E-mail notification from subscribed threads

[rbenn]

I love the feature to get instant e-mail notification from subscribed threads. I use this feature to get instant notification delivered to my cell phone when some makes a post to the major incedent thread for my area.

I'd like to suggest a way to improve this feature. Since I have the e-mail alerts forwarded to my phone, the only thing I get is all of the generic header info. Since cell phone messages are limited in size, I don't receive enough text to see what the content of the message is, only the header info. With this limitation, I only know that an incident has occurred, I can't tell what it is until I can actually log into the forums.

It would be great to have a feature to receive 'terse' messages for forum notifications, where the terse messages would only include a brief subject line and the actual text of the new forum message. Basically, everything between the 2 lines of asterisks is the valuable stuff in the message.

Another alternative would be to re-format the layout of all the messages so that the forum message content comes first, then put all of the 'overhead' stuff after. From a programming point of view, this would likely be the simpler option.

Thanks for the great site, keep up the good work.

Randy

 

[loumaag]

Randy,

Using the email notification for subscribed threads is for everyone, not just those getting messages on a cell phone. That said, it might also be pointed out that "Incident" threads are only tolerated here, not encouraged. In fact Lindsay has said in the past that he does not want this site used for this (as there are tons of incident sites on the web dedicated to just that) but has allowed some to exist so far. Pushing for changes to encourage this is a sure way to lose each "Major Incident" sticky in regional forums.