Notifications System further updates

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This is a follow-up on yesterday's update to the Notifications System covered in our last news post. We want to address some of the pain points users will have experienced and what improvements we have made as a result of your feedback.

The new system was sending notifications for new comments on tracked mods. This was an error and we switched this off but 300,000 notifications of this type were delivered. We cannot easily delete these and you will see these if you are logging in for the first time since this release. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Hopefully, the deletion functionality will allow you to manage these efficiently.

"Tracked Mods/Users" notifications were not sending properly at the time of release. We have worked to bring this important feature back and have now released an updated version. You will now be able to receive tracked notifications for mods and users you tracked since the start of January. You will also be able to toggle these options on the updated Preferences page.

We are currently running a migration to re-sync all of your "Tracked Mods/Users" notifications from before January. This migration is expected to be fully finished early next week but may also finish for individual users over the weekend. Until then you can visit a mod page and un-track then track the mod again to ensure you receive new notifications until the migration is complete. The new preferences page will hopefully make it clearer how to control your various notification options and we will be working on further improvements to make it even easier.

We appreciate all of your patience and feedback since the launch of the system and apologise for any inconvenience caused by the update. Please continue to give us feedback on the system as we continue to make further adjustments.

196 comments

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  1. Happybara
    Happybara
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    If there a notifications that you would like to see, please add or upvote the suggestion that you want on our feedback board.
  2. Talyna23
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    I'm just feeling deaf a blind without notifications. There are many mods I followed, which needed lot of support, and often got it from the author. But the most support came from the community and mod users. That's all gone.Am I supposed to bookmark every single mod in my browser and look through all of them every day to keep up to date? 
    1. Eolhin
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      Yeah, I have so many tabs in my browser that I have to keep open, and keep refreshing now.
    2. LiloLila
      LiloLila
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      every day? More like Every hour. And opening ALL MODS in new tabs is impossible for me. I just checked how many mods I follow and I was surprised how many they are. I absolutely understand why new notifications for new comments everytime had to be removed. But still. I need a notifications system which tells me when a tracked mod HAS new comments, so that I don't HAVE to keep hundrets of mods open in new tabs.
  3. Shade999
    Shade999
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    Could we please first concentrate on making it possible to search for words in the comments section of mod pages again?

    Because i hate that i have to manually search  the comment page after comment
    page of a mod to see if it was mentioned somewhere that this mod is
    compatible with another specific mod. It's  annoying and time
    consuming!
    1. LiloLila
      LiloLila
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      you could use F3 or STRL+F to search for words. But tbf you would still need to scroll through the pages manually.
  4. Glanzer
    Glanzer
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    One thing I do like about the notification changes is that all the new/read notifications appear in a full list without having to constantly click the "view more" button. That is now gone and I get the full list. Much appreciated. The only button there now is the View All button which takes me to the full notifications page which I rarely need to visit.
  5. CatcherLuLu1
    CatcherLuLu1
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    I fucking hate this system. I would check all my mods and now I can't even bothered to visit this website as much cause of how s#*! this is. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt and not be so negative, but this is TERRIBLE. Why would you do this???
  6. Morghean
    Morghean
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    new system is crap..
    -hard to distinguish between newly created mods by authors and updated ones by the same authors..
    -picture updates by authors are packed in a bunch, it's hard to check which is the new one and which is older as the link in the notification isn't direct you to the actual picture, but the gallery of the uploader
    -still can't block notifications from games I don't care about
    -have to refresh the whole page to get more notifications from the roll down menu, the [VIEW ALL] button leads to the rooster of all games on Nexus instead of MY notifications
  7. R0NlN
    R0NlN
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    For those who want to see a return of notifications for comments on mods you're tracking (not just mods you've authored), I've added a request on the Feedback Board titled "Bring back notifications for comments on mods I'm tracking even if I'm not the mod author."

