Welcome to the new forums!

I tried what I wrote but it didn't work (got another alert without a mail). I just selected both those options again. Maybe I understood those instructions wrongly?

 

The easiest option might be if I read every post on the forums for you, and just send you and email when there's something interesting I think you should see!

 

YOU SHOULD DO THAT!

 

The point is that you should "unwatch" and "watch" the thread again, while selecting "and receive email notifications".

Do you receive any emails at all? Looking at your account, you generally have email notifications enabled, but for a certain few it's disabled. Can you let me know which thread your were testing with?

 

I was trying with this same thread, but also this one and this one, without any result. All of them, among many others, show the "email" attribute in my "watched threads" list. And no, I never received a single email from the forums since the "new" forum version happened. Though Asset Store and Unity advertising emails, which are connected to the same email, arrive without any problems.

 

Hi, martinvium, thanks for responding. No, I haven't received a single email from the forum since the switchover, including PM's. I've tried everything I can with the settings to no avail. I wonder if the messages are being sent by the mailserver or if they're being canceled before they're even sent. (This could happen if my mail server is on a spam blacklist, which frankly is almost impossible to avoid these days on sharded hosting.) But I've tried changing my email address as well with no better results, so that may not be an issue.

 

Same here, though I'm not sure I'm receiving all the emails from the Asset Store. I get some, but quite often when I make an update to my asset on the store I don't receive an email saying it's been updated. I usually do get the emails when I first submit the new update however. Perhaps they're just not always sending out emails when the update goes through. I also do receive emails from Unity Answers.

 

I have a thread: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/force-feedback-controller-toolkit.159297/

When posts are made to this, they don't appear in new Posts?

I also watch it with notifications. But I don't get notifications when posts are made.

Is this an issue because the thread was made before the new Forum was introduced?

Edit: This post didn't appear in new posts either???????

 

Yes it did, and I got an alert about your post in this thread.

--Eric

 

The recent posts are definitely behaving differently than the old site.

Here is screen dump with my force feedback thread sandwiched between 2 other threads and missing in the 2nd image.

If I am not logged in it shows up in recent posts.
If I am logged in, it does not show up in recent posts?

Both were done at the same time, one in Chrome, the other Nightly, the only difference being I was logged into Chrome and it didn't display.

Are post "you" make, filtered out of recent posts?

 

I've been using the Watched Threads page to overcome the inconsistent result I get from the alerts. For example, I had 7 alerts this morning, but a further 3 watched threads had updates on the watched page, but no alerts.

 

Hi @martinvium

+1 ditto (none since switch). I believe settings conform to @aurora recommendations.

(sorry for delayed response - not checking forum very regularly and, er, no notifications )

Hope you can solve! Thanks for investigating!

 

+1 for the avatars, i really would like to see the reasoning behind people not wanting avatars, now it's all text that i can't at a glance see where is what i want, "not looking nice" should come after "not functional" and not before

why not have a voting for this, or why not have an option in the settings?

EDIT: Okay, the more i looked the more it bothered me, you have to keep in mind that i actually came to this thread looking for information on why the avatars were gone (since i was away for some weeks that was the first thing i noticed), but now it isn't just the avatars, i really don't get it where you guys are going with this theme, the previous version had subtle color changes that discriminated and identified the different information, now all we have is stripped blocks of either white or grey where only the spacing between elements actually helps telling what is what, and even that is more cramped, who exactly is this trying to cater and why?

It's like you gave a huge step forward (albeit with possible quirks to solve) and now you are giving small steps backwards

The lack of avatars really bothered me so i started digging the page layout and I'm glad the information is still there, only hidden (or else i would have to fetch the information myself) so i made a quick and small greasemonkey script that adds a bit of css styling overriding the parts that hide it, if you know how to use greasemonkey you know what to do, i would post this on userscripts but it's down at the time of this writting

I know this probably looks more like a rant, we can never please everyone but at least we can try be rational about it, i would like to know from the people that don't like the previous style and prefer this one the reasons for your preference, what is actually "better" in this version?

