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Resolved Question

Forum post alerts

Oct 8, 2011 10:12PM PDT

Is there any way to change my CNET alert notifications so that I do NOT receive an email when *I* post a reply to a forum post I am tracking?

Discussion is locked

cag8f has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Two options.
Oct 8, 2011 10:21PM PDT

Whenever you post, make sure you do not tick the "Track this thread and email me when there are updates". That option is just below each typing box where you type your message.

The 2nd way is to untrack individual threads that you are already tracking. To do that, click the "My Tracked Discussions" option in the left hand column, right up the top.

In the new window you will see a list of the discussions you are currently tracking. You can either untrack individual threads, or tick the top empty box, (next to "Topic"), to select them all. Then click Unsubscribe. I am unsure if the 'select all' button works for all of the entries in the whole list, or just for each page.

Hope that helps.

Mark

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I wasn't entirely clear...
Oct 9, 2011 12:10AM PDT

No, I definitely want to track my forum posts and receive emails when *others* reply. But CNET is also sending me emails when *I* reply to my own thread. For instance, once I submit this reply, CNET will send me an email saying, "cag8f has replied to your forum post." Is there any way I can prevent this?

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Ahh.
Oct 9, 2011 9:08PM PDT

Yep, that's a bug!

Not only that, but the emails we get for tracking thread posts, the links don't take us to the new post, but instead takes us to the first post in the thread. Two quite annoying bugs.

The engineers are aware of them.

Mark

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OK
Oct 9, 2011 10:19PM PDT

OK thanks. Just wanted to be sure.

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Answer
I hate that too
Oct 9, 2011 9:54AM PDT

I've always hated that. It sends an email for your own posts. Like this post I'm making now will send me, myself & I an email. Plus it takes a long time for the emails to get to me. Frequently I've gone back and checked the thread and seen the new posts before I get any emails.

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I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of it either.
Oct 14, 2011 9:38AM PDT

The reason why you receive a notifications regardless of who posted to the thread is because the notification system is pretty much a mindless robot that sends out an alert whenever the discussion thread gets updated regardless of who posted it. So as you can see it's a dumbed down notification system like an RSS feed.

As Mark mentioned above I don't like the fact that the links don't anchor to the post that was recently submitted and I don't think there is anyway at least for now to make that happen easily.

I really wish the system could be smarter, but at them moment I will take as it's better than nothing.

In the future I'm hoping to improve the forum notification system all together, but it not a trivial change or else we would've done it long time ago. I do apologize for the sub par notification system.

Thanks for the feedback all.

-Lee

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No worries
Oct 15, 2011 3:19AM PDT

Thanks for the reply. It's certainly better than nothing. I wasn't complaining, I was just making sure I wasn't doing anything wrong.