the Forum - no Email Notification of replies?

Cosmo, i guess that for you that it is really important.
We did have 'subscriptions' once in a past incarnation of Drupal, but not currently.
You are the first to mention that it would be liked as a Forum feature.

I'd like that feature too.

hi
I check every day, I guess that one of the advantages of being retired, although I have trawl through several pages to find the answers to my post, what I'm trying to say is " Yes I would like e-mail notifiction of a new post".
Regards Jim:)

Gets my vote,

A-and... is there any way to (at least on my own Mepis page) block a thread that's not doing anything but being a flame war?

--

Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!

Now that I've brought it up, you can see that others are chiming in about the need for the feature. And I don't think that many people are even seeing this posting...

But even without the votes in favor, just think of it logically. You and I and everybody, basically, visit many sites a day. We may post to various forums & various threads. Who can keep up with all the places we go, and remember to check back? That's what computers are for!

The forum should be self-notifying. This will greatly increase the usefulness, and I bet, the use, of the forum.

I posted to 4 new forums this week. I went to those places because of specific issues. I have no reason to go back to those same forums, unless I have similar issues. I don't have the time to be constantly checking back to see if there _might_ be a response. And I'm too busy to remember what forums they were. Ithink most people would fit that description.

We need to be able to set it and forget...until there is some useful response to our query. Not have to check back constantly for nothing, or nothing useful.

Cosmo

Here's my opinion Cosmo. I like your idea for email notification sometimes. I would like to be able to click an option in my account to say yes/no to email notification. I would be overjoyed if I could make that choice on an individual topic! Why the choice? Because I have multiple email addresses, and multiple places that I'm at. The website sits here and I can get to it whereever I can get to the web, but for some of the more complicated topics it would be nice to have the "archive" of the conversation held in my email.

I like email, but I don't like being annoyed by email. So I'd like to be able to turn the feature on/off. But yes, there have been a couple posts of mine have been "lost" for a few days/weeks and then something pops up in the Recent Posts.

Oh, I also like your idea of a "Forum Forum" so that we can post our ideas, gripes, bug findings related to the overall forum in one place. I have a couple ideas I'd like to post there too.

Jon

Jon:

Generally, it is the case that you have a choice to be notified in exactly the manner you described. It is opional per thread. This feature exists on the Ubuntu forum, Kanotix, PCLinuxOS & others. The omission of this feature on this Mepis site seems quite odd to me by its exception.

As an example, I recently had a problem getting sound to play with an Intel motherboard with the D915 chipset. This problem was common to all Debian-based distros. I posted to four or five different Debian distro forums. I finally got several replies and a solution, but I might not have known had I not been automatically notified by email by the forum. Mepis is the only site that I had to manually check.

When notified by email, you receive a link that takes you directly to the responding post & thread. This also saves you from having to go through the process of going to the forum website and remembering, navigating & searching for the thread you originally posted to - which can be a very time-consuming process, if you've got to do this everyday for five different forums!

And really, this is a feature that protects us from our own natural tendency to forget to follow up on things. It ensures that we indeed receive any replies to our post. Once we post, we usually forget we did it.

Practically, w/o the feature, posting to a forum becomes an empty exercize in "posted and forgotten". It's really about making the exercize of finding a solution one of dependability rather than chance. As far as I am concerned, the forum isn't a true tool without it. It's feedback without response...

Cosmo

I have not made a special post to Mepis.org
about the subject of no email notification, but I've
done it numerous times in other topics.

Is there no oversight at the forum where all topics
are read for, you know, quality control of either the
posters content or problems with the forums?

I find this quite odd.

yes, i read every post, and so does LordDavon and joeintenn; but sometimes we're behind with our reading.

I try my best to check the site daily. I have been on vacation at different times this summer and during those times I did not visit the site as often as I like. I think all of the moderators do a great job on the site.

This issue has been brought up before. If I am not mistaken, notify was replaced by subscriptions long ago. Then after the site upgrade we lost subscriptions. The newer version of the CMS the site is using did not have a current subscription module after the upgrade. I am sure the module is now available, but it is ultimately up to the site administrators to decide wheter to install and use the module. I am sure Warren will see this and take the request under consideration.

