How do bookmarks and Notification levels work on this forum?

Bookmarks

Bookmarks are shortcuts that you use to save posts, topics or private messages, so that they’re easy to find again later. To create a new Bookmark, select the below any post or message and use the symbol .

Optionally, you can choose to set a timer on that bookmark, to receive a notification about it later. This is handy if you’d like to be reminded of a topic on a certain date/time.

image

A bookmark with an active reminder attached to it will show a little clock.

You can easily reach your bookmarks using the button on the top of the forum.

Note that if you’re inside a section of the forum, the bookmarks shown will be the ones pertaining to that section — for instance, if you’re inside the Meetups part of the forum, you’ll only see the bookmarks you’ve made in that category. Likewise, your bookmarked private messages won’t be shown in this page.

To be taken to the page where you can see all your bookmarks (including bookmarked messages) and manage them, click twice on the bookmark symbol, on your personal menu.

This will bring you to the page on your profile where all your bookmarks are listed, and you can easily remove or set new timers for them here.

Notification levels

By default, you won’t receive notifications about posts on the forum unless someone interacts with you directly (eg. by sending you a message or mentioning your @username).

But sometimes, a particular discussion might be super interesting or you really want to keep an eye on things within a specific category. In that case, notifications are here to help! Here’s what they look like:

To change your notification levels on any topic, post, message or even category, search for the little bell in the page and choose the option that fits your preferences. image

Watching

This setting is the old-forum equivalent of Subscribing to a topic.

Watching is the highest level of notifications: you’ll receive a notification for every new post on this topic or category, and a count of new replies will be shown next to the topic (as well as on the Unread page). You can see a list of the topics you’re currently Watching on the hamburger menu above.

By default, you’ll also receive an email about these new posts, if you were away when they happened. This setting is configurable in your Email Preferences.

Tracking

Tracking is the old-forum equivalent of adding a topic to your Favorites.

This level of notifications are one level below Watching: you will still see a count of new replies next to the topic (and they’ll appear on the Unread page), but you won’t receive a notification for them unless someone mentions you or replies to you directly. As with the Watching, you’ll find a link to the topics you’re currently Tracking on the menu above.

Muted

If you’re not interested in a topic or category at all, you can choose to mute them. These topics will disappear from your Latest page, and if you mute a whole category, you will not see a link to it in the frontpage — it will effectively disappear from your view. This can be useful for muting languages that you don’t speak, or categories that are too noisy.

Note that when you mute a category, you will still be notified if someone @mentions you in topics within that cateogry. However, if you mute a topic, you won’t receive any notifications about it, not even if someone @mentions you.


Still got questions about bookmarks or notifications? Please do ask them below. I’m watching this topic :wink: and will try to keep it as updated as possible.

12 Likes

but beware: you won’t receive ANY notifications for this topic, not even when someone uses @mention!

1 Like

I like the bookmark button, it’s very easy to get to bookmarks now. Thank you for adding that.

Is it possible to search within bookmarks? I don’t have a long list of bookmarks at the moment but I imagine it’s growing to grow as the forum grows and I’d like to be able to search within my bookmarks.

On the advanced search options, there’s a way to search only on topics you bookmarked:

It’s the equivalent of including in:bookmarks on the search terms.

4 Likes

Thank you for pointing that out, I hadn’t noticed that :slight_smile:

I believe you still get notified of mentions, even if you’ve muted the category… :thinking: Let’s test this.

Interesting! Yes, I received it (in this case I muted the category). But I know reisegern mentioned me in a topic I muted and I haven’t received a notification (it was in the sandbox)

1 Like

Ah, I see — I think there is a difference between muting categories and muting topics. If you mute a topic, it assumes you want nothing to do with that conversation and in that case, even mentions won’t work. But if you’re muting a category in general, the mentions will still come through.

Sounds a little random, but I can sort of understand the reasoning for it. I would still like to be notified if someone mentions me from a category that I’m not particularly interested in (and have thus muted to remove it from the Latest, etc), but if I feel strongly enough to mute a specific topic, it’s more akin to “I want to ban this conversation from my view — don’t even tell me if someone mentions me in it.”

In any case, I’ll try to make that clearer in the text!

2 Likes

Each time I post in a topic in this forum I’m set to “watching” this topic and my mailbox is spammed with lots of later replies. Not a single one of these so far did reply to me or mention me. So how can I get rid of these unnecessary mail at once, if possible. I see that I would remind myself to set this topic into another level would work but I usually don’t think about this. I find it a bit unconvenient, but, of course let’s me stick around longer as this software wants me (and others). Thank you in advance if there is some help.

I think you need to change in your Preferences -> Notifications this:
image
Maybe you have it in Watching, instead of normal or tracking

hope it helps :slight_smile:

OK, I found it in preferences and notifications. I’m done with this, hopefully. Thank you all.

2 Likes

yes, this is for all topics. look for your preferences:
image
then notifications:
image
and here (the 3rd “question”):

hope it helps :smiley:

ps: don’t forget to save changes :wink:

1 Like

In your settings, you can change how long you can look at a topic before it changes to watching.

Under Preferences > Notifications you’ll find the setting below. The default time is quite short, but I found 2 minutes is a good time to skim and decide if you are interested or not.

I’ve been trying to set a bookmark for a post, rather than a topic, but can’t get it to work. Every time it defaults to showing me the last unread post on the topic, rather than the one I set the bookmark on.

Can anyone suggest what I am doing wrong?

Mmmm… :thinking: Which post are you trying to bookmark? And are you setting a date for a reminder, or no reminder?

My post in a bingo, no reminder.

I just tried again. I went to the post, click the three dots, then the bookmark and save. The icon changes colour to show it has worked.

But then if I go to the bookmarks link, and follow that, it goes to the end of the topic.

And it’s only this particular bookmark that is misbehaving? What if you try to bookmark someone else’s post on that topic?

(I’ve just tried with yours and it works fine… not sure what might be causing this)

I tried on a couple of mine. And just then I tried on someone else’s and it also went to the bottom of the thread.

Here’s my bookmark on an early post in this topic:

https ://community.postcrossing.com/t/how-do-bookmarks-and-notification-levels-work-on-this-forum/5527/19

I went to the bookmark list, right-clicked and copied the address, and it is as above (going to your post).

And now my bookmark no longer shows on the post, although it does show at the bottom of the topic.


@helent Are you seeing this in the …/activity/bookmarks page or the https://community.postcrossing.com/bookmarks page? I noticed that bookmarked posts shows up in the …/activity/bookmarks page and it does take you to the post. The other bookmarks page takes you to the bottom of the topic regardless of whether you’ve bookmarked the topic or a post.

1 Like

It worked from the activity page, thank you! But that is several extra steps to get to from the home page.