    Feel free to upvote and discuss it there.
    1. Babaloo321
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      .
    2. Eolhin
      Eolhin
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      Just an FYI, following the link Happybara gives above to the Feedback Board leads to it with the search settings "view Recent with 1 TAG".  That setting does not show your request about comment notifications.  The link you give leads to  "view Recent with Any TAG", which does show your post.
    3. R0NlN
      R0NlN
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      Eolhin, thanks for noting this. I wanted to add a tag to my post but didn't see any way to do that.
    4. Eolhin
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      It is possible that the admins have to tag them, I don't know.  I can't see how to do it either.
    5. R0NlN
      R0NlN
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      That was my guess as well.
    6. Eolhin
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      I tried to add a 'feedback' about being able to tag feedback, and it referred me to this old post and reply, just FYI:
      +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
      See and Tag your own Feedback Posts
      XilaMonstrr · Nov 2022
      Wow this forum is terrible for navigation. It's impossible to find posts that I've made.
      I can't search posts and I can't put tags on my own posts.
      Lots of posts have tags but no idea how they got them--I can only assume that admins put the tags on because where else do they come from? Why have tags if they can't be used?

      DECLINED
      Pickysaurus
      Tags are only assigned by our team, this in intended.

      You are able to see all your content (and content you've voted on here: https://feedback.nexusmods.com/?view=my-votes)
      +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

      The problem is, I vote up a lot of good ideas I see on there, not just my own, so finding my own posts among all that is prohibitively difficult.
    7. R0NlN
      R0NlN
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      So they _are_ tagged by Admin. Which means that by the time the staff gets around to tagging a post, it may well have gone "dormant". But at least now we know! Thanks for looking into it, Eolhin!
    8. Babaloo321
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      Try updating the link you originally posted with the actual url of your feedback post: 

      https://feedback.nexusmods.com/posts/2015/bring-back-notifications-for-comments-on-mods-im-tracking-even-if-im-not-the-mod-author

      Another relevant one, by Pickysaurus:

      https://feedback.nexusmods.com/posts/252/granular-notification-options
  8. R0NlN
    R0NlN
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    I haven't received any notifications for replies to my post on the Feedback Board
    The replies are there (more replies than to other recent posts), I'm just not getting notified about them. (I have all notification options toggled on, except for Game Specific notifications.)
    1. Eolhin
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      I never got notifications about replies to my previous posts to the feedback board, so given all the other things they turned off, or never had, they likely just don't do notifications for replies under feedback board posts.  I had to just check mine in the list every so often, which gets harder and harder the longer ago it was posted.  It would be nice if there was at least a search/sort option for the list with 'my posts' as an option, so that I could find my own posts quickly.  I should likely make a post suggesting that. 

      Edit:  Oh, and these would likely be the notifications on the Forums side rather than on the mods side, from what I can tell, which is counterintuitive.

      Edit 2:  My brain isn't working today, when you make a post, it signs you up by default to receive notifications for replies to that post... or so it claims.  And I left my posts in the subscribed state, but I also never got notifications about replies to them, and yes, there were some.  So that does not appear to be working, no.  I did post a Feedback post about the Feedback Board to the Feedback Board. 

      Edit 3:  Of course you likely won't receive notification of this reply to your comment about notifications.  Is it just me, or is this getting really meta?
  9. korootz
    korootz
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    It's still broken. I used to get notifications about new posts on mods I track, but I don't get them anymore!
    1. Eolhin
      Eolhin
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      Yeah, they evidently turned that off on purpose, to see if anyone would miss it.  As if it wasn't the whole main reason that most people use notifications.
    2. Happybara
      Happybara
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      We turned comment notifications on tracked mods off as it seemed that most of our feedback indicated people didn't want to see them. We are currently looking at our options for future improvement.
    3. Eolhin
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      People did not want to see comment notifications for ALL of the mods they tracked, no.  They very much did want to see comment notifications for a specific sub-set of those mods.  Being able to differentiate those would also help with the 'bloat'.
    4. korootz
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      I do want to see comment notifications for all mods I'm tracking. I read all of them, it's not like I track 1000 mods and games I mod don't have that crazy traffic. If, for some reason, someone doesn't want to be notified about posts, why not just add an option to disable it?
    5. Highlynx
      Highlynx
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      im still not getting notifications for mods I track
    6. LiloLila
      LiloLila
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      I too want to see notifications for new comment off all mods I track. If I don't care about a given comment, or have read it and decided to not have anything of value to add, I will delete the notification. (Btw until "delete all" got removed, I did empty my inbox regularly. It just got bloated with read notifications after that button got removed.)
      I can imagine that some would want to turn comment notifications off here and there on individual, single mods. But I assume that no one would have wanted this feature to get removed entirely.
    7. Wolfpack49
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      as it seemed that most of our feedback indicated people didn't want to see them.
      What feedback was that?  This is the main use of notifications, and everyone is really missing it.
    8. Stormie
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      as it seemed that most of our feedback indicated people didn't want to see them.
      What feedback was that?  This is the main use of notifications, and everyone is really missing it.
      This.

