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Turning off reply notifications would be a really nice feature
I didn't see it in feature requests or planned features. Has there been discussion on this before?
For the most part, I want to receive notifications of replies to my topics. But recently I made a topic that took off a bit and many days later there are replies still dropping through. At this point I would prefer to stop getting notifications and or would be great to have a button on the topic to disable replies most for that one.
The Ignore Topic function does this, and can be activated by clicking "Ignore" at the top of a comment section, or "Ignore Topic" in the Actions dropdown menu on the front/group pages. It will disable all notifications of replies and mentions originating from the topic you have ignored, even if it's a topic you created.
Edit: Just tested, and yes, even username mentions/pings (e.g. @cfabbro) in the ignored topic do not show up in your notifications anymore.
Hmm. That seems a bit blunt hammer in terms of functionality but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just not quite how I expected it to work. Maybe a tooltip describing what it does would help? Yet more backlog fodder I know.
Yeah, it's probably not ideal, and IIRC the reason for that is the ignore replies and mentions was sort of just tacked onto the Ignore Topic function (which was originally supposed to just prevent a topic from showing up on your front/group activity sort page every time a new comment was made). So it could probably use a bit of tweaking, adding more granular options, and/or separating the individual functions into their own specific features. That's part of the reason I put an "Investigate" label on the related issue.
Thanks a lot.
I agree with phedre, that a tool tip or at least a mention in the docs of this functionality would be great.
But this definitely solves my immediate problem.
YVW. And yeah, good idea. When I get some time tomorrow I will add a section to the Tildes Front Page doc mentioning Ignore Topic and what it does. Or maybe the Replying and Messaging doc. Not sure which is best.
For now, a new sub-heading on the Tildes Front Page doc sounds about right:
Sorting Topics
Filtering Topics
Ignoring Topics
I'm starting to feel like I need to do a revisit of some of these pages. Even though not much of the core information has changed, I'm getting some ideas about how to better present some of that information.
Personally, I think replying and messaging makes sense as that's where I initially looked to see if I was missing something :)
It seems like a refinement of this would be some kind of warning to other people that their reply isn't going to be seen. If there's an AMA with Elvis and they're done, they can ignore the topic and there's an "Elvis has left the topic" warning that appears when someone starts writing a reply. It would be a good way of making sure people know the conversation is over. If someone needs to contact you, they can do it in a different way.
If you started the topic, it can be done manually by editing the topic. In other cases it might be more useful, though.
The issue I foresee with making it automated, and informing everyone who might reply that OP has ignored the topic, is what if OP is trying to stop engaging in the topic for their own mental health, or to avoid an ongoing argument, or for any other private reason. Informing everyone that views the topic that the OP has ignored it could make things worse for that person. That's why I think the OP simply editing the text topic body, or asking someone with permissions to edit the title, or even asking Deimos to lock the topic, is the ideal way to do this for AMAs, and times when the OP actually wants to inform everyone.
Maybe this needs to be a different thing than the "Ignore topic" functionality?
We can do it by writing another message, or editing one, but I think some built-in easy ways to say "thanks, bye" would result in more conversations having nice endings. It could be done in a friendly way so that you disengage and other people understand that you're disengaging, so they disengage too.
Maybe the OP should be able to partially lock the topic - that is, the topic is marked as done and top-level comments are no longer allowed? People can still talk among themselves in replies that aren't top-level, so it's less abrupt than a full lock. Also, if someone wants to keep going, they can start another topic that's a continuation, and then they're the new host for part 2 of the conversation.
I also think a button to say "thanks" to someone who replied to you would be a nice way to end a back-and-forth. It would be like a vote except not anonymous. Maybe a thumbs-up or checkmark?
If AMAs start getting more popular here, I think there probably will need to be some better ways to handle them, and end them, for sure. A lock new top-level option would be nice for that.
As for "thanks" replies, being able to self-label comments as Noise would work, and there is already a Gitlab issue for it. The "aside/whisper" comment idea would work for that too, and there is already a Gitlab issue for that as well.
When the "ignore" feature was added, there was discussion about whether it should also silence notifications, but I don't know if it ever happened?
It did. The ignore topic function disables all notifications originating from that topic.
A setting to ignore replies after n days/hours. Or perhaps collated into a batched notification for a period.
Already on Gitlab:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/771
But I will add the batched notification period suggestion to that feature request issue as well.
That reminds me, I need to get my ass in gear and set up that dev environment. It’s been a long time since I did any kind of code outside of work.
I especially want notifications if it has been a while.
On hacker news, you know everything is ephemeral (spend time researching and writing a post today, turned into wasted time before the week is out) and adding information to an old thread, or asking the poster a follow-up question on a topic that matters to you, or correcting a statement that has since come out as different, is entirely useless because the site has no notifications whatsoever. The person will never learn of your reply, the best you can hope is that future googlers have a use for it.
I noticed two days ago they've also disabled replies after <18 days now: I finally got around to check what someone had recommended to me and I couldn't even let them know that the situation I was describing was a different thing. Ephemerality++
I made a habit of turning off reply notifications on Reddit, since I'm generally opposed to nudge-type notifications to compel engagement, but so far I haven't found it to an issue here.
Maybe something along the lines of how Slack manages notifications. You can opt-out of a Slack thread by selecting "Turn off notifications for replies", but if somebody really wants your attention, they can always @username you.
You mean you got notifications pushed to your phone's general notification area when someone replied to you on reddit?
For me, RIF would only check my inbox when opening reddit manually already. Not sure I'd not have wanted realtime notifications but that sounds like a better way than just ignoring everyone who replies to you ever
It could. Relay offer(ed) the option to check your mailbox for new replies/messages either while in the app, or outside the app as well based on an interval you choose. The problem is also related to how Reddit does notifications, partially using the same mechanism for both post replies and DMs. So I just ended up turning all that stuff off.
As far as followups go, that's the thing! I follow up when I choose to follow up, not when a light on some app demands my engagement. We don't owe the internet anything, and especially with a site as large as Reddit, I don't believe it's conducive to good mental health to allow randos the ability to demand one's attention.
Unsurprisingly, Reddit (and most other sites) would love love love it if we keep tit-for-tatting in threads all day long since it boosts engagement metrics and allows them to run more ads. If that's how folks want to engage, then that's awesome for them, but especially after 2016 I found that periodic check-ins work better for me.
I'd like to be able to "unsee" a topic, so that I wouldn't have the ever tempting "x new" notification on something that I already took a peek in.
You can just use Ignore Topic for that too. It hides it from your front/group page so you won’t be tempted to visit it again.
But I still want to check in on it.
You still can by going to your ignored topics list:
https://tildes.net/ignored_topics
That kinda feels like everything left on the front page of Tildes is unread mail at that point. Disabling new comment indicators on topic better handled through client side changes if I really wanted it bad enough.