To better clarify the mechanism described above.
When you post in a thread you are automatically subscribed to it and automatically receive e-mail notifications when someone replies to that thread.
But, until you log-in, you will only receive 1 notification e-mail and not the subsequent ones for any other replies.
Until you log back into the forum.
This is the logic I already described above.
Until you log-in again you will only receive 1 e-mail related to that thread, which obviously cannot (and indeed does not want to) be related to the most recent post in that thread.
Hoping this help.
When you post in a thread you are automatically subscribed to it and automatically receive e-mail notifications when someone replies to that thread.
But, until you log-in, you will only receive 1 notification e-mail and not the subsequent ones for any other replies.
Until you log back into the forum.
This is the logic I already described above.
Until you log-in again you will only receive 1 e-mail related to that thread, which obviously cannot (and indeed does not want to) be related to the most recent post in that thread.
Hoping this help.
I think what we both are saying is that we will go to the forum as soon as we get the update, notification or email (however you wish to name it) from diyaudio about the new numbers on the list, then suddenly we will not get any without us doing anything that prevented us from getting the next notification. Then it will dawn on us that we have not gotten a notification in a day or more. Only by going to a prior notification can we see that there have been a new number(s) on the list. In fact, we will have been getting automatic updates to the list then suddenly we won't.
I'm saying that it is not an update.
That's just an e-mail notification of the first reply that was posted on that thread after you logged out, not the last one.
And if you don't log in again you won't get any more.
And If you didn't log in anymore, you wouldn't receive any more e-mail notifications about that specified thread.
And you would only have the first one, you will never receive the last one, only the first one, until you log in again.
You think that's an update, but that's not, it just tells you that at least 1 reply has been posted since you logged out.
Ultimately, it's a very simple mechanism, it just needs to be realized in its semplicity.
I didn't log out. The only time I am ever logged out is when my computer is rebooted, which is seldom. As soon as the reboot is done, I log back in. In essence, I am never logged out. What we are saying is that while logged in, out of the blue we will stop getting emails from diyaudio about this forum.
jaxboy, I can confirm that for me it happens exactly as described above, and in other places it's just the same.
However, I'm sorry to hear that from you, but I can't know what exactly happens there.
Anyway, I believe you are finally in the right thread for your issue, as I had suggested doing a few week ago.
However, I'm sorry to hear that from you, but I can't know what exactly happens there.
Anyway, I believe you are finally in the right thread for your issue, as I had suggested doing a few week ago.
They do for me as well, but this is not the only board where this happens. It never happens at a couple of other boards I frequent, so I don't believe it has anything to do with me. Something to do with the software, I suspect.
Hi All.
The problem of not receiving emails about threads we would like to have received emails about is a known problem, and one dear to my heart.
There is no "simple" explanation, other than "Everything appears to be working as intended (by the software)". I'm not saying that I like that answer, or that it's what you or I want, but as best as I can tell, this is the case.
Now if you'd like to delve in a little deeper and learn about all the factors at play, here goes.
It did send a lot of emails, but they dribbled in as new posts came in to my watched threads, and it would never send torrents of them. I never completely "lost" a thread because every time I came back to the site I would be sure to get an email about the next new post in every subscribed thread.
Additionally, vBulletin had various digest options, daily/weekly subscriptions and (from memory) you could ask to receive a notice of every new post (or not?).
I'm not sure why XF made the change, perhaps due to email deliverability issues, but when we switch to XenForo things changed.
The biggest issue here, which many of you may not be aware of, is that in today's high-spam email environment, email hosts (Eg: Gmail, Yahoo) have to be very judicious about what emails they let through to their customers (you).
They have all kinds of tech in place to make sure that you only see the emails you want to see. A lot of how they do that is by determining which senders of emails are "good" and "bad".
"Bad" senders encounter deliverability issues. If you sent a million emails you will find pretty quick that none of your emails get to anyone's inboxes because you have been tarred as a "bad actor" with a "poor sender reputation".
If a forum sends millions of emails, even if the members want them, but the members aren't clicking on them (engaging with them), the email host is going to consider that sender a bad actor and give them a poor reputation. When that happens, nobody will get any emails.
This is just one of many factors, but I need to mention it - we can't just send emails willy-nilly these days like we used to.
We have to do a lot of stuff to stay on the good side of hosts, and keep our reputation up. If we keep sending emails to bouncing email addresses, or people that have unsubscribed, we'll get bad reputation. We use Sparkpost to send mail and if your email bounces, and we don't stop sending to it, we'll lose reputation. So Sparkpost will put you on the infamous "suppression list". I created the suppression list removal tool to easily remove yourself from this, but if you do this and your host still thinks we shouldn't be emailing you it's extra bad if we start emailing you again. So it's critical you've told your host you DO want our mail before you remove yourself from the suppression list.
