Auto-Subscribed Hell

[Nebulous]

I hate when forums make you automatically subscribe to all the topics you create or reply to. Before you know it, you go to your inbox and there is a million email notifications of replies to these topics you didnt even know you were subscribing to!

Good thing I have a separate account I use to register on forums and I dont really care if the inbox gets filled up with nonsense, but its kind of ridiculous when I clear out my inbox and a day later I have over a hundred new emails, most of which are just email notifications of auto-subscribed topics.

Does this annoy you?

 

[kavin]

Re: Auto-Subscribe Hell

Its quite annoying. But like you, i'm also using a separate mail ID for registering to sites.

 

[Nebulous]

I wonder if it eats up server resources for a board to send out that many emails all the time.

 

[master412160]

Its annoying indeed. You can just go to your UCP once you joined and un click get notified on replies or make sure you don't auto subscribe.

Then you only get the mass e-mails which are most of the time valued for informatioin what is going on at the site.

 

[Gizmo]

That pi***s me off. I go into my hotmail sometimes and see so much auto-subscribed crap that I just delete it and do not visit the site. If they want me to stay they do not make it auto.

 

[Justin]

That pi***s me off. I go into my hotmail sometimes and see so much auto-subscribed crap that I just delete it and do not visit the site. If they want me to stay they do not make it auto.

Why censor pisses when you don't censor crap? 😛

Anywho, I don't really mind. Usually they really are meaningful and let me follow the conversation without logging in. So I prefer this 🙂

 

[kavin]

That pi***s me off. I go into my hotmail sometimes and see so much auto-subscribed crap that I just delete it and do not visit the site. If they want me to stay they do not make it auto.

Why censor pisses when you don't censor crap? 😛

Anywho, I don't really mind. Usually they really are meaningful and let me follow the conversation without logging in. So I prefer this 🙂

Well, most of the times they would just say "someone had posted a reply" and link it back. You need to visit the site anyhow.

 

[Gizmo]

That pi***s me off. I go into my hotmail sometimes and see so much auto-subscribed crap that I just delete it and do not visit the site. If they want me to stay they do not make it auto.

Why censor pisses when you don't censor crap? 😛

Oh! Did not notice that.

I myself prefer the 'new posts' page on forums than just using a subscription method. In the past I have actually removed the ability to subscribe to forum threads on Movie Planet etc.

 

[Fergal]

Why does it annoy you so much theezy, it is very easy for you to do something about it and un-subscribe?

I feel that automatic subscription is a useful feature when a lot of your members may not be that familiar with forums. For examples it helps them find replies to their own posts, when they are not sure how to do that.

 

[Grumpy]

Why does it annoy you so much theezy, it is very easy for you to do something about it and un-subscribe?

I feel that automatic subscription is a useful feature when a lot of your members may not be that familiar with forums. For examples it helps them find replies to their own posts, when they are not sure how to do that.

I agree with Fergal. This feature is set to yes by default on vBulletin and IPB I believe. Not 100% sure about other forum softwares though. I think it's a great feature. I personally only use it on one forum though, Business Advice Forum. I get around 50 emails every 48 hours, which probably does eat up server resources, but there again it benefits the site... People are more likely to come back if they're reminded to do so. 😉

 

[Nebulous]

It is easy to change settings but it should be up to the member to decide to implement it in the 1st place. It typically doesnt say anything in a forum's registration agreement that they are about to get their email inbox filled up with spam by posting around on that forum.

 

[Shole]

well sometimes it does but most of the time it is useful. Why? Because I get to forums that i don't visit often and check new replies thanks to a mail that i got notifying me about a new reply.
But if you don't like it there is always the option of turning it off.

 

[D]

Most forum software do this by default, I have already looked around xenforo for something to switch it off or only send so many notifications on my forum but it is not possible from what I have seen apart from if a member changes the setting on their account.

 

[Kevin X Dragon]

I hate when a forum has it by default. It does not make me want to back to the forum, in fact most of the time I go back and change my preference and never visit the forum again.

Most forum software do this by default, I have already looked around xenforo for something to switch it off or only send so many notifications on my forum but it is not possible from what I have seen apart from if a member changes the setting on their account.

ACP -> Options -> User Registration -> Put no for Watch threads when creating or replying:

 

[D]

That is just for private messages, not for posts made in the forum. I assume most people would like to be alerted when they receive a message 😛

 

[Kevin X Dragon]

:lol: Wrong one. Here is the right one:

ACP -> Options -> User Registration -> Put no for Watch threads when creating or replying:

 

[AnAccount]

Yes, this annoys the crap out of me. Especially when it happens on forums that I used to frequent but am no longer even so much as visiting. I hate it when I go to my email and I find, "so and so has started such and such topic on such and such site." I'm reading it thinking, "who gives a rat's rear end; I haven't visited that forum in months or even years! Why should I care?" It is annoying, but I automatically delete these though. Especially if it's a forum I no longer care about.

 

[CyberFreak]

Quite often when you sign up for forums, it is not visible that you will be getting these emails. Usually the first you know of it is when you have an inbox full and while it is simple to correct and stop them, you still have had to delete each email and go to the trouble of finding the option to disable all email subscriptions after the damage has occurred (so to speak).

I wonder if it eats up server resources for a board to send out that many emails all the time.

It will affect your accounts usage for sure although not sure exactly about what extent though. Most hosts do limit the number of emails you can send out per hour (especially on shared hosting) and usually the limit is in the hundreds. Hostgator allow 500 per hour and don't like you sending 500 at once and prefer you to throttle them - http://www.hostgator.com/mailpolicy.shtml

There is a 500 outgoing email hourly limit per domain.

Any time you're sending a message no matter how large your e-mail list is you must throttle it. We recommend you throttle it to at the very least sending 1 email every 8 seconds. (Sending 1 every 8 seconds would send 450 emails within 1 hour, keeping you below the 500 outgoing email limit.)

If you do not throttle and you try sending 500 emails, the server will try sending all 500 in 1 second which is not possible on our shared servers. This will cause a very high load on the server and the entire server will be sluggish, potentially affecting your sites and service, until this sending process is completed.

If you have a large topic (such as the Hello/Goodbye topic here) then each reply could generate a very large number of emails just from that one topic. It is not counting other topics and other emails such as profile comment notifications, registration emails, PM notifications, emails sent from member to member, mass emails sent out by the admin, birthday emails (if that feature is available for you) and any other emails that may be sent out. It can soon add up and could cause hosting issues sooner or later aswell as annoying alot of members.

 

[Fergal]

The "Automatic Thread Subscription Mode" on out business forum is "Weekly email notification". That means that members who don't change their option, get one email per week when there is a reply to a thread they are subscribed to. We previously had this set to "Daily email notification" but some members complained. The weekly notification works very well for us and of course members can change the setting if they so wish.

 

[Nebulous]

Subscriptions should be something the member decides on. They might think to themselves, "Hey this an interesting topic, I'm going to subscribe to it."

^ That should be the extent of how the feature is used on a forum. Auto-subscriptions to every single created/replied topic on a forum is an abuse of a good feature.

Just my opinion..