suggestion for forum email notification

Is there any way for the email notification to include the subject of the topic. Currently it shows the forum and either new topic or reply.

If the subject was included, it would make it a whole lot easier to filter which messages we want to read or reply to, especially if you subscribe to a number of the forums.

[bluckcuck]

The email subject for subscriptions was actually something that we have struggled with. We need to balance to lenght of the subject, versus how much information it can convey. We have a couple different options for the email subject line - so let me present some ideas so we can get everybody's opinion.

1. Subject contains the forum name and an indication of whether there was a new topic or a reply

 

• Advantages: Shorter email subject, easier to use email inbox rules (for filing,etc.)

• Disadvantages: Does not contain any information about the new topic posted

2. Subject contains the forum name and subject of new topics

 

• Advantages: More descriptive email subjects are easier to view in your inbox

• Disadvantages: May cause very long email subjects. Also, inbox rules will be a problem as the subject would always be changing.

3. Subject contains only the subject of new topics (no forum name)

 

• Advantages: More descriptive email subjects are easier to view in your inbox

• Disadvantages: If you are subscribed to multiple forums, this could get confusing. Also, inbox rules will be a problem as the subject would always be changing.

Well, there are some ideas. Let me know what you think about these options or any other ideas you might have to improve the subscription process.

Thanks,


Bruce Luckcuck
Director, Applications & Support Services
Wiley Publishing, Inc.

[David Cameron]

I'd say that the forum should be a minimum even if it were cut down to half a dozen characters. It makes things a lot easier for those on multiple lists.

Also the old lists had a different To address for each list. I don't know if this is an option (or different From).

regards
David Cameron

[Hal Levy]

Option 2 is clearly the winner.

[FORUMNAME] Subject


EG: [ASPdotNET] Why did Microsoft remove the Masked Edit Control?

We sort by the mailing list [ASPdotNET].. do you plan on changing the names of forums frequently?

oh wait- that's how the old system did it... In fact, that's how almost every mailing list on the 'net does it....

I didn't know it was a problem.


Hal Levy
Daddyshome, LLC

[Jeff Mason]

Option 2 is the only one that makes sense, IMO.

As Hal has said,

[FORUMNAME] Subject

allows us to set up filter rules to place messages by forum into their own folders, or to handle individual subjects if we so choose.

Jeff Mason
Custom Apps, Inc.
www.custom-apps.com

[bluckcuck]

We've made a couple of changes to the subscription emails:

Per your requests, we changed the email subject to be the forum name and the topic name.

Secondly, we've changed the email processing to turn the formatting HTML back into forum code. Hopefully this will make the messages a little more readable when a lot of formatting is included in the posting.

Bruce Luckcuck
Director, Applications & Support Services
Wiley Publishing, Inc.

[Hal Levy]

Bruce,

These are good changes.

I would suggest that you find a way of creating a "short" name for the forums.. such as [P2PFeedback] and use those in the emails, instead of the "long name"

Drop the
"Hello user,

Forum member so and so has posted a new blah...." Just give us the message that was posted...

keep the trailing "You can view" and "you can reply"

These would be huge improvements - while I want to reply though EMAIL.. these will all be steps to getting the mail that I get in my inbox to be usable and sortable.




Hal Levy
Daddyshome, LLC

[Jeff Mason]

I'm not trying to be ungrateful here - I really do appreciate that Wiley changed the email notifications.

Do you suppose you guys could change the email subject line to include the forum "short name" in, say, brackets? The current method which has e.g. "SQL Server:" is just a bit too generic and has resulted in a couple of false positives for me.

If it were instead [SQL Server] it would be far less likely that other subject lines would result in a message being sent to the folder I use for those notifications.

Thank you for your consideration.

P.S. If instead you used [SQL_Server] I could be really lazy and keep my old P2P rules ... :D

Jeff Mason
Custom Apps, Inc.
www.custom-apps.com

[papparuff]

I would like to see the Subject line be the same as what it used to be and that is:
[access] RE: Original Subject line.

Also, can we remove the lines that tells us that someone has replied to a topic. This is unnecessary. example of what I am receiving in my email:

"Hello papparuff,

Forum member Dataman has posted a reply to the topic "Access SubForm Problem" in the Access forum.

You are being notified because you are subscribed to the Access forum.

Topic: Access SubForm Problem
Message:
------------------------------------------------------"

This is not needed, especially if we return to the original Subject line format. If we don't return to the original Subject line format, then we only need:

Topic: Access SubForm Problem
-------------------------------------------------------


TIA and glad to have you back



John Ruff - The Eternal Optimist :-)

[bluckcuck]

Well we're getting there...

I changed the subject line to be:

[Short Forum] Topic

The moderators will need to go through the forums (all 100!) and assign new short forum titles for use in the subscription emails.

For now, if there is no short name, the long name will be used.

I'm working on some ideas for changing the internal content of the emails as well - stay tuned.

Bruce Luckcuck
Director, Applications & Support Services
Wiley Publishing, Inc.