Some hosts block more mail than others. The worst is Yahoo. If you are having email problems, and using a @yahoo address, please change it to something else. You're making life hard for yourself. Yahoo hates forums (and it's not just us).
How do you tell your host that you want all our mail? Please whitelist our mail. Here is a guide on how to whitelist mail in Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, AOL, Zoho, and Protonmail.
Ok my fingers are hurting now from typing so much, but I want you to know I'm here to help. I can see a log of the headers (not the bodies) of every email sent from the forum to Sparkpost. And then, from Sparkpost to your host. If you believe you have failed to receive an email, please be very specific about the date, time, exact thread, and I can look it up for you.
Lastly, please know I am listening, and I am keen to find a solution, whatever it is, to making all our members happy when it comes to receiving email. A lot of assumptions were made when we moved from VB to XF that it would be at least as good if not better. IMHO, it was not an improvement and a significant reduction in usability. We'll get it right in the near future.
The problem of not receiving emails about threads we would like to have received emails about is a known problem, and one dear to my heart.
There is no "simple" explanation, other than "Everything appears to be working as intended (by the software)". I'm not saying that I like that answer, or that it's what you or I want, but as best as I can tell, this is the case.
Now if you'd like to delve in a little deeper and learn about all the factors at play, here goes.
HOW EMAILS USED TO WORK WHEN THE SITE WAS USING VBULLETIN
- You subscribed to threads.
- When someone posted in a thread you were subscribed to, you got one email, and only one email, about that thread.
- You never got another email about that thread, until you visited the site again.
- When you visited the site, every single one of your subscribed threads was "reset" and you would receive exactly one (and never more than one) email about that thread.
It did send a lot of emails, but they dribbled in as new posts came in to my watched threads, and it would never send torrents of them. I never completely "lost" a thread because every time I came back to the site I would be sure to get an email about the next new post in every subscribed thread.
Additionally, vBulletin had various digest options, daily/weekly subscriptions and (from memory) you could ask to receive a notice of every new post (or not?).
HOW EMAILS WORK NOW USING XF
I'm not sure why XF made the change, perhaps due to email deliverability issues, but when we switch to XenForo things changed.
- You watch a thread
- When someone posts in a thread you are watching, you get one email about a new post in a thread, and one email only. Don't you know, there's an email famine going on!
- If you click that email, of visit that thread, you will get one more email when someone posts in that thread
- If you don't click on that email, you will never, ever, ever hear about that thread again, unless you visit the thread independently of clicking on the email.
Email Deliverability
The biggest issue here, which many of you may not be aware of, is that in today's high-spam email environment, email hosts (Eg: Gmail, Yahoo) have to be very judicious about what emails they let through to their customers (you).
They have all kinds of tech in place to make sure that you only see the emails you want to see. A lot of how they do that is by determining which senders of emails are "good" and "bad".
"Bad" senders encounter deliverability issues. If you sent a million emails you will find pretty quick that none of your emails get to anyone's inboxes because you have been tarred as a "bad actor" with a "poor sender reputation".
If a forum sends millions of emails, even if the members want them, but the members aren't clicking on them (engaging with them), the email host is going to consider that sender a bad actor and give them a poor reputation. When that happens, nobody will get any emails.
This is just one of many factors, but I need to mention it - we can't just send emails willy-nilly these days like we used to.
Suppression Lists
We have to do a lot of stuff to stay on the good side of hosts, and keep our reputation up. If we keep sending emails to bouncing email addresses, or people that have unsubscribed, we'll get bad reputation. We use Sparkpost to send mail and if your email bounces, and we don't stop sending to it, we'll lose reputation. So Sparkpost will put you on the infamous "suppression list". I created the suppression list removal tool to easily remove yourself from this, but if you do this and your host still thinks we shouldn't be emailing you it's extra bad if we start emailing you again. So it's critical you've told your host you DO want our mail before you remove yourself from the suppression list.
Mail Hosts
Some hosts block more mail than others. The worst is Yahoo. If you are having email problems, and using a @yahoo address, please change it to something else. You're making life hard for yourself. Yahoo hates forums (and it's not just us).
Whitelisting mail from diyAudio
How do you tell your host that you want all our mail? Please whitelist our mail. Here is a guide on how to whitelist mail in Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, AOL, Zoho, and Protonmail.
Where we go from here?
Ok my fingers are hurting now from typing so much, but I want you to know I'm here to help. I can see a log of the headers (not the bodies) of every email sent from the forum to Sparkpost. And then, from Sparkpost to your host. If you believe you have failed to receive an email, please be very specific about the date, time, exact thread, and I can look it up for you.
Lastly, please know I am listening, and I am keen to find a solution, whatever it is, to making all our members happy when it comes to receiving email. A lot of assumptions were made when we moved from VB to XF that it would be at least as good if not better. IMHO, it was not an improvement and a significant reduction in usability. We'll get it right in the near future.
