Small tip getting around marking a lot of alerts read

[Onimua]

If you're like me* you might have yourself set to watch every thread you post in. While this works fine when you're online, getting a small number of Alerts at a time, overnight can result in you waking up to more than 10; jus today I woke up with 33 to go through!

Clicking Alerts marks them all read, and therefore a little useless. A small way around this however, in case others haven't figured it out, is to NOT click Alerts, but instead open the Your Account drop-down menu and click "Your notifications." You'll see all your alerts with starts next to them that represent new ones, and clicking each link (make sure you open it in a new window; I believe simply going to this page also marks all alerts as read) will allow you to go through your notifications and not miss any.

It's not a perfect system, and personally I think Alerts should be tied with you actually viewing the content otherwise it's a temporary list that disappears the moment you look at it (This letter will self destruct in 5 seconds).

Some may have already figured this out, but for those who didn't I thought this bit of advice might help if you're bogged down by a lot of alerts when logging in the first time of the day.

* Oh gawd I hope not... if you are, I'm so sorry. :p

 

[Peggy]

I don't mark any threads to watch unless I've asked a question that I'm waiting for an answer to.

Good advice tho.

 

[Onimua]

True. In my case it's that I like to keep track of discussions I've participated in so I can follow up with more comments later or just read what's been said last.

I've also been thinking, especially if this system stays as-is when it's released, that this advice would be good to have when managing our own sites since there's definitely more of a chance you want to follow what's going on. Alerts is great but it falls short in actually helping you keep track of things that require your attention.

 

[chousho]

So until the Alerts menu doesn't mark all as ready, this is a work around?

*sniffs air* Sounds like a plan!

 

[MordyT]

Yes, my vote to not mark all as read until you view the thread. I do like the OP, and I hate that...

 

[Onimua]

The developers implements a gadget to keep the alerts as new for 10 minutes after you've seen them (small yellow asterisk-like image). This helps with the above so it's a little unnecessary now.

Though I do wonder if it's possible to remove the gadget when you've read the thread as I still have to keep in mind what I viewed last to make sure I don't end up viewing the same thread twice.

 

[Mike]

It's actually changed to show you the alerts you have marked as read recently (last 10 minutes), so they survive across page views. I think requiring an action to potentially get rid of an alert would get really tedious (plus some alerts don't have pages that they're associated with).

 

[Erik]

Loving the yellow star, nice work.

Onimua, why don't you just use "Your Watched Threads"? Much easier than trying to deal with the alerts. I don't even get alerts for watched threads (bug), so I have to use Your Watched Threads anyway. But IMO it works much better than alerts, because they don't disappear until you've read the thread.

 

[Onimua]

It's actually changed to show you the alerts you have marked as read recently (last 10 minutes), so they survive across page views. I think requiring an action to potentially get rid of an alert would get really tedious (plus some alerts don't have pages that they're associated with).

I can live with how it works now since it's far better than before and the worry about missing some alerts isn't there. Just a new smaller problem of mentally keeping track of which I read and which I haven't (particularly when I get 2-3 new alerts while still working through the usual 20+ I get coming to the site for the first time in the day).

But thanks for making Alerts a little easier to deal with.

Loving the yellow star, nice work.

Onimua, why don't you just use "Your Watched Threads"? Much easier than trying to deal with the alerts. I don't even get alerts for watched threads (bug), so I have to use Your Watched Threads anyway. But IMO it works much better than alerts, because they don't disappear until you've read the thread.

Oddly enough, I didn't think about that. I've just gotten used to using Alerts to hop from page to page whenever I visit a thread instead of going to a thread, back to Watched Threads, and then to thread, etc.

 

[Paul B]

Do Alerts also advise you of replies to watched posts then?

Like Eriksrocks I'm using "Your Watched Threads" due to the email bug.

 

[Onimua]

Do Alerts also advise you of replies to watched posts then?

Like Eriksrocks I'm using "Your Watched Threads" due to the email bug.

Yep, they do. You mean threads, not posts, right? I don't think you can watch individual posts.

 

[Paul B]

Yes I meant threads.

I had no idea the alerts system did that as I've got the dreaded email bug