      I know that most mod authors are very grateful when people like me help out others on their mod pages - it's something I enjoy doing, and I'm not the only one. It was also only really feasible by using the comment notifications. Without it, it's next to impossible, unless you're only tracking a very small number of mods (eg. 10-15).
  10. BrendonofKells
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    so i have a bit of a different problem here. i haven't had a chance to really deal with it before, but my notifications...for everything, has beeb apparently permanently disabled. anyone out there have any ideas.
  11. MJS814
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    Please reconsider allowing your members to track all comments on a mod.  Like many others I track and use multiple mods.  Many of the mods I use are not supported by the mod author and are supported by the the people that use the mods.  I also track new mods that seem interesting but wait to see what other people that have downloaded the mod comment on their experience.  It has always been helpful to read other people’s solutions, issues or strategies for any given mod.  I have not seen comments on any of the mods I track for days and I'm not sure if the system is up and running because I see that mod authors are commenting on their mods, but I'm not receiving any notification on these as well.  I realize it could also be because I use Firefox as my web browser.

    I imagine that having so many members and so many messages would cause for a lot of "bloat".  If the "bloat" issue is caused by us members not deleting posts from mods that they're tracking whether read or not, then I would like to add my voice to the suggestion of some of your other members that messages sitting in people’s notification queue should be deleted after a reasonable period.  I believe 14-day retention was given by some people, which sounds reasonable to me.

    I track about 200 mods over just 2 games.  Now I receive no notifications.  I don't have the time to go into every mod and see if someone has left a comment or not.  I would log onto your site at least twice a day to see new mods and new notifications, and I really enjoyed reading other people’s comments for the most part.  In fact, some people’s advice sometimes indicated to me an important tidbit of information even though they didn't create the mod.  Since this change took effect a few days ago nexusmods has lost some of its wonderful appeal to me.  Not only was this a great place where you could upload and download mods safely and securely,  utilities to manage your mods like (Vortex) was also available, and you could converse with your fellow gamers about the games and the mods you played as well as learn a lot in the process.

    Maybe we as members of nexusmods let you down by not conveying how important the comment and notification system is to many of us.  I appeal to you to try and find a way to bring this back, please. 
    1. LiloLila
      LiloLila
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      +1 we need comment notifications back.

      But you are right. This feature was the reason (or one of them) why the notification system was at its limits. Maybe we will get it back in a diffferent form. Maybe not new notifications for every single comment but just that there are new comments in a mods comments tab. That way a new comment wouldn't generate a new notification but, if anything, just bump the corrosponding mod-comment notification to the top of your inbox.

      Having the "delete all notifications" button back is already a huge improvement to deal with the bloat on the users end, tbf. (Though I have no Idea how this this bloat problem was working behind the scenes.)
    2. Babaloo321
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      +2 I agree completely!

      Maybe there could be a system where you could be able to track comment notifications separately from just clicking on the track button. Maybe like a pop-up that appears after clicking the track button that asks whether you'd like to track comment notifications as well as other updates, or just like how it is right now instead.

      I also like LiloLila's idea of a generic "New Comment" notification, instead of listing the specific user's name, and what not.

      However, that is on the basis that you'd get a new notification whenever a single new individual comment is made. Or rather have a relatively short update cycle of how often a new comment notification is sent. I'd hate to get spammed with a barrage of the same notification about a ton of new comments within the span of like 5 minutes lol.