Code (JavaScript):

1. // ==UserScript==
2. // @name        Avatars for everyone
3. // @namespace   UnityAvatar
4. // @description Gives back avatars in thread listing
5. // @include     http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/*
6. // @version     1
7. // @grant       GM_addStyle
8. // @run-at      document-start
9. // ==/UserScript==
10. if ('loading' == document.readyState) {
11.   GM_addStyle(".discussionList .posterAvatar { padding-left: 6px; width: 54px !important; height: 60px !important; } .discussionListItem .posterAvatar .avatar { display: block !important;}");
12. }

 

I'm not sure I understand the fuss over the avatar issue. Do you really choose to read threads based on who posted in it rather than what the thread is about? People say they want to see information at a glance, and I could understand that if the thread itself had some kind of icon based on its content, but I fail to see the purpose of a thread with an avatar of the OP or the latest poster.

 

Avatar is faster to spot from a list than reading all the names. I remember the avatars of most of the people who's posts generally like to read. I also remember the avatars of people who's posts I dislike

Anyways the avatar icon column had the "I posted here" icon included so now it's missing too.

 

It's about pattern recognition

That icon helps identify and discriminate threads that you care about, much like the odd/even background colors or the bold text on unread threads, and yes, it also helps identify the persons behind them. I don't know about you but when i see a wall of text it feels impersonal and insignificant. But when I see the avatars and start recognizing the people behind them then I can start telling if the thread is something good, if it's a duplicated or even if it's important, and all this before reading the title or opening the thread. I'm not saying it substitutes the title or the content, but it's a valuable additional information for a better community experience.

If avatars don't have a purpose why do we have them inside the threads, or why so many others forums use them inside and outside of threads? Why there's even a global avatar system (gravatar) that people try to use, including unity forums?

All I'm saying is that the avatars with the "littleMe" avatar system they had before that would also tell you at a glance which threads you participated in fit a very good purpose of a function within the forums, and now they are gone because apparently a handful of people don't like how they look. In game design this is like removing a piece of gameplay in favor of absolutely nothing because a few consumers didn't like the graphics for said gameplay.

@Ostwind if you use my script from above that little icon also returns.

 

I like the "Like" link on posts.

I think it would be really great to have a "Dislike" option as well. (I expect this is inappropriate in the politically correct, only be positive, world we now live in.)

However, some posts really bug me and I would like to express this without getting into a posting war. Having to bottle up these emotions is not healthy

edit: This is not directed at any of the posts in this thread.
eg: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/sliding-movement-how.262976/ (2nd comment by OP)

 

I was most confused by @Zaddo67's post. I completely disagree with his/her/its point of view. His/her/its post is therefore making me, for the first time, wish for a "Dislike" button... somewhat to my consternation!?

Yours, insincerely

 

I understand the purpose of avatars in general and they completely make sense for identifying which poster is talking in a conversation thread, but in this case, the only reason they would be useful is if you are trying to follow threads by specific people. That seems to me like something that would rarely be done when reading through a list of hundreds of threads. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook are much more direct methods of following a person than searching for their messages in a sea of other messages. I get the fact that some people may want to only read messages from the people they know, but it seems like a rare use-case for a forum thread listing since most people are probably looking at thread titles for content information without regard to the author.

 

There's a "follow" feature for that.

--Eric

 

Did you miss everything else i said? No, the only reason isn't just because I'm following someone, why would you state something like that as a fact without arguments explaining it? Why is this even a special case? Like Eric said if i want to specifically follow someone i already can do that.

 

Very well said, best post on this topic so far,I fully support your statement as a daily forum user.

The removal of avatars was rushed, no poll was done. Now the admin team had to make a decision and stick to it and this is what they have done, it would look really messy for it to change again and there is a fear of backlash. I simply think its to late now anyway. In fact I seem to be opening threads less these days and just sticking to notifications system as a result of the removal.

