Need to be Changed

[official DJ Bron3 117]

Well, i do like this social media site but one thing kinda frustrates me, the notification system, it should be a little more flexible, i can't answer possible questions or comments if anyone did comment anywhere. 

[ExplosionMare 18,062]

True. Sometimes I tap the notifications and they don’t go to the message.

[ExplosionMare 18,062]

5 hours ago, Bas said:

@ExplosionMare Can you explain what you are doing exactly?

I know the notifications suck, but the team can't change it.

What I do; If there is just a few so they all fit into the pop-up bubble, I'll just open each of them in a new tab (middle mouse button).

If there are more...well, I open View all notifications and then start with what I believe are the latest notifications. Not easy to find out where new unread and old read content are, though. Again, middle mouse button.

Either we do it myself or motivate the staff writing to the developer company, lol.

I mean when I click on a notification to go where it is in its forum I’m not always directed to it and I’ll end up in the beginning of the forum or something.

[Rikifive 24,183]

7 hours ago, official DJ Bron3 said:

Well, i do like this social media site but one thing kinda frustrates me, the notification system, it should be a little more flexible, i can't answer possible questions or comments if anyone did comment anywhere. 

If by that you mean receiving too many random notifications, that are impossible to follow, I suggest taking a look at your notification settings and making few adjustments based on your preferences. 

 

1 hour ago, ExplosionMare said:

I mean when I click on a notification to go where it is in its forum I’m not always directed to it and I’ll end up in the beginning of the forum or something.

That made me curious - do you have any specific examples?

I don't recall having similar troubles; Notifications such as-

- ... posted a topic ...
- ... replied to a status update ...
- ... reacted to ...
- ... mentioned you ...

- all point me to the specific thread / exact post in a thread / status update; I never had to find things out on my own. What doesn't work for you? 

7 hours ago, Bas said:

I know the notifications suck, but the team can't change it.

The only problem in my opinion is, that just opening the box marks all new notifications as read. That's a terrible design. All notifications should be bold until clicked - one by one, just like it is with threads, for example. They remain unread until you'll actually read them, not until you'll just see them somewhere on the list... 

Other than that, there is nothing I could complain on. The notifications are really neat, compared to mess in Facebook (that I no longer use), for example. 

[Jeric 46,851]

Are you talking about the desktop notifications by chance?

[ExplosionMare 18,062]

12 hours ago, Rikifive said:

If by that you mean receiving too many random notifications, that are impossible to follow, I suggest taking a look at your notification settings and making few adjustments based on your preferences. 

 

That made me curious - do you have any specific examples?

I don't recall having similar troubles; Notifications such as-

- ... posted a topic ...
- ... replied to a status update ...
- ... reacted to ...
- ... mentioned you ...

- all point me to the specific thread / exact post in a thread / status update; I never had to find things out on my own. What doesn't work for you? 

The only problem in my opinion is, that just opening the box marks all new notifications as read. That's a terrible design. All notifications should be bold until clicked - one by one, just like it is with threads, for example. They remain unread until you'll actually read them, not until you'll just see them somewhere on the list... 

Other than that, there is nothing I could complain on. The notifications are really neat, compared to mess in Facebook (that I no longer use), for example. 

I think it happens on bigger threads. It doesn’t happen often though.

[Fhaolan 4,483]

Okay, I can see several things going on here that might all be the same issue, or may be me misinterpreting what the problem is.

1. When a post/comment/status update is merged with others, or hidden, or otherwise removed from circulation, the notification system isn't coping with it very well. It's either sending you to the first post in that thread, or just saying 'that post no longer exists'. I don't remember the exact circumstances that leads to either event.

2. Replying to a comment/status update is not quite as clean as it was before the last system update. It used to be you could reply to a status update right there, but now when you have to either click on the person's name, or on the 'x replies' link, which takes you to the person's commentary page and *then* you get the chance to reply to it. It's not exactly intuitively obvious where to click on the homepage's list of status updates to get to the point you can reply. And then it records you as having gone to the person's profile when all you wanted to do was reply to the status.

3. The notification system doesn't track which notifications you've done something about. It's all or nothing. You look at the main list, and it considers you entirely done right then and there.

In all three cases, it's a problem with using commercial forum software. That's the way Invision built this thing, and MLPF is just one of many groups who purchased the rights to use it. MLPF doesn't have the ability to really force Invision to fix anything. Fixing it themselves is a serious hack, and is likely not high on the priority list. However, discussing it here means it might get *put* on the list in the first place.

[Rikifive 24,183]

1 hour ago, ExplosionMare said:

I think it happens on bigger threads. It doesn’t happen often though.

From my experience I can tell, that similar thing happens when I'm on mobile, using Chrome. When I tap a notification on my phone, it will work perfectly. However, when I'll open it in a new tab - it won't load the page right away, but queue it instead. I mean, the new tabs remain blank until I actually select them - that's when the page is loaded and once I'll leave the tab unloaded for a short period of time, the browser later will 'forget' what part of the page it was supposed to take me to (it won't trigger the anchor to jump to the specific location of the page).

That doesn't happen on Desktop though as there, Chrome loads all pages regardless if the tab is selected or not. Middle click opens in a new tab and loads the page instantly, rather than leaving it blank until is actually viewed.

I shared that, because you mentioned that happening occasionally, rather than in specific circumstances. If your browser handles opening in new tabs similarly, then that might be the reason why it doesn't take you to specific posts in threads. If it is the case, I believe the browser is the one to blame, not forums.  

 

Also as Fhaolan said in the second point, there are no anchors in the status updates. If you'll get a notification, that someone reacted to your comment in the status update, it will simply lead you to the status update, but won't take you to the mentioned by it comment. It is probably because statuses have only three latest comments displayed by default. The rest you have to reveal by clicking "Show previous comments" button. I believe this is the reason why such thing wasn't implemented there in the current forum soft version. This also applies to "someone replied to a status update" - it will take you to the status update, but won't show the exact comment, as it may be simply hidden (sunk). 

 

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TL;DR

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- All notifications should normally take you to the correct page with mentioned by these contents.

- They also should take you to the specific post, unless it is about status updates, as these do not support that function.

- If it fails to take you to the specific post (not status update comment), then either the content was removed by staff or your browser may have something to do with it (when it took too long to load the page or something - for example in big threads with lots of embedded content, such as videos, that tend to move your page position all over the place while they're being loaded).