Quote Notifications

[ianbee]

Mostly all of the forums that I am currently a part of have some sort of quote notification system built in to their forums. So if someone quotes you twice, there will be some sort of notification telling you that you have been quoted twice... or simply 2 notifications. Much like the current "Private Messages: Unread _, Total _". In the top right section of this forum, indicating how many new personal messages a user may have.

When I create threads within this forum, I find that I often forget that I have created that thread until a few days later when I randomly stumble across it in whatever section I may have posted the thread in. This happens a lot for me. And even when someone else makes a thread asking for help with a problem, I may give them a suggestion or tip and then stumble across the thread a few days or even a week later only to find out that the OP replied to my message (in which he quoted me). Where as if I received a notification that he quoted me, I would have seen the notification and replied a lot earlier, potentially solving his problem faster.

This may not seem like it would make a big difference to those users who haven't been a part of a forum community that supports quote notifications... But trust me, it does. It makes it so much easier to communicate with other users, to help people or get help more faster and it just makes the whole forum experience that much more enjoyable.

Here is an example of how quote notifications look on another website:


So looking at that image, you have the greyed out quote notification icon (the earth globe) but it becomes blue when a user(s) quotes you. It also will have a corresponding number beside the globe like 1, 4, 6, 2 (or however many times you have been quoted) to let you know how many times you have been quoted. I'm not saying that if duc.avid implemented quote notifications that this is how it should work, but this is just an idea for people who aren't familiar with quote notifications. Realistically, simple text like "Quotes: 3" or something would work just fine.. But a clear visual difference between zero quotes and more than zero quotes always helps someone to notice that they have been quoted. Also, if you look at that image you will see that it tells you who quoted you, in what thread they quoted you and when they quoted you. I've been on many forums and that is how it works on most forums that I have been a part of.

So, I think the idea of quote notifications would be extremely helpful in so many different ways. And I can confidently say that many people (or maybe even most people) within this forum use quotes, and it would be very efficient if us duc users could access quote notifications and see when we have been quoted. I've also used vBulletin in the past and there are mods available for quote notifications, so I don't think this would be very hard to implement. What do you guys think of all this?

[musicman691]

The answer to your problem is simple: in your user control panel turn on instant email notification in the Settings and Options/Edit Options/Default Thread Subscription Mode. You really need to check that out as there's all sorts of neat things there that will make life easier. That way you'll get an email notification when a reply is made in a thread you posted in. But you won't get any more notifications until you visit the thread again. So visit the thread again. If there are multiple replies in a thread you'll still only get one notification of a reply and that will be for the first reply (of possibly many) made since your last visit to the thread. That's so you don't end up with a bunch of stuff in your email inbox.