Auto-Subscribed Hell

[AnAccount]

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..

I agree. There are too many forum software out there that have this set by default, so you get those unwanted emails whether you like it or not. I think that's how it was before where you could subscribe to a topic only if YOU wanted to, but now it's all automatic, and it's stupid more than anything.

 

[Gimgak]

Yeah annoys the hell out of me. You can usually disable it but at least for me by the time I made 50 posts after I signed up and the next day my mailbox is filled with 100+ new emails from the same source, I get a bit of a FFFFFUUU- feeling. Usually I just set up a filter to remove all emails from the source if I don't feel like logging in.

 

[Fergal]

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..

I do see your point, but not everyone who joins a forum is familiar with subscriptions. Automating it still allows them to decide, they can still un-subscribe from any topic and change their subscription settings any time they want.

 

[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..

I do see your point, but not everyone who joins a forum is familiar with subscriptions. Automating it still allows them to decide, they can still un-subscribe from any topic and change their subscription settings any time they want.

So, because someone may not be familiar with subscriptions, they deserve to be spammed to oblivion? Chances are these unfamiliar people arent familiar with having to change settings to avoid this from happening. They have to learn the hard way (after they get a full inbox of notifications), by then they may already be turned off the forum.

 

[AnAccount]

Yeah annoys the hell out of me. You can usually disable it but at least for me by the time I made 50 posts after I signed up and the next day my mailbox is filled with 100+ new emails from the same source, I get a bit of a FFFFFUUU- feeling. Usually I just set up a filter to remove all emails from the source if I don't feel like logging in.

Is there a way you can do this in Hotmail? I still get emails from sites I no longer frequent and on some I don't remember my username/pass anymore so I'd like to do something like that so I don't have to do the forgot my password link only for breaking all ties with the forum in question.

 

[Fergal]

That's a fair point theezy and I agree that you have to be careful not to turn away members by sending them too many emails.

...So, because someone may not be familiar with subscriptions, they deserve to be spammed to oblivion?..

No, definitely not and I am 100% against spamming anyone. However, I wouldn't describe sending someone who has posted in a thread, one email per week, if there are updates to the thread as "spammed to oblivion". Especially when they can easily un-subscribe from those emails.

 

[Justin M]

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

Sending out thousands of emails a day eats up a lot more resources that could be better spent handling members.

 

[Charlie--]

I have the forum I run, set as opt-in - For me when I am posting, I like to get emails for some topics myself, but not all.

 

[hcfwesker]

Good thing I have a separate account I use to register on forums

^ THIS. I had to get a new email cause of these problems with forums. Now i just use the old one everytime i register to a new one, and let it pile up with the spam alerts. Though, usually one of my first items on my check list when joining a new forum, is unchecking all notifications.

 

[AnAccount]

Good thing I have a separate account I use to register on forums

^ THIS. I had to get a new email cause of these problems with forums. Now i just use the old one everytime i register to a new one, and let it pile up with the spam alerts. Though, usually one of my first items on my check list when joining a new forum, is unchecking all notifications.

That's what I'm currently doing as well. However, one has to kind of watch it, because I have that email with our host as well, so the only big thing is to not accidently delete anything the host sends me.

 

[GamingOn]

I think there should be an option to subscribe or not. 😀