Notifications System Improvements

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This post is a follow-up on the ongoing system changes we have been making to further improve our site performance and user experience.

Once you’ve read through it, please feel free to leave your feedback, thoughts or suggestions. Any off-topic posts may be removed or moderated; if you’d like to make an unrelated suggestion please use our feedback board.


What are we doing?

We’re updating our notifications system so that it better handles our current and future levels of traffic and is more intuitive for our users. 


New ‘Notifications’ page

A new page is being created dedicated to viewing and managing your notifications. The existing dropdown notifications menu that you currently see on Nexus Mods isn’t being removed and will exist alongside the new page. On the new ‘Notifications’ page you will be able to:

  • View all of your notifications
  • Filter your notifications by whether they have been read or unread
  • Filter your notifications by categories (e.g. Mods, Collections, News, Games, etc.)
  • Mark unread notifications as read, individually or all together

We’re also changing how we handle deletion of notifications, to help us manage the scale of what the system needs to handle. Both 'Read' and 'Unread' notifications will be automatically deleted after 90 days. This way we don't need to store old data and you do not need to worry about deleting old notifications.

Here’s a capture of the new ‘Notifications’ page in development:




New ‘Notification Preferences’ page

A second new page is being created dedicated to managing your notification preferences. This will be accessible via the new notification page and from the notification dropdown menu. We’ll also be linking to it from within the new ‘Settings’ area that we are also working on, as mentioned in our last article.

More granular preferences have been added to give our users more control over what notifications they receive.

Here’s a capture of the new ‘Notifications Preferences’ page in development:




Old notifications

The current notifications dropdown will remain largely the same with the following changes:
 
What we are improving:

  • Notification Settings will be removed from the drop-down and moved to the new notifications 'Preferences' page
  • Better grouping of notifications with no midnight cutoff
  • Read groups will no longer get marked unread when they are updated (read groups are never updated)
  • New game notifications will be grouped as a weekly batch to stop them clogging up the feed

What's removed (these may be subject to change based on feedback):

  • Ability to mark notifications as unread
  • Ability to delete notifications entirely


Why are we doing this?

With more and more users joining the site, our system has been struggling with the amount of notifications we have been throwing at it. This will make it easier for us to develop more notification features in the future.

You’ve been telling us that the current user experience isn’t great. It works well for small numbers of notifications, but for users like Mod Authors or Collection Curators, we send a lot of useful notifications. We hope this makes it easier to manage lots of notifications at once.


When are we doing it?

As with our update to Preferences and Settings, we are working on this now and plan on finishing by the end of January 2024. When the system is released, all notifications brought across (which will be up to 90 days old) will be marked as unread but it should be easy to 'Mark as Read' again.

The current version of the notifications system is currently being released to a focus group for an extended QA testing period. If you're interested in being involved, please use this form to join the focus group.

As before, please feel free to leave your feedback, thoughts or suggestions. Any off-topic posts may be removed or moderated; if you’d like to make an unrelated suggestion please use our feedback board.



Update: We've listened to your feedback and that of the focus group and will add back the functionality of 'Marking as Unread' and 'Deleting' notifications.

Thanks for all the helpful feedback and we will keep you appraised as more improvements are made.

179 comments

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  1. Happybara
    Happybara
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    The system update is planned to go live for everyone 31 January. Please see the article if you have any questions.

    "Mark as Unread" and "Delete" functionality have been added back into the system following user feedback.

    Please note the "When are we doing it" section of the article: "When the system is released, all notifications brought across (which will be up to 90 days old) will be marked as unread but it should be easy to 'Mark as Read' again."

    A news post has been put out here with the latest update. 

    If there a notifications that you would like to see, please add or upvote the suggestion that you want on our feedback board.
  2. Drakhus67820
    Drakhus67820
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    wow...I have receive a lot of annoying notification about image and video...but actually NO about the mod who has been updated! What's the point of this rework? oO 
    Give the old one who actually give me the GOOD notification ! 
    1. Borland30
      Borland30
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      Yeah, more testing is required...
    2. Happybara
      Happybara
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      Some mod notifications are currently offline while they get tweaked and more fixes will be incoming.
  3. Jinxxed0
    Jinxxed0
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    Can we please, please, please get a delete all button. My notifications just all came flooding back and i have to delete them one by one again.
    1. FastBlackCat
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      I agree. I just spent about 45-55 minutes going through them because I track about 400 image uploaders and I don't know how many (probably thousands between all the games I play) mods.  If there's one there, I didn't see it.
    2. Borland30
      Borland30
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      Yeah, I removed most of notifications manually, but then found a way to delete them all at once. The button "delete all notifications" appeared after clicking "View all", lol.
    3. Happybara
      Happybara
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      As said above, there is a delete all button on the main notifications page.
    4. ista3
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      How do I access the main notifications page ?
    5. Happybara
      Happybara
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      Click the Notifications bell and scroll down to "View all".
    6. chickmetalhead
      chickmetalhead
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      Thanks for the "delete all" function and for bringing back the Notifications page! I do need a clarification... does Delete All delete everything displayed on the notifications page, or does it also delete any notifications that have come in since the notification page is displayed, causing them to be missed? I often get distracted away from my PC, and then come back to resume what I was doing. If the way this worked was that you could select the displayed notifications you want to delete, and then delete selected... with an option to select all, then it would/might be safer. BUT I am NOT asking for a change, just a clarification so I know how this works. Hope that makes sense!

      Also, on the settings screen. What does "Game Specific Notifications" mean? Never mind - the updated settings page has a description of the setting.

