Followers notification X real followed 'content' notification

[Adriano Faria]

PLEASE, separate the Followers notification of the real followed 'content' notification.

On IPS4 there are no friends anymore. Which is bad. Now there are followers. My friends became my followers, ok. With that, I received hundred notifications on a day everytime someone blinks the eye around the board (new topic, new reply, bla bla bla). This is annoying!

So I was told to disable the "New content for things I follow" notification. Fine. If I do it, I won't be notified anymore of things I REALLY want to, like forums, topics, files, etc.

The solution here ? Do what I did: simply had to delete ALL my friends/followers (100+). Is that fair or reasonable to you ? That makes followers thing totally useless.

So PLEASE, add a custom notification to when a follower post something!

Thank you.

[Andy Millne]

On IPS4 there are no friends anymore. Which is bad. Now there are followers. My friends became my followers, ok. With that, I received hundred notifications on a day everytime someone blinks the eye around the board (new topic, new reply, bla bla bla). This is annoying!

​If it's annoying why can't you just unfollow them? I'm not being awkward I'm just genuinely curious what purpose you are following them for if you don't want updates.

[Adriano Faria]

I'm not following them by my own desire. They were my friends. IPS forced me to change, it's not something I wanted or asked.

Can I keep my friends or is this prohibited on IPS4 ? IPS should at least leave it well clear on upgrade... I can't tell you if this exists because I only installed new boards of IPS4; I never had the nerve to upgrade.

[teraßyte]

Apart from the forced conversion from 3.x, people also used to add "friends" to quickly find a specific account. Useful especially on big boards when several accounts have similar names. Another thing is that we might want to follow the content from those users but in the instance we want to temporarily stop those notifications we must stop also notifications for any other type of content with the current configuration.

The only other way to temporarily stop notifications from followed users without stopping notifications for other contents (topics, forums, files, etc) would be to unfollow every user and then follow them again at some later date. Not exactly user friendly.

 

Or you could include a notification option that lets us choose which kind of email notification we want for their content like for topics, this way we can choose instant or no email. Daily/weekly digest options would be skipped for obvious reasons.

[Andy Millne]

Just to clarify, it's not a forced conversion it is now an upgrade option. Thanks for providing some use cases tera

[Adriano Faria]

Just to clarify, it's not a forced conversion

​See:

IPS should at least leave it well clear on upgrade... I can't tell you if this exists because I only installed new boards of IPS4; I never had the nerve to upgrade.

​Never upgraded.

[Bluto]

There are multiple valid points, in this thread, why Follower and Content notifications should be separate.  I also think it would be a bad thing from a community standpoint to force members of a community to unfollow another member.  On the most basic level:  unfollow someone if you don't want to receive notifications - this sounds really simple - kind of kin to how the government thinks.  On an advanced social level:  unfollowing someone might be considered, what would equate to "unfriending on Facebook" or "unfollowing on Twitter".  The goal here shouldn't be to confuse the members who are using this software.  I see this as very confusing and I understand how it works.  A user of an IPS website is going to have a hard time understanding that they have to unfollow their "friend" on the forum because they don't want receive a ton of notices.  Following, to the member, is basically the only way they can communicate to the other member that they're "friends".  In a social community of humans - that's important.

Another point worth mentioning, which I feel is even more important and hasn't been mentioned in this thread:  increased Mandrill costs.  I can see my Mandrill bill going through the roof if everyone is getting a notice for every person they're following.  I already have a pretty good sized Mandrill bill.  My free emails for the month are used up in 1 day on Mandrill.  Am I going to have a $100 a month Mandrill bill because IPS doesn't want to separate Followers notifications and Content followed notifications?

[Andy Millne]

A user of an IPS website is going to have a hard time understanding that they have to unfollow their "friend" on the forum because they don't want receive a ton of notices.

If you feel your users will have difficulty with this and the concept of friends is sufficiently different to followers then you can opt to not convert these during the upgrade. Please understand I'm not dismissing the suggestions and I agree there are some valid points here. It is, however, important we understand why the existing solution is not suitable for some customers before deciding if it is sensible to start what amounts to quite a significant refactoring.

[Adriano Faria]

... then you can opt to not convert these during the upgrade.

​Doing this means that we will delete all friends (followers), right ?

[Andy Millne]

yes, I understand this may not be a solution for you Adriano but it is a solution for those who believe that followers are sufficiently different from friends.

[Adriano Faria]

yes, I understand this may not be a solution for you Adriano but it is a solution for those who believe that followers are sufficiently different from friends.

​No, not only me, Andy. There are 2 other users on this topic and I believe several others didn't notice this until they upgrade their boards.

Anyway, there's always a 4.0.1, etc.

[Bluto]

If you feel your users will have difficulty with this and the concept of friends is sufficiently different to followers then you can opt to not convert these during the upgrade. Please understand I'm not dismissing the suggestions and I agree there are some valid points here. It is, however, important we understand why the existing solution is not suitable for some customers before deciding if it is sensible to start what amounts to quite a significant refactoring.

