A discussion on how members use the various features related to threads, feeds & alerts

[Paul B]

I know it's been discussed on a few other threads but that's usually as part of a different discussion.

I'd like to know how people browse the site using the alerts, watched thread and new threads, etc.
It might give the dev's some additional insight as to what is more/less important from a user's persepctive.

Personally I have 3 main views that I use:

• Watched Threads
• Your News Feed
• What's New?

I don't use the Alerts system in the way that is probably intended as I can find out most of the stuff that's important to me using the above 3 pages.

I'm sure there is a way to make use of the Alerts but so far I haven't really seen the need to use them.
All I do is occasionally mouse over the menu to clear them.
If/when it is possible to choose/filter then I will probably just set it to likes which have been given to me.

What about everyone else?
How do you use the various views/features to browse the site?

 

[Floris]

When I come back to the site, I go to alerts, to see what content is relative to me.
Then I go through news-feed in a second browser, to keep track of the content currently relative to me and my friends.
And in the mean time I browse What's new to see all content available on the site. Without the follow/likes/quotes listings. just pure threads.

I use what's new the most, frequently update the news feed, and use alert only every so often, to see if there are new likes or follows, etc.

 

[JulianD]

The first thing I click when I return to the site is the Alerts. However I don't get many alerts so I decide to go to the Discussion forum and from time to time I check my news feed because I'm following Kier and Mike and that way I can find out if I missed anything important by the devs.

 

[Floris]

Pfff, you should follow me too

 

[gordy]

Everyone's News Feed is awesome, then I have a python script that checks for new posts and emails me on the Announcements forum ~

 

[Floris]

Everyone's News Feed is awesome, then I have a python script that checks for new posts and emails me on the Announcements forum ~

Oh, talk to you on irc about that one .. in 3..2..1..

 

[Alluidh]

I'll check my conversations and then my alerts when I come back to the site. After that I take a deeper look into the forum

 

[Brandon_R]

I basically start off by posting in a thread and waiting for my alerts to turn red.

 

[Biker]

I nail "What's New", scroll through and read the threads that I may have an interest in, then mark all as read. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Forsaken]

I mostly only use 'What's New', and alerts; I usually don't watch my threads (Or I remove them after a week), and I don't really follow people so feeds was rather pointless to me.

 

[Paul B]

OK, now I can see the benefit of the Alerts system.

Being able to filter out replies to threads has suddenly made it a much more useful system to me.

 

[Dean]

OK, now I can see the benefit of the Alerts system.

Being able to filter out replies to threads has suddenly made it a much more useful system to me.

Absolutely!

It is my hope that when other content types are added, such as blogs/articles those could be included in a sensible way through the Alerts as well. That would solve the problem of integrating those with how people normally use a forum (Watched threads/Whats New).