      Edit: Okay... Delete All means just that, even if you have received additional notifications between loading the notifications page and clicking "Delete All". I was afraid of that, but not surprised. So, while I am STILL not asking for Nexus to implement it better with my "delete selected notifications" after a "select all", it would be a safer way of doing things.

      At least now I know that I need to reload the notifications page right before I do a delete all - but with the lag effect of cloud servers, even that is not exactly foolproof. So maybe I just won't use "Delete All".
  4. MarIouBrando
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    It seems like I don’t qet notifications when an user I follow post a new mods.
    I mainly follow authors to see what mod they publish, so I greatly miss it.
    Is it a bug, something on my end, or a parameter I didn’t see ?
    Thanks.
  5. LuxZg
    LuxZg
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    What I miss the most and don't see here either is - notification for new POSTS or post REPLIES on the mod pages. Also, why isn't forum notification about new reply or personal message also visible in the same notification feed. I do get email notifications for PMs, but all too often I miss new questions or comments on my mod pages. I don't have a thousand a day, but I also get zero notifications about these posts/replies.

    Other than that, if it does what current notifications do, I don't care much.
    1. Happybara
      Happybara
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      I'll let the devs know about this for consideration. Thanks!
    2. polymorphic2346
      polymorphic2346
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      Seconded on this, I too would like to see notifications from my comments/replies in my notifs for mod pages! Notification integration with the forums would be amazing as well.
    3. jacksp1
      jacksp1
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      This is the most important thing and I wonder why it has never been added!
    4. Xaliber13
      Xaliber13
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      Yeah this has been suggested several times:

      https://feedback.nexusmods.com/posts/406/see-comment-responses-as-notifcations

      https://feedback.nexusmods.com/posts/255/notifications-for-comment-chains-i-did-not-start

      https://feedback.nexusmods.com/posts/40/show-nexus-notifications-for-replies-on-a-comment-chain-made-by-other-users

      https://feedback.nexusmods.com/posts/1640/comment-posting-history

      Should be a part of this update...
    5. jacksp1
      jacksp1
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      @Happybara is this implemented in the new notification system?
  6. Dreifels
    Dreifels
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    if "notifications"  "All" or (i.e.)  "News" or "Games" I see "You are all up to date", nothing more, and in Mods I don't find any mod and see only one messsage for an own mod 12 hrs old.
    No mods listed, not these I marked to track, etc., nothing. All show  "You are all up to date"
  7. WallRockTree
    WallRockTree
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    Please consider not deleting notifications after 90 days!

    The nature of this hobby is that we often have to leave, but then come back at a later date.

    Also, the notifications from the past serve as a record for conversations we had. I sometimes have to look back a ways to be able to remember where I had an exchange with someone or to find certain info.
    1. SilentStorm064
      SilentStorm064
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      So much this!!! I often come back after a few months to look at my notifications and see which new mods were published by authors I tracked. And I want to be able to go back to old conversations as well!
    2. Happybara
      Happybara
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      I'll bring this feedback to the team but unfortunately, many decisions were made to improve performance. If deleting after 90 days allows our system to handle the amount of notifications better we may not be able to roll this back.
    3. grvulture
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      Yeah, well, while I do understand the need for the system to handle the database, the notification system was what I was relying on to check things at a later time. I consider this a UX downgrade, not happy at all about this... The fact that I suddenly had all my old notification messages deleted is frustrating!
  8. VonLoewe
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    Why Nexus, why are you so stupid?What in God's name would make you think I want to see every single new comment on every mod I'm tracking?My notifications are completely screwed up. You managed to make it worse.I had to go and disable all the settings, and now I have a billion notifications to sort through.All I want to see are file updates, and I just have to assume that that is on perpetually, since it's not even an option in the notification settings.


    As a mod author the only change I wanted was to be able to turn OFF grouping. Instead you made it more aggressive.I want to see who the hell wrote a new comment on my mod, instead of having to search through the posts tab for anything that looks different. Grouping makes that impossible.

    Your idea of "improvement" is an overall downgrade, and you guys are patting yourselves on the back because you finally made any changes at all after years of doing nothing. Instead of actually improving your website you keep investing in terrible mod managers nobody wants, because there are actually good FOSS managers already out there.

    Get your priorities straight, and please hire someone who actually understands UI/UX.
  9. blo0d1k
    blo0d1k
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    You are great guys, thank you. Please do one more thing so that opening notifications are automatically marked as read, that is, as it was before. Please!
    1. SilverViperUA
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      If they do this, I would love it to be an optional feature, then. Sometimes I leave some notifications unread on purpose so I checked them when I get more time for them or just keep them as temporary note for myself.
  10. SilverViperUA
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    Eh, how does "mods" tab in setting work exactly? I would love to keep getting updates on my own modifications, but not on other people's mods. "There are X new comments on XYZ mod". I don't need this. If I disable all "mods" notifications, will I keep getting notifications about mine?
  11. phinix
    phinix
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    I no longer get notifications for mods I track that have new files, which is the only reason I use notifications.

    Looking at the new settings, there is no option to enable this either.

    Is this a bug or did you intentionally remove file update notifications for tracked mods from the site?

    EDIT: Just read the pinned comment update, so apparently it was a bug that is still being fixed.
    1. Astakos
      Astakos
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      I still do not receive any notifications for mods I track.
      I can see in the Tracking Centre today that there are updates for mods that I track but still no notification about them...
    2. Happybara
      Happybara
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      Tracked is experiencing issues and has been turned off for now while it is fixed.