Members following Forums v 4.x

[Keith Roberts]

This has  becomie a headache for us.  In versions 3.x  we could turn this off. That is not an option now, and that is a real problem.

When we had 12 years ago a couple of hundred registered users, of whom maybe 25% were actually active, that was fine, now we ahve 60,000 plus registered, with obviously much churn and a couple of hundred regularly active while others only drop in occasionally or to seek advice and information on a single topic  and drop out once their query has been addressed.. We have approaching 2 million posts in a military history forum and because of our subject  many of our members are older than the average internet user. Our most active sub forum now has over 400 followers. It frequently has between 10 and 20 new topics daily each of which can generate aa notification. 

Turning off emails is not a long term solution as posts from years back can frequentlly be found by a new member who wants to contact the original possibly now inactive poster. When email addresses are still valid the contact  has brought distant relatives together, and also resulted for example in gallantry medals being returned to family members who had been seeking them for years. 

Lapsed members never clear their settings - some are no doubt deceased, so our email is getting large numbers of bounced messages from failed notifications mostly because inactive members have changed ISP or just email service. .

We pretty much resolved this in version  3.x by turning off the option to follow entire forums, and amending/contacting members depending on the level of their activity regarding obsolete email addresses..

We really need a setting that will enable us to limit following to individual topics or users if we are  to manage the forum properly.

 

Keith

[The Dark Wizard]

On 6/23/2016 at 2:31 AM, Keith Roberts said:

This has  becomie a headache for us.  In versions 3.x  we could turn this off. That is not an option now, and that is a real problem.

When we had 12 years ago a couple of hundred registered users, of whom maybe 25% were actually active, that was fine, now we ahve 60,000 plus registered, with obviously much churn and a couple of hundred regularly active while others only drop in occasionally or to seek advice and information on a single topic  and drop out once their query has been addressed.. We have approaching 2 million posts in a military history forum and because of our subject  many of our members are older than the average internet user. Our most active sub forum now has over 400 followers. It frequently has between 10 and 20 new topics daily each of which can generate aa notification. 

Turning off emails is not a long term solution as posts from years back can frequentlly be found by a new member who wants to contact the original possibly now inactive poster. When email addresses are still valid the contact  has brought distant relatives together, and also resulted for example in gallantry medals being returned to family members who had been seeking them for years. 

Lapsed members never clear their settings - some are no doubt deceased, so our email is getting large numbers of bounced messages from failed notifications mostly because inactive members have changed ISP or just email service. .

We pretty much resolved this in version  3.x by turning off the option to follow entire forums, and amending/contacting members depending on the level of their activity regarding obsolete email addresses..

We really need a setting that will enable us to limit following to individual topics or users if we are  to manage the forum properly.

 

Keith

Maybe a better suggestion would be a configurable option in settings where you can select a cutoff date since users have last visited. After that notifications from watched stuff doesn't work, so it won't send an email or an alert. But things like PMs still works fine email wise(maybe make that a configurable option?)

@Lindy That might not be a bad thing at all for the very large forums.

[Keith Roberts]

It is a thought, but the nature of our forum is that we do get new members picking up on posts from years ago, and that can result in some excellent outcomes - re-uniting relatives of WW1 service personnel, or even in one case leading to bringing together relatives of a soldier of the Great War whose body was only recovered and identified three years ago. We could maybe benefit from a tool that would review email addresses to check that they were genuine, but we would have 60,000 to test.

 

Quite simply limiting follows to individual topics would resolve the present issue, and would prevent it occuring again.

 

Keith

[opentype]

If there is no setting coming, you can just go into the theme settings and remove the follow button from the topic listing template. It helps to be able to read HTML, but it only takes a minute.