# Anyone ever figure out a way to track if a user has posted? **URL:** \ **Category:** Site Feedback\ **Created:** [February 12, 2026, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625 "2026-02-12T18:03:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/1 "2026-02-12T18:03:15Z")
We can track Threads, Forums and Tags, but not users from our Preferences. We can Ignore or Mute them of course. Not what I’m looking for, especially as a Mod. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/2 "2026-02-12T19:09:57Z")
This is old, but suggests it’s not an available feature and never will be: > **[Tracking a specific user(s), like a specific topic?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tracking-a-specific-user-s-like-a-specific-topic/100032)** > > Hi all, I’ve had a look, and I don’t see a specific option, but I wondered, is it possible to track a specific user? There is an option to do the opposite, e.g. to mute a specific user; …but what if I wanted to be made aware of all posts by a... But … There is a feature that provides such data as an RSS feed. The problem would be developing an app that reads it. Here’s my activity as an RSS feed and it’s obvious how to edit the url to track any other particular user. **[boards.straightdope.com/u/lslguy/activity.rss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lslguy/activity.rss)**. Somebody has already built a plug-in to do what you ask, but that’s only available for Discourse instances hosted by the customer, not those hosted by Discourse itself, like SDMB is. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/3 "2026-02-12T19:28:55Z")
There’s an [official plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-follow/110579) that allows following users, but even if plugins were allowed here, I don’t think it would work for your needs. Users can opt in/out of being followed, and by default they get a notification when someone follows them. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/4 "2026-02-12T19:31:32Z")
Here’s a partial work-around that works semi-OK. I just added that activity.rss url for myself as an RSS feed within my Microsoft Outlook desktop client. And yep, suddenly there are my 50 most recent posts showing up in my Outlook. Outlook doesn’t have a feature to trigger a beep or whatever when a new RSS item is added. But Outlook’s RSS feeds have the same newly unread items counter as emails do. So once you set up an RSS feed for a person of interest and mark everything existing as unread, you’ll have an Outlook unread messages indicator whenever that person posts. And you can read their content from the comfort of Outlook without needing to chase into SDMB to see the content. It’s not clear what Outlook’s polling interval is, so the post wont appear in your Outlook immediately after the POI posts it; there’ll be some delay. But it ought to show up within a few minutes, maybe an hour tops. Which is probably good enough for loosely trailing suspicious users. You can also trigger a manual [Send/Receive All Folders] action in Outlook which will retrieve up to the moment data from SDMB. And of course as soon as you’re done watching any particular user, you can just delete the feed from your Outlook to avoid cluttering it up. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/5 "2026-02-12T21:41:03Z")
Later testing shows that Outlook polls Discourse at least hourly. Also that if the poster has edited their post, the RSS feed will contain all the versions as separate entries. But with them sorted backwards so the final version appears as the lowest = oldest of the set. Hmm. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/6 "2026-02-12T21:53:33Z")
Just a note, RSS feeds are no longer supported in new Outlook. You have to use Classic Outlook for them. Of course, there are several other RSS readers out there if you want to take this approach. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/7 "2026-02-12T22:09:08Z")
I did not know that. Thank you. Yet another reason for me not to switch. Lack of support for PST files are the showstopper for me. They keep claiming it’s coming to new Outlook in the near future. But I’m starting to lose what small faith I had. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/8 "2026-02-12T22:51:33Z")
Thanks for that, but I don’t/won’t use Outlook at this point. Cool work around though. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/9 "2026-02-12T23:11:22Z")
There are RSS plugins for browsers, although I don’t know what they look like or how they behave. It may not be an optimum solution, but it seems that RSS may be the only way to get an event-driven interface for monitoring posting behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2026, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/10 "2026-02-13T06:36:01Z")
There are services like [https://feedmail.org/](https://feedmail.org/) that will monitor RSS feeds every few minutes (as often as allowed by the feed) and email you on changes. Would that help? If you’d prefer to get notified some other way (SMS, Slack, etc.) you can probably hook it up with Zapier/Ifttt/Make/NodeRed or similar services too. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2026, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/11 "2026-02-13T06:50:41Z")
And if your viewer or monitoring tool prefers it, you can also get the feed as .JSON instead, eg [https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lslguy/activity.json](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lslguy/activity.json) JSON may be slightly more compatible these days (RSS is getting more rare) ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2026, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/12 "2026-02-13T09:16:47Z")
RSS seemed like a big thing maybe 20 years ago. I really liked it back then. I haven’t even thought of it in years. ---
**Author:** ![colinfred](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colinfred/32/21338_2.png) [@colinfred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colinfred)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2026, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/13 "2026-02-13T11:07:38Z")
I’m sure I’m missing something but can’t you just search for @username and check the time of the latest post? ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2026, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/14 "2026-02-13T12:17:44Z")
**Anyone ever figure out a way to track if a user has posted?** Don’t you know? Aren’t you mod? > [@colinfred](#): > > I’m sure I’m missing something but can’t you just search for @username and check the time of the latest post? Even simpler than that, just go to their profile and then go to **[activity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/what_exit/activity)**. You can bookmark it. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2026, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-ever-figure-out-a-way-to-track-if-a-user-has-posted/1027625/15 "2026-02-13T12:45:50Z")
Not what I was looking for, of course that can be done. I’m looking for notification, not just checking.