Operation Audacious Phoenix

I know I may have suggested this before in the public suggestion forums on the main site, but...either this was before this group was formed or I didn't know about them at that time, so, my apologies for creating what seems like a duplicate thread. Though I would like to think I have thought of easier ways to explain it this time, at least. Anyway...

The ability to subscribe to and follow threads is ridiculously easy to use, either by checking the option to do so when you reply to it, or just clicking the available button, and I love it. The problem is, as things stand now I have to manually check a forum to know potential new threads I might be interested in have been posted, requiring me to go trough each forum individually to check on a daily basis if I want to keep up to date.

What I would like to see, is an option for forums similar to the topic subscription--namely, being able to subscribe to a forum and see when a new thread is created within it. Not necessarily of all new replies happening within that forum, just the posts that are the creation of a new thread.

If this was implemented, I for one know the first forum I would subscribe to--the Introductions forum. It would help me more quickly recognize that there is a newcomer in need of a hearty and perhaps informative welcome without needing to just manually check the forum every few hours--especially because I often forget to check the forum for a few days at a time, and this isn't conducive to ensuring a new arrival is quickly assured that their arrival is a welcome one.

In short...basically it would be a means of giving those who make use of the feature a quick reminder that hey, there may be some new things you want to see now, come take a look when you have a moment, rather than waiting until days (or longer periods of time) pass before they remember to check, if they are like me and prone to frequent forgetfulness on some things.

EDIT: To clarify, I think this would be great on both the main, public RPR forums, and group forums. Not just the option to get notices from a whole group or nothing in it at all, but to follow specific forums instead.

Subtleknifewielder's suggestion sounds like a good one to me. I know that every once in a while I'm like bored a trolling around and hit the Smalltalk forum then I notice that there are 3 or 4 threads I didn't know about, because I had just be clicking on threads that popped up in my feed through friends responses to Smalltalk threads.

So, I can see how this would be a benefit. The first thing I would subscribe to would be the Smalltalk thread.

Thank you Abigail, I know I probably would subscribe to that one too, right after Introductions.

Does anyone else have thoughts, concerns, or questions on this? I fully acknowledge that just because I can't spot a downside doesn't mean no one can. I only have one brain and one set of eyes.

The only problem I see is that dozens of people post every day even in just the small talk forum. The notifications wouldn't last long on the main page of your feed because they'd constantly be getting pushed back by new posts from not only the forums you're subscribed to but the topics, the people and the characters you're subscribed to.

Well, I'm not talking about automatically subscribing to everything. Just the forums of your choice, just as you choose to subscribe to certain topics.

Also limiting it to just being notified of the beginning of a new topic, and avoiding notifications of following posts in that topic, would go a long way to reducing that clutter. You would only get notified of further posts in a topic if you choose to subscribe to that topic specifically, at least the way I imagine it.

Also to clarify, I am talking of the e-mail notification sort of subscribing, not necessarily getting a notice in your feed (unless you choose to enable that option too, of course).

Notices in feed are the default way of subscribing to anything on the RPR for most people; email subs usually come after.

I'm still working on figuring out how notifications will work at all on 2.0, so I'm not ready to comment on things like this. Just wanted to drop the note that I have seen it, but that's why I'm not saying anything about it right now.

Alright, that's completely fair. I look forward to hearing about it either way once you decide how notifications will work.

I think this is similar enough to post to this thread...

I'd love a way to 'follow' my RPR friends but somehow exclude their activities in the 'Forum Games' forum.

I'm interested when they post a new LFRP topic, or join in an OOC discussion, but not so much that they posted 17 times in a virtual tug of war.

Hahah, yeah that's fair. Would be an interesting and useful add-on, to make a way to exclude certain aspects of a feed as well.

It's super different code wise. Give it its own topic, if you please.