Here is a link below to a similar request. Your requests do not go unread.

http://www.mepis.org/node/6037

Joe Pearce

The student is not above the teacher
The servant is not above the master
The student shares the teacher's fate
The servant shares the master's

http://www.joepearce.com

We understand that much of this is done to
support the Linux community. It's just difficult
some times to remember who was supposed to
answer what question. I suspect that for me
some of this operating system stuff will slack
off. I've been at this for half a year without
actually using any programs besides dialout.

All user account should have a tracking option allowing users to track their own posts. This will show you if there are any new posts to any threads you may have participated in. You can check this by accessing the "my account" link in the navigation block located in the top left of the page. Next choose the "track" tab. This will show all discussion threads your have posted in and will show if there are any new posts.

Joe Pearce

The student is not above the teacher
The servant is not above the master
The student shares the teacher's fate
The servant shares the master's

http://www.joepearce.com

The Tracking feature is nice, but it is still a _manual_ process, requiring that the user must remember to repeatedly check-in for responses. If he forgets to do so, he may never see responses to a thread he's interested in. And, as I pointed out before, if someone responds to a query a user posted two weeks ago, the user is not likely to still be checking everyday for posts, and will never know about the response. That's why the automated response system is necessary.

Cosmo

What I am annoyed by is email notification of my
own update or response. I go to mail and there
is a new notification in ther and it is from
me.

Like the guy said above, filtering for this is what
computers are for.

this site needs a little work with forums, more categories, and real time chat help. or even just user chat. all within this site !!!!!! people need to have a easy to navigate site, with all the help topics listed and readable here, not just in the manual pages. what if someone wants to research mepis before trying ? they can come here and see that there is real people using it. all this gets into the fact that windows has made people lazy in a sense. no one wants to learn how to do things drastically different from what they do now. its a waste of time since all this stuff is already available in windows format. so the only selling point for a windows user is security and customization. most people just want a computer to learn and research with. not to figure out how to use it all over again with a different interface. anyways the forums need work. the site needs work. however i am a proud mepis linux user, and am thankfull to all the people that put their time into this project.

There is another issue here so long as this is
a freeform discussion about why use Linux at
all.

The criticisms of the various 'Linux Is Easy, Here's
A Book For You Beginners' is a simple one: Whenever
they they tell you how easy it is and follow up
with an easy phrase/command to impliment, they _never_
absolutely _never_ show examples of the errors you
will most likely encounter if you try one of these
easy things yourself.

Here's the worst of it: there is a well-known author
who touts the fact that he taught his granddad
how to use Linux. Nobody seems to scratch their head
and say, "But you're a Linux author, why shouldn't it be
easy for grandpa to use it when he's got sonny boy
close by?"

Nope. That never gets asked.

And you'd be pretty hard-put to find even an error list
in an appendix so you know what the effin problem is.

I suppose they avoid putting error lists in appendices
because that would refute the Linux Is Easy premise
and hurt sales.

The frustation factor in all this (for me) is huge.

I don't mind reading books and learning technique.
What I do mind is being confronted time and again
with that old title from the Firesign Theater:

"Everything You Know is Wrong!"

Activity on this thread has been virtually non-existent. Is there any progress being made on implementing the Subscription feature? It's frustrating to hear people say that there is a module available, or that it was once implemented, but still see no action on this.

If a module exists, shouldn't it be simple to implement it? If so, why hasn't it?

Again, I haven't checked these threads for weeks, and I didn't know whether or not there were postings to particular threads. But I shouldn't have to manually check the threads in order to find this out. And Yes, having to remember to login and check the Tracking feature is a _manual_ process. I.E., it is _not_ the automatic notification of the type I'm requesting.

Cosmo

I apologize for this. I am not sure what the reaoning is behind the lack of subscriptions. Enabling this feature is up to Warren and the other site admins. I suggest sending emails to the support team at Mepis.com and see if you get a responce. I am not sure what version of Drupal is currently being used on the site, but I am almost positive that there is an available subscription or notification module.

I would also like to see this feature enabled. It would be nice to know what has been posted when I am tied up with school and unable to visit here regularly. As I stated before, I use tracking to keep up with new posts to threads I am involved in. Again, I apologize for this and wish that there was something more I could offer.

