h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm sure this has been suggested and discussed before, but I've always wondered why Hootoo doesn't have what seems to me to be the basic notification functionality of other forums; i.e. emailing to advise of new posts?

Wouldn't this increase eyeball time on the site? Often when I go to H2G2 I see replies to posts from weeks ago that I would've responded to at the time if notified.

AT least I don't think this functionality currently exists; correct me if I'm wrong!

I think it's an excellent idea.

Another forum I am on doesn't have it either. It is a much newer site and doesn't have quite a few of the nifty features we have here. The founders and early coders of h2g2 were very forward-thinking.

How would the e-mail notifications work?

You get one if someone posts to a thread that you have started?

You get one if someone posts to a thread that you have contributed to?

You get one if someone posts on threads that you have marked out for the purpose?

We'd never all agree how it should work, even if there were still people around who could implement it.

I remember when h2g2 was down and we all posted in a Yahoo group. Someone found it and went to join in and in those days there were hundreds of e-mails coming in daily - she crashed the company server because she logged in at work!

Well most forums I'm a member of have an email options page, with tickboxes for most of the options you outlined below, including options for 'instant emails or daily/weekly digests of new posts to cut down on the number of emails. I would assume this is 'off-the-shelf' coding as so many forums seem to have the same options pages.

Whether any such off-the-shelf option would play nice with H2G2/guide ML is another matter all together I suppose. I understand that this site runs on what is now some pretty non-standard programming language and protocols.

Sad to say it but I don't think anyone's email inbox is going to be overwhelmed with new H2G2 content at the moment, even if all notification tickboxes were ticked

Even the most basic email notification system would increase site engagement. If people were notified of responses to their posts or to new articles, most would go to the site straight away instead of making a vague mental note (as I do) to check if anything has happened on hootoo every few weeks. Then there would be a snowball effect of more people posting on the site, generating more emails, leading to more people spending time on the site, etc. I don't think this is supposition or debatable, it seems common sense to me that email notifications increase engagement.

But of course I know that resources here are very minimal and the site basically runs on goodwill and love so this may all just be wishful thinking; that any new features will be developed

I'm content with the "My Conversations" pop-up thingy in Brunel. I keep about 3/4 of it visible behind my main browser window so I can see when a new comment in any of my conversations is posted.

That sounds like a workable solution.