If you choose to get email notifications for the forums you follow, you have probably been bemused by an occasional problem: you get an email notification whose subject is clearly NOT the title to any thread in the forum you're following. Instead, it's a seeming random sentence. And you may then see multiple emails following that pattern. What's happening (and what I SO hope might be changed) is this: for an email notification about the mesage which STARTS a forum thread, the email we get DOES have a subject naming the title of that thread. That's great. then for any direct (top-level) REPLIES to that thread, those do also show the thread title in the email subject, which again is great but then when someone REPLIES to such a top-level REPLY, the email subject will then show the first sentence of that top-level REPLY! Not great. There are at least two problems with this approach, which almost makes the email notifications unusable for active forums: first, we have to open the email to understand what topic is being discussed. The first sentence (of a reply) may not give proper context at all. If the email subject showed the actual form THREAD title, we might even not bother to open the email, if it's a topic we know we are not interested in reading about via email (if at all) second, even if we DO open it (because we're being diligent), we STILL may not have the proper context of what thread this "reply to a reply" is even referring to, so we have follow the offered link to go back to the forum message, which further diminishes the very purpose of getting the email notifications. If we were shown the thread title as the subject, we may not need to go to the site to get that needed context I suppose the idea (of the subject stating the "reply" that's being replied to) may have made sense to some engineer of the forum software vendor, and perhaps it's even a configurable option in the forums software--but it's indeed very confusing (indeed, others have raised it here before, with no reply or resolution from Adobe, and indeed only one other reply. I have spelled the issue out a bit more here, if that may help some readers.) Can anyone from Adobe confirm if this is an acknowledged problem, and perhaps what the status is of addressing it? If this design decision is unchangable, here's a possible alternative: might it be possible for someone at Adobe to modify the software so that the BODY of the email includes at the top an additional indication of (and link to) the top-level thread that this "reply to a reply" is referring to? That would help.But really seeing the thread name in the subject (for all replies and replies to replies) would seem most appropriate (and similar to previous generations of Adobe forum software). Do others have thoughts? Do others actually "love" the current handling of such replies to replies?

Community Expert

Question

PLEASE correct email notifications to show the THREAD name, even for "replies to replies"

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
February 7, 2020
5 replies
1010 views

If you choose to get email notifications for the forums you follow, you have probably been bemused by an occasional problem: you get an email notification whose subject is clearly NOT the title to any thread in the forum you're following. Instead, it's a seeming random sentence. And you may then see multiple emails following that pattern.

What's happening (and what I SO hope might be changed) is this:

for an email notification about the mesage which STARTS a forum thread, the email we get DOES have a subject naming the title of that thread. That's great.
then for any direct (top-level) REPLIES to that thread, those do also show the thread title in the email subject, which again is great
but then when someone REPLIES to such a top-level REPLY, the email subject will then show the first sentence of that top-level REPLY! Not great.

There are at least two problems with this approach, which almost makes the email notifications unusable for active forums:

first, we have to open the email to understand what topic is being discussed. The first sentence (of a reply) may not give proper context at all. If the email subject showed the actual form THREAD title, we might even not bother to open the email, if it's a topic we know we are not interested in reading about via email (if at all)
second, even if we DO open it (because we're being diligent), we STILL may not have the proper context of what thread this "reply to a reply" is even referring to, so we have follow the offered link to go back to the forum message, which further diminishes the very purpose of getting the email notifications. If we were shown the thread title as the subject, we may not need to go to the site to get that needed context

I suppose the idea (of the subject stating the "reply" that's being replied to) may have made sense to some engineer of the forum software vendor, and perhaps it's even a configurable option in the forums software--but it's indeed very confusing (indeed, others have raised it here before, with no reply or resolution from Adobe, and indeed only one other reply. I have spelled the issue out a bit more here, if that may help some readers.)

Can anyone from Adobe confirm if this is an acknowledged problem, and perhaps what the status is of addressing it?

If this design decision is unchangable, here's a possible alternative: might it be possible for someone at Adobe to modify the software so that the BODY of the email includes at the top an additional indication of (and link to) the top-level thread that this "reply to a reply" is referring to? That would help.

But really seeing the thread name in the subject (for all replies and replies to replies) would seem most appropriate (and similar to previous generations of Adobe forum software).

Do others have thoughts? Do others actually "love" the current handling of such replies to replies?

Bug

This topic has been closed for replies.

Charlie Arehart

Author

Community Expert

I appreciare the responses from others supporting and encouraging resolution to this problem. But I can only lament that no one from Adobe (or involved otherwise in managing the forums) has responded, in any way at all. The problem is one that clearly many of us suffer daily. How can it be ok that it's simply ignored?

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

Come on guys like this thread, get it escalated!

I can't believe only 1 like - and that's from me

neil

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

Agree 100% with this request. First few words of someones post quoted as the "subject "is no help to anyone. Actually its ridiculous and means multiple un needed trips to the form from the notification emails, wasting time.

Forum developers, please m,ake it go away! its not a feature it’s a hurdle to participation

thanks

neil barstow, colourmanagement.net

[please do not use the reply button on a message in the thread, only use the one at the top of the page, to maintain chronological order]

A

Amebr

Community Expert

Agree 100% with your request. Random text as the subject is no help to anyone. Even in a social media platform, I can't imagine the first sentence of a random reply is useful to anyone.

And while we're at it, making sure "Correct Answer" emails actually get a subject line would be useful...

Ideally, I'd also like the users's name in the From field of the email like it used to. While I don't always remember the person's name, I find it a more useful decision aid than "Adobe Support Community Mailer" or whatever the From field currently is. (The email address behind the name was the forum email, not the user's email, however, because privacy is good.)

Just Shoot Me

Legend

This has been reported many times with Documentation to go along with it.

It is caused by the Nested Reply system. So yes they know about it.

Here is a link to a thread about feedback tracking post by Trica.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/adobe-community-professionals/your-community-feedback-tracker/td-p/10755005?page=1

You can downlaod and or view the PDF file that has the latest info on what is still broken and the Status on it.

Charlie Arehart

Author

Community Expert

Thanks, but while I see there is in that thread indeed a lot of complaint about nested replies (in the ui), I'd reassert that my point is solely about how they're presented in email.

And if you may say that the PDF there already captures the point, I'd fear it does not, at least not accurately. It has a line saying, "Email Notifications are missing key details in the sender name, subject line, and body.". That alone is not true about the first msg and top-level replies, at least I have no complaint about those. If it referred to nested replies, then I'd accept it as "documentation" of the problem. Otherwise, it seemed worth making the post I did.

And to be clear, I had searched back 3 months (early Nov) in this forum for any messages on the matter, and found only the one--where I realize you were that lone commenter I referred to.

I sure hope others may chime in, or this matter may well fall between the cracks. It seems it should be easily solved.

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)

Just Shoot Me

Legend

Right but my point is they can't fix the change of the subject line while the forum allows Nested Replies.

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