On a separate topic; I would like to just ask if the REPORT button works? because apart from real spam, the who ever the report goes to seems to be a little to gentle and let anyone spam indirectly on the forums without any action.

 

Yes, it works fine. There aren't huge numbers of mods so it can take some hours before anyone gets to the reports, depending on the time of day and other factors (such as Unite, which currently seems to have reduced moderator presence). Personally, I reject some of the reports because they amount to "this guy looked at me funny!" and that's not something mods get involved with; posts need to be pretty clear about breaking rules (wrong section, duplicate topics, spam, etc.) and I don't want to arbitrate petty bickering, sorry.

--Eric

 

Time for a side note. I really like the new huge height of the thread pages, but I think a floating "back to top" button or something like that would be pretty neat. I spend a lot of time just scrolling upwards after jumping to some alert at the bottom of the page, and I suppose I'm not the only one.

P.S. notifications still not working

 

I just press the "home" key.

--Eric

 

I am ashamed to admit I didn't know that worked: nice!

 

No, everything else you said related to the merits of avatars as a concept. That is not in dispute. What I'm questioning is their usefulness in this specific implementation -- thread view.

This entire paragraph is you explaining that avatars help you " identify and discriminate threads that you care about", which when stated simply, means you determine what threads to read by identifying visually if the message is from a specific person whose avatars you recognize, which is exactly the same as following a person or searching for their messages because you find what they say important or interesting. Exactly what I addressed in my response.

There is no useful information an avatar icon conveys except for who the poster is. If you care about that in the thread view, great. I don't find that very useful except if I'm actively in a conversation in a thread and I need to find the same thread again in the list after it's changed position. In that case, sometimes the avatar can clue me in visually, provided there aren't a lot of other posts around at the same time by the same poster. But 99% of the time I just go to my content list to find the thread or get an alert because its quicker and more direct than searching a thread list.

If the threads view feels "impersonal and insignificant" because of the lack of a graphic icon, that's really a matter of aesthetics rather than a functional issue.

I don't know about the majority of people, but I would imagine that most don't browse thread views looking for posts by specific people. Of course, I cannot back this up with data, but nor can anyone the opposing view.

I would much prefer an icon that somehow related to the topic sub category than an avatar in the thread view. That would convey much more useful information about the content of the post at a glance and not just the person behind it.

 

@guavaman
the only thing i don't agree on the first paragraph is the fact that you reduce the "identifying and discriminating" process into just one possible combination, like you said, i can identify a person from an avatar i recognize but i can also identify a person from a avatar i don't recognize (for example, a user asking similar questions in multiple threads, aka, dups), and you state as a fact that recognizing the person behind means "I want to follow that guy", it could also mean, "I don't want to see what that guy as to say right now or even at all"

I'll give you an example, recognizing Aras at a glance in the shaderlab means to me that thread is important even if I don't fully understand the content of it, so I will, most certainly open it, a trivial title asked by someone with no avatar has less weight to that same title asked by Farfarer, so, most probably, I will judge the first one a bit more but not the second. This is all done at a glance mind you, it's not like I'm spending a whole hour deciding what to open like my life depended on it. The icons from the avatars also help you mapping the state of the current forum you are in, much like the bold from the new messages or the stickies.

If the forum feels impersonal and insignificant to me, means that i acknowledge how it can feel different to other people. BUT! any forum that feels impersonal and insignificant is failing in one of the primary functions/purposes of what a forum is/why it exists, which is... building a community. We aren't simply data. Imagine a forum without avatar and without usernames, or in other words, you couldn't recognize who was talking to who. You wouldn't tell, for example, that this message was directed to you. People do want to interact with each other and people are selective, this isn't inherently a bad thing, it's just how people behave socially.

I completely agree with you, an icon signifying the content of the thread would be awesome, but i don't think it could ever work, considering the vast type of things people can ask, share or simply talk about, people wouldn't know how to mark their own thread and i also doubt you could create that many symbols easily recognizable. And while there's a bit of overlap with the avatar system, one does not exclude the other unless it gets too cluttered.

