This has been a gripe of mine with many software applications I have used over the past 40+ years. It’s fine to have a million billion little bells and whistles and features and gimmicks, that the “power users” can learn at their leisure if they want. But all the basics need to be there, and be simple, and hopefully be fairly obvious or at least standard.
AND: The fancy schmancy stuff needs to not be intrusive. That is, you shouldn’t have to learn all the elaborate features just to be able NOT to use them. The elaborate details you don’t know shouldn’t get in your way.
I totally understand where you are coming from, but notifications were not designed to be cleared. We accumulate them over time like a twitter stream. The closest to “wipe everything off” would be “mark read”. You can then find all the unread notifications on your profile page if you end up with a big backlog.
We have some protections in the software that ensure your list will not pass a certain threshold (10,000) but really, the odds of you ever wanting to look at notification number 9977 in a year are quite low.
I recommend that instead of using notifications as your TODO list try to lean on bookmarks. They have reminders and you can curate the list.
I 100% agree with both of you. I have a smartphone only because the carrier gave it to me free, because my old flip phone would soon be incompatible with their new network. I use virtually none of the “smart” features on it, and don’t even have a data plan. Its major features as far as I’m concerned are a hole that I can talk into, and a hole that I can hold up to my ear to hear what someone on the other end is saying – to wit, the fact that it’s a telephone. The fact that it works everywhere without having to be plugged in to the wall is a major benefit. The rest of it I have no use for. I do have it connect to my home wireless, though, and it’s nice to have it ding when I get an email and am not at my computer, but that’s about it. Otherwise “phone” to me means “telephone”.
I’m not using them as my todo list. I have no use whatsoever for old notifications. They’re in the way. That’s why, yet again, what I want to do is to get rid of them; preferably after I’ve seen them, but I’d rather not see them at all then have this long list of them every time I click on my icon profile.
I wouldn’t mind being notified. I have no use whatsoever for a long list of every notification I’ve ever gotten; and as much of that list as Discourse can fit on the screen pops up any time I click on that icon.
But I also think I should have the choice whether to be notified.
The reason we keep the stuff there is cause if we aggressively deleted here then you would only get one shot at dealing with information.
Someone would reply, one would click to read the reply, get distracted and do dishes and then not know how to get back to the reply.
We keep stuff around just so you have a big of context regarding stuff that happened recently.
That said, I am not strictly against a “mode” in Discourse where read notifications are automatically deleted. Feel free to suggest it on https://meta.discourse.org we can see what others think. A big selling point of a mode like this is that ultimately there is less data stored for you.
I’m not asking for all notifications to be automatically disabled for everybody.
I’m asking to have the choice to go into my preferences and delete those notifications which I choose to delete. An additional option to automatically have them deleted after I’ve read them would be nice, as would an option to turn them off entirely, though I doubt I’d use the last one as long as I could clear out the old ones.
If other people like them the way they are, then other people should be able to have them the way they are.
If Discourse somehow thinks it’s an essential part of the record, not only what the posts were, but that I was notified of their existence, I could settle for being able to archive them somewhere they wouldn’t show up unless actively hunted for; though I really don’t see how the fact of the notification is something worth keeping forever.
ETA: I wouldn’t get only one shot, anyway, because if the thread discussion matters to me I can always come back to the thread.
ETA One thing you can do @thorny_locust is filter them by UNREAD rather than by ALL. That way the list of ones you’ve dismissed or read is no longer visible and not cluttering up the field.
ETA2 Nevermind. That does work as well as I hoped. So no good resolution after all.
You’re right. That did make them all disappear from the profile page about notifications; which is easy to ignore. It does not make them disappear from the drop down menu that appears from the profile icon, which is not easy to ignore.
Yes, doesn’t. I was briefly hopeful, but I totally agree with you. It’s cluttered and on a board that all about the functionality why is this the preset hill to die on?
ETA sorry I didn’t see that this point had already been made. We don’t seem to be making any headway about getting notifications which have been read deleted tho, do we?
And I just noticed all the reply notifications in the avatar list show “new reply” when hovered over. Even the ones from several days ago. And all of which have been read. I have no words. I have been kind of getting used to this new system and haven’t been bitching (much) but this is just ridiculous.
See above. That’ll make them invisible in preferences. Nothing, apparently, will make them invisible in the drop down; Discourse has decided that we must see them, old ones as well, like it or not.
I’ve been trying to give it plenty of chances, but now I have to say yes, I am considering it. It was bad enough when I found out I can no longer turn of avatars. When they got enabled on the old board it was with the understanding that those who hated them could turn them off. But now they’ve enabled images in posts, and there seems to be no way to turn that clutter off.
The sad thing is there are many, many forums out there that have nice big avatars and allow pictures in posts. For over 20 years the Dope has been the only board I frequent because it’s one of the very few that didn’t allow that kind of noise. And now it looks like that simplicity is being taken away. And as Eonwe alluded in the thread on images in Site Feedback, it’s made the board no longer SFW.
I can’t speak for @Doug_K but I think what he is referring to is this: if you are looking at SDMB while at work and the page shows images, someone catching a glimpse of your screen would know you are not working. I can relate to that. When I was working, I pretty much only looked at SDMB because at least if anyone saw just text, it wouldn’t be a clear giveaway that I was wasting time.