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@turk 182
I had a look at your options. I could see you have not been sent any emails from the forum.
I believe it was because you had this option turned off:
I have turned this on for you. Let me know if you start receiving emails. If this setting also controls whether watched threads are sent emails, I think I should update the description of the option from this default.
Let me know if you start getting emails!
Another possibility is that since you did not have automatic watch on, then you were not watching threads automatically when you posted to them. Can you check for example, that you are watching this thread?
I had a look at your options. I could see you have not been sent any emails from the forum.
I believe it was because you had this option turned off:
I have turned this on for you. Let me know if you start receiving emails. If this setting also controls whether watched threads are sent emails, I think I should update the description of the option from this default.
Let me know if you start getting emails!
Another possibility is that since you did not have automatic watch on, then you were not watching threads automatically when you posted to them. Can you check for example, that you are watching this thread?
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I can see you are being sent emails, receiving them, and clicking on them. There appears to be no delivery problems to you I can see. If you believe you have a situation where the system is not performing as it was designed (not necessarily as we would like, but as designed!), please let me know the specifics. Welcome to send this information to the helpdesk if there is any sensitive information there.
@jaxboy If after reading my post above, you believe the system is not working as designed, please let me know the specifics, including dates and times including timezone, preferably with everything in UTC timezone. I'll look up your entire outgoing email history over the previous 48 hours and let you know what was sent and when. You are welcome to email the helpdesk if there is any sensitive information you'd like to share.
If the system is working correctly, it sounds like this should have happened:
- You posted post #3
- You were active in the thread until #7 (you said you received updates, and so I assume you at some point viewed #7)
- You went away
- You got an update about post #8
- You receive no more emails ever again until you come back to the thread (this is how the system is designed, to prevent spamming of users)
- You click the #8 update email and are shown all the new posts starting with the first one you haven't seen, and ending with the most recent post
What I would like to see, and it appears this does not exist for XF either in core, or in any available plugin, is "a few gentle reminders but not too many" about threads you might have forgotten about. Perhaps 3 follow ups - after a week, three weeks, six weeks.
If you encounter the issue again, let me know, and we can try to track it down. You're welcome to email contact@diyaudio.com and we can handle it through a ticket. To date I have not seen any evidence, other than anecdotal, of the system not working as designed by the XF developers. Just a hunch - when you viewed #8 was it a full page reload or did you click the "There are more posts - show them?" link which dynamically loads new posts without a page refresh?
Two things:
This site is randomly slow, and I get back to forum list / latest posts after clicking on a thread post in the watched threads list about 50% of the time.
Mail notifications are erratic, I have not bothered to trace if it is Gmail or the site which is at fault.
And yes, Yahoo has caused forums and groups to close down, or pay extortionate (in some people's opinion) fees to keep the group on Yahoo, mostly the groups either closed or moved to other sites.
This seems to have happened after Yahoo got taken over, and the new management decided that there was a need to make a profit, which resulted in a lot of free facilities being withdrawn.
Yahoo groups was free, IIRC, and a lot of groups for dedicated hobby / interest groups existed on the site.
There are competitors to their mail facility, you can ask around and shift to another mail provider if you feel like that would make life better for you.
This site is randomly slow, and I get back to forum list / latest posts after clicking on a thread post in the watched threads list about 50% of the time.
Mail notifications are erratic, I have not bothered to trace if it is Gmail or the site which is at fault.
And yes, Yahoo has caused forums and groups to close down, or pay extortionate (in some people's opinion) fees to keep the group on Yahoo, mostly the groups either closed or moved to other sites.
This seems to have happened after Yahoo got taken over, and the new management decided that there was a need to make a profit, which resulted in a lot of free facilities being withdrawn.
Yahoo groups was free, IIRC, and a lot of groups for dedicated hobby / interest groups existed on the site.
There are competitors to their mail facility, you can ask around and shift to another mail provider if you feel like that would make life better for you.
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Logs show that in the last 24 hours, mail is being sent, successfully delivered to your host, and thread notification emails are being opened and clicked on. If this is not what you are experiencing, or you expected something different, please email contact@diyaudio.com with details and I'll be happy to work through this with you.
@Jason
I don't know if it could be useful in this specific case, but please note that some providers are starting to require a white-list for "unknown" senders of e-mails otherwise they will treat them as spam.
May be putting the forum's email address in one Contacts might help in this case.
Just my 2 cents.
Of course, it would be interesting to receive some feedback on this.
Not from me though, because I disable sending emails from all Watched Threads...
I don't know if it could be useful in this specific case, but please note that some providers are starting to require a white-list for "unknown" senders of e-mails otherwise they will treat them as spam.
May be putting the forum's email address in one Contacts might help in this case.
Just my 2 cents.
Of course, it would be interesting to receive some feedback on this.
Not from me though, because I disable sending emails from all Watched Threads...