To be honest I also don't think they should be changing again this soon, and i could had simply created the script like i did and never bother with this thread again because, at least for now, I have what i wanted. But I'm actually more worried about were is this going. I watched the Unite keynote and it was said Unity wants to be more open with their decisions and what not, and in fact i actually feel like they are doing just that in the places i lurk in this forums. I believe a thread like this is trying to improve everyone experience with the forum, which is a good thing. But they also need a vision of what they want and fulfill that within the community expectations. When trying to be rational about removal of the avatar i couldn't find that vision.

 

That's cool, we could all be numbers. Dibs on #6!

--Eric

 

Well, I see your point about it potentially being used for explicit excluding as well. It's a bit, so it has two uses. Except you can't filter out someone's post you don't want to see without also recognizing their avatar, unless you are just excluding all unknown avatars, in which case we're back to "identifying people you recognize" so you can read their posts.

We use icons in our daily lives to signify things, especially on computers. Check out http://fontawesome.io/icons/
They also have entire written languages made up of what originated as pictographic representations -- Chinese for example, which has many thousands of characters. Of course, it would be completely impractical to go THAT complicated. I'd say have 10-20 or icons for various types of topics in each category. I've seen some forums do this for categorizing posts by topic already. It would probably be a challenge to come up with a useful set of categories for each forum section, but I wouldn't say it would be impossible. And of course, the icon would be optional if none fit -- just something to help visually clue you in on certain topics.

 

7 of 9? Okay, no... she kinda ruined that show.

 

I strongly disagree

7 of 9, had the best mammary glands on TV And her acting wasn't that bad either

 

Update about the notifications bug. While I still don't receive any mail notifications, I also just realized that sometimes some alert is missing (I had a feeling this was happening since a while, but wasn't 100% sure - now I am).

 

Re: notification problem

It would be really nice to get an update on the status of this. Is anyone looking into it still?

 

It's not ideal, but at least it stops you missing things in threads you're watching.

There should also be a site achievement for quoting yourself...

 

True dat! I remember you mentioned the Watched Threads approach but I forgot about it. Still, it's so much more impractical than alerts :/ Hope they get fixed (along mail notifications).

I agree! And since you were the first one I think that achievement should be called "The Nomad King Himself"!

 

Unwatching a thread and then hitting watch and ticking enable e-mail notifications doesn't work then?

 

Nono, it doesn't. Tried that many times.

 

Have you checked your spam folder?

 

Yes I am 100% sure that mail notifications are 100% not working (except for news directly sent from Unity).

 

OK cool, we have found some weirdness (finally) so we're checking it out.

 

The e-mail notification issue should be fixed now.

 

Wohooo!!! I got my very first e-mail notification!!! Thanks By the way, now that I finally see it, I have to say it's a very nice mail format: compliments for the job put there.

 

I just got my first email notification, but I don't appear to have it turned on anywhere. How do I turn it off?

 

Lol Go to your Preferences (from the dropdown that appears when you hover over your name at the top-right of a thread) and uncheck "and receive email notifications of replies". Though I don't know if that will disable mails for everything or only for newly subscribed topics.

 

Thanks, but that was turned off years ago. That is why I was surprised to get an email.

 

Wow, ditto on all of @Izitmee reply (and sorry for spam "me too" but really wanted to add my thanks for resolving!).

 

@Aurore Wow I had to do a double take when I saw my first notification show up today. Thanks so much for fixing this!

 

You only change the default in preferences. The setting is on a per thread basis.

EDIT: To clarify you must unwatch and then watch the thread again.

 

Thanks. But why isn't the setting in each thread the same as the default? Isn't that what default means?

I have 33 pages of watched threads. They did nothing, but now do. It means I am starting to get spammed with emails, which is why I turned it off years ago. I have made a start on deleting all those watched threads, but clicking the tiny button on each thread, then selecting the action for the page, then clicking delete is taking time I don't have at the moment.