Don't take this the wrong way, but what was the thought process that led to changing what was a successful system to the new system?  If you're asking me to change how my forum works, I should know what led to the decision?  How is removing friends, in the new system, going to improve the end user experience?

I won't convert these when I upgrade my forum - as this feature is written now.  Separate the email notices or allow a member to be "friends" with another member and "follow / unfollow" at the same time would be my best advice.  There needs to be some sort of "friendship ability" between members in this software.  It appears IPS is replacing it with followers - with a catch and a hit on my Mandrill bill.  Every major piece of social software out there has some sort of friendship aspect.

[Andy Millne]

The thought process was friends in 3.x didn't actually do anything beyond being a symbolic link. As tera pointed out in this thread it also allowed people to see at a glance people they had close links with which I agree is a valid use. My preference for this would be to separate out the notification options as has been suggested but that's my personal opinion and I can't say if that is what will happen. As I mentioned it's not a straightforward change at this point. Feedback topics like this are useful for us but we need to know why not just what to be able to implement the best solutions. It sounds like most of the points in this topic would be solved by separating out the notification types and the rest is just terminology (friends vs followers) which can be addressed via the language system.

[teraßyte]

Yep, separating the notifications setting would be the best and less time expensive solution I can see.

 

And possibly for upgrades this specific notification about followers content should be "disabled" by default to mimic what we have in 3.x. Otherwise people will suddenly start receiving tons of notifications after the upgrade without understanding why. But that's secondary, the most important thing is to separate the notifications.

[Izaya Orihara]

 

 

I quite like the way it is done in the current version. I agree with what is said above about how it is done in Version 4 and it is a bit annoying to me personally. Probably the biggest thing now that I have an issue with. I'd hate to have to unfollow someone just because I don't need constant notifications for EVERYTHING they post. Information overload.

[Bluto]

The thought process was friends in 3.x didn't actually do anything beyond being a symbolic link.

​No offense to the decision makers at IPS, but that's totally an decision an engineer would make.  No consideration for the social aspects that feature fulfills for the commmunity members.  From a engineering perspective it's perfectly logical to remove that feature.  Not so logical from a social community perspective.  Also, now that decision has yielded a secondary issue of receiving notices when following someone (if an admin would decide to convert friends to followers during the upgrade).

Friends should be brought back.  Yes, it will be a feature which really doesn't have a function besides showing two users that they're friends - but that very important to some communities.  A community can keep their friends during the upgrade and if they choose to follow a member after the upgrade, then they can follow all that member's content and receive the associated notices.

I hope IPS decides to bring back friends and also keep followers.  I believe both serve a purpose.

 

[bfarber]

For the record, the decision was, in fact, not an engineering decision and was one made jointly between all departments of the company (as were most non-engineering-specific decisions).  Every setting that was removed, every feature that was added and every feature that was changed, including this one, was discussed within the company after pulling in initial client feedback.

[opentype]

Friends should be brought back.

​Right, IPS, have a programming day with the motto “the clients were right and we give in” and bring back:

• friends (in addition to followers)
• best answer (in non-Q&A forums)
• custom media tags 

[Adriano Faria]

​Right, IPS, have a programming day with the motto “the clients were right and we give in” and bring back:

• friends (in addition to followers)
• best answer (in non-Q&A forums)
• custom media tags 

​That would be perfect. HAHAHAHA

[Bluto]

For the record, the decision was, in fact, not an engineering decision and was one made jointly between all departments of the company (as were most non-engineering-specific decisions).  Every setting that was removed, every feature that was added and every feature that was changed, including this one, was discussed within the company after pulling in initial client feedback.

​​You guys are going to do what you want to do with the software.  Personally, I think removing friends should be re-evaluated.

Wait until the customers, who don't use this forum, start upgrading and just clicking through converting those friends into followers and start writing support with questions and issues like:

"What happened to all my members friends?"

"Why do my members get an email every time someone posts?"

"Why did you guys get rid of friends?"

"How are two members supposed to show they're friends without following all their content?"

IMHO it's going to cost more time dealing with support tickets and questions from the customers than just adding the feature back.  I could be totally wrong, but if this thread is any gauge, be prepared.

[bfarber]

We changed the upgrader to prompt if you want to convert friends to followers, defaulting to off.

[Adriano Faria]

We changed the upgrader to prompt if you want to convert friends to followers, defaulting to off.

​Sorry, this is not a reasonable solution. Remove everybody that you had contact just because IPS doesn't want to separate notifications isn't a good move. Not good to the software itself and probably competitors will take advantage of it.

[teraßyte]

The upgrader change doesn't really solve the root issue. If we want to convert the friends we're still going to flood our users with tons of notifications about "friends content".

[AlexJ]

I am sorry to say this but I like Terabyte but I freaking hate all the notifications which i get when terabyte does something. terabyte could be my friend but if terabyte is hyper active on forums i ain't going to follow him lol

[teraßyte]

I am sorry to say this but I like Terabyte but I freaking hate all the notifications which i get when terabyte does something. terabyte could be my friend but if terabyte is hyper active on forums i ain't going to follow him lol

​