A Few Site Updates

A couple of site improvements are undergoing testing this weekend, one already in progress.

  • Time-limited comment editing

Comment editing was time-limited for several years but the feature didn’t make it across upgrades last fall. In order to keep threads from becoming confusing due to changes in old posts, we’re bringing it back. Currently, when you post a comment you have an hour to revise it. That length of time will be adjusted in coming weeks. When you first commit your post, take a look at the edit link to see how much time is available for editing. When the time is up, the button will not be available. (The time requires refreshing the screen to update.)

  • Subscriptions system

Some time over the weekend, we’ll be testing an alternative system for email notification subscriptions to forum threads/discussions. In the past, you could set an option in your profile to automatically subscribe to any thread you post in. We’re hoping to bring that back, but it does involve scrapping the current notifications system. During testing, you may find that there are periods when no notification process is working at all. If we make the switch successfully, any threads you were previously subscribed to will no longer be subscribed. So it will be a start from scratch.

Discussion

The new subscriptions system is in progress using mostly default settings. We’ll be tweaking. See options in your profile.

(Currently, notifications go out only about once an hour…. and what is sent seems far too verbose.)

Experimenting now with a couple of different notification systems.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

An email notifications for comments is now available. You can set notifications for threads you comment on work automatically by going to My SI and then to your Edit tab.

You can also subscribe to individual threads using a checkbox that appears on the thread…. below the comment box currently. Feel free to test and post any issues or questions in this thread.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

The shortcoming of this particular solution is that you have to post in order to subscribe to email notifications on the thread. Is this a problem?

I think it is now set to not do that by default for new users. Existing users, not sure. Check settings in your profile. The settings there should (lets hope) determine what happens by default when you post in a thread.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.