Joe Pearce

The student is not above the teacher
The servant is not above the master
The student shares the teacher's fate
The servant shares the master's

http://www.joepearce.com

More than a year has passed since the last post, and still no sign of thread subscriptions (auto-notification) available on this site.

Whereas, if I post a problem on ubuntuforums.com, if an answer comes 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years later, I get a notification that someone has replied to my issue.

I'm making a decision as to what to install on a laptop that I have. It ain't going to be Mepis, because this forum lacks this essential feature. Lack of notification is equivalent to virtually NO support, because few people are going to constantly check and re-check threads over and over.

If somebody responds to this post, I won't know it - because the Mepis forum won't notify me! How would I know? I'd have to waste time manually checking and re-checking ad nauseum. And the responder to my post won't know if I responded back to him, because the forum won't notify him either. He's got to check and re-check ad-nauseum. NOBODY's going to do this.

Posting to the Mepis forum is like sending your words to /dev/null.

Someone needs to get that the usefulness of this tool is virtually nil without a notification mechanism.

Cosmo Lee

Cosmo Lee

I have read back through all of the posts on this thread. I know that the "notification" or "subscription" method is something that would be helpful to you. I'm sorry that it's not available at the moment. Thanks for letting us know that you have some ideas for improving Mepis and/or the Mepis forum.

Are you aware that there are at least six of us moderators who read pretty much every single post that is placed on this forum? And are you aware that all of us are doing this as a volunteer service?

There are a lot of people who have posted ideas to make Mepis better. That is the way an electronic community works and improves. But please be aware that there is ONE MAN behind the development of Mepis itself. And there are ONLY TWO other people who work directly with Warren to administer the site. If you are going to say, "Well how long does it take to put in one little module?" or some such, then I'd have to ask whether you have taken care of putting in all the "one little fixes" on your various boxes? I know I haven't. I'm wrapping up my last day of work at a company that I've worked for for three years. And let me tell you, I don't think I'll get everything done. (And I'm taking time out from that to answer posts on this forum).

There are a LOT of improvements that can be made to Mepis as well as to the forum. And there is only limited amounts of time to do them.

Are you frustrated that SPECIFIC ISSUES have not been addressed on this forum? Have you posted a question about a SPECIFIC ISSUE? When we moderators (speaking for myself) look at these things, we try to give answers that will help the end-user fix THEIR PROBLEM. The priority of fixing something on the site has to go down accordingly. When you state, "Posting to the Mepis forum is like sending your words to /dev/null.

Someone needs to get that the usefulness of this tool is virtually nil without a notification mechanism.", I would say that there seem to be a lot of other people who are getting helped without the notification in place.

So I'm not saying that notification would not be useful. I chimed in way back when on exactly that, but it is not an important priority. Please be patient.

Jon

SimplyMEPIS Value CD: $17.95
Amount saved not buying Windows Vista Ultimate: $399
Experience gained learning Mepis and helping others: Priceless

I signed up to the ubuntu forums, posted once to a topic and had an email a week for about 4 months because it was a hot topic and I don't use ubuntu, in fact I hate the shaved down and restrictive alterations they make to the gui. I could have removed the notification earlier, but I just didn't have the time to do it with a computer shop to run, a LUG to look after and many other after hours non computer related activities and meetings.

Cosmo, are you picking at a pimple and forgetting the whole? You had a suggestion, it was a good one, but email notification will not alert the masses about your suggestion, it will only alert those that have subscribed to the thread. I am an outsider, not a moderator, but I would read approx 50% of the posts on this site and reply to 5% of them. Your posts do not go to /dev/null, they go to people like the moderators and myself, who with nothing to gain financially devote hours to the the SM forums.

I am financially challenged, but I ponied up the dough for a subscription to Mepis because I believe in what Mepis stands for and I want to support Warren and the crew and I believe in that the worker is due his wages, especially when the worker does such a good job.

Concerning this gripe of yours, why go to all the trouble of straining out a gnat, while you're swallowing a camel? Give Mepis the credit it's due.

Mike P

--------------------
Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis

I'will chime in on this. Notifications are nice, but not essential. Logging in and checking latest posts is not much of a chore. The help you get here is invaluable and posts for help are seldom ignored.

If the lack of notifications on this forum is the only reason someone will not use Mepis, that is a very shortsighted view to say the least.

Rich