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<node id="57417" title="Subscribing to a thread?" created="2001-02-09 16:36:16" updated="2005-08-10 16:21:18">
<type id="1036">
monkdiscuss</type>
<author id="3131">
mikfire</author>
<data>
<field name="doctext">
I frequently like to follow a particular thread of conversation
and usually scroll down into the New Notes section and scan
that list for any new entries into a particular thread.
&lt;p&gt;
I was doing that today and I wondered if it would be
possible to extend the "/msg me when a reply to one of my
posts arrives" functionality and be able to get /msg'd 
when a new note is posted in a thread I have marked as
interesting.
&lt;p&gt;
Add a button, say, at the top of each thread "Subcribe me"
( can't resist the Alice in Wonderland reference ).  If you
wanted to be /msg'd when a new post was added to thread,
click the button and you are subscribed.
&lt;p&gt;
There would be, at my first glance, two hard parts.  
&lt;p&gt;
The first would be some way of knowing that the interested 
party had already been /msg'd and not /msg again until they 
had cleared the first.  This is primarily to keep from 
getting overwhelmed in the CB on a busy thread.  It is not
currently provided on the "/msg me when a reply to one of my
posts arrives", so maybe [vroom] says caveat emptor and that
is the risk you take for subscribing.
&lt;p&gt;
The second hard part is unsubscribing.  I would rather
not clutter the thread interface too much - it is bad enough
already.  Maybe another screen could be added off of each 
user's account to manage subscriptions - a person could
unsubscribe from here and possibly even subscribe if they
had the node id.
&lt;p&gt;
Is there any value to this?  Can it be done?
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;a href="/index.pl?node=mikfire&amp;lastnode_id=1072"&gt;mikfire&lt;/a&gt;</field>
</data>
</node>
