Threads show when you've contributed to them

Not so very long ago, I suggested that threads show when the user has contributed to them. Turning this feature on killed the board, so it was turned off. I note that this feature is back on. Perhaps the BBS might be rather faster if it were turned off?

Where, please? I’m not seeing anything different for threads I’ve posted in, using either the vBulletin default “skin” or the “Straight Dope” one with the SD banner. I guess either I’m just not looking in the right place or they turned it off already.

I’m pretty sure I know what to look for, and if so, they’ve turned it off already.

Definitely not turned off - you get a little picture of a rectangle with an asterisk inside on the far right of the thread title field.

Yeah, I definitely don’t have that. The only threads that have anything on the far right of the title are stickies, which have a pushpin.

I don’t think that’s what you’re seeing over there, qts. If this feature was turned on, the envelope on the left side of the thread should have a small black dot in it and display the message, “This Thread Contains a Message Written By You,” when you hover your mouse over it. It looks like the icon on this page: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/sdmb_images/statusicon/thread_dot.gif This is definitely not the case for threads to which I’ve written replies, so I think this feature is indeed disabled.

What I believe you are seeing is the icon denoting threads to which you have a subscription. Is this what it looks like: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/sdmb_images/misc/subscribed.gif If so, that’s the subscription icon. If you hover your mouse over it, you should see a message saying, “You are subscribed to this thread.”

Spot on that man!

Ok, but I don’t see the “suscribe to this thread” option anymore! I’ve posted in several threads since the upgrade and my email is missing the SDMB notifications of replies. What’s going on there?

Look under the “Thread Tools” drop-down menu near the top of the thread for the manual subscription function.

However, mere posting in a thread should subscribe you. I think there may have been a bug in the old version, but the new one seems to be reliable for me.

Not necessarily. In your user control panel, there’s an option to subscribe, by default, to threads to which you have replied. If this option is turned off, you may subscribe manually. And that may be done either when you reply, or you can do it at any time from the “Thread Tools” pulldown at the top of each thread page.