(1)
If I post something in a forum thread here at LingQ, I will automatically receive an email notification about every following post.
I must untick the “Watch thread” checkbox at the top of the page to stop this.
It would better to default this to NOT watch the thread, or have a special user setting to OPT-OUT from thread “watching”.
(2)
Today I corrected German texts for some LingQ users. Now I receive many emails about every comment in these exchange requests, and I am unable to stop this.
Please enable users to OPT-OUT from all these annoying request email notifications.
We have had this discussion many times, to no avail. The only solution for me was to send all Lingq emails to my spam folder. Like you, I wish there were general email settings that one could adjust in one’s profile or any other way to avoid these notification emails, but either these setting dialogues don’t exist or I couldn’t find them.
And the notification Emails don’t stop there, I receive emails when I am given a rose, someone posted something on my wall, requests etc. Most respectable websites and online services have an opt-out option for notification emails, newsletters and such. There is a word for sending out unsolicited emails: Spamming!
As I am writing this comment I am aware that it might not be read by the people who have so far contributed. What is wrong with setting up a special LingQ folder where all notifications from LingQ are ‘swept into’, thus keeping one’s inbox clear? It iis so easy to do. It seems rather odd to me to want to dismiss replies etc completelym although I have been tempted to do it at times, but you never know what you might miss and so the extra folder comes in handy.
This is all fine and dandy but why not give the users a choice? It is a very basic element of the online code of conduct of respectable websites to not send out emails if the recipient does not want to receive them.
Why would you assume that I’d miss anything because I have not received an Email? Maybe I am only a casual visitor, maybe I don’t want to interact more than browsing some forum posts. I do not tend to check my emails more than once a day anyway, sometimes not even more than once a week.
I miss nothing. If I want to know, I can open the thread, or exchange request, etc.
I don’t receive any notification mails from any forum, only at LingQ I always have to uncheck a checkbox, which I too often forget until my mailbox fills up… It’s the #1 annoyance in the moment.
I gotta agree with Friedemann - these endless torrents of emails do kind of feel like spam.
I made the mistake of setting up my new account on my iPad, using my icloud-email. I can’t seem to see any way of flagging them as spam! (I guess there must be a way, but I can’t seem to figure it out…)
I don’t know if Mark will be seeing this forum before Tuesday. This is a long weekend here in British Columbia.
We are concerned about fostering interaction amongst our members. Obviously this needs to be balanced against minimizing any annoyance to our regular users. So let’s wait to hear what Mark has to say on this.
Finger-wagging about the “online code of conduct all respectable websites” from casual visitors is of less interest to us.
That filter only governs notifications on your wall, I believe. I don’t know if it affects email notifications. It is best to wait until Mark or Alex has a chance to answer.
Friedemann, I guess we could change our email address to the email of somebody we don’t like (maybe the office of a leading Socialist politician) and have the emails sent there?
Of course I’m only kidding…although there are wicked moments when I feel like doing such things!
(I just had to delete almost 200 of these darned emails from my mailbox!!)
@u50623 - Regarding the site notifications, you can turn off exchange request notifications on the Settings page. We do not currently have a way to unsubscribe from rose notifications, etc. but this is something that we can take a closer look at and perhaps add an option to enable/disable general notifications such as wall posts, forum posts, roses, etc.
EDIT: I see that I misread the second part of your post. The comment notifications would be included in the second list of notifications that I mentioned.
Alex, since all these other opt out options exist I assume that it would not be difficult nor time consuming to implement a total email opt out. As I can see, a general email unsubscribe option is good practice throughout the internet. Why not just do it here as well?
The point is that I would like to get a notification if somebody creates a new exchange request in German. All follow-up emails are normally not interesting, so I don’t like them. Forum posts should never result in an automatic notification subscription, I think that’s quite unusual.
Hopefully the people at LingQ are now a bit more convinced to change things here, and give users more control about emails from LingQ. In the moment the situation is very annoying.
Three people, two of whom don’t learn at LingQ, are annoyed by these emails. I am sure Mark will look at the points made here and take them into consideration.
Now and then I forget to uncheck forum thread notifications, but it’s not the end of the world. I can delete those messages if I want (I usually visit the forum a couple of times a day anyway).
I think I may have given slightly the wrong impression here - it isn’t the emails per se which somewhat irk me, rather it is the sheer volume of them. Personally I wouldn’t mind at all if I were just being alerted about things like roses, personal messages, etc.
But HUNDREDS of emails just because a person forgets to uncheck a couple of threads…seriously…is there anybody on this forum who really and truly welcomes this weird electronic Trommelfeuer…??
Now it doesn’t really bother me anymore since all Lingq Emails are now being diverted to an abandoned Email address of mine. But I find the Email policy here really at odds with what Steve normally stands for which is freedom to the learner. Furthermore he is certainly no friend of intrusion and curtailing personal freedoms in other areas. Why do we need a super nanny (Lingq’s email system) to remind us of things even if we don’t want that?
