ActiveRain Tips & Tricks - Comment Notifications

One of the things you realize early on in the ActiveRain community is that you can expect comments on the posts that you create. These are real people making comments and interacting with you. If you have had any blog out there in cyberspace, for example on a WordPress site, you quickly realize there are a ton of spammers and bots ready to hit your site with garbage comments. The rewarding difference in ActiveRain is you get real people and genuine comments!

A couple of months back, something went awry with the notification system as far as comments were concerned. When the notification system was working, you would get an indication in the notification flag at the top of the window and the system would also email you to let you know. At the moment, this is broken, so when somebody comments, no notifications are given. (notifications still appear when people like your comments and other misc system notifications)

 

So, without notifications, how will you know somebody has left you a comment?

Likely you'll just keep on checking your last post and see if anything new is there. That's okay and works pretty well (not super efficient, but it works).

However, what if somebody leaves a comment on one of your older posts too? Chances are right now you'll never see it because who has time to keep checking old posts for new comments?

Well here's a workaround TIP for you that I just connected the dots with.

If you go to your points page, every time somebody leaves you a comment you get points for it. Light bulb moment - hey! that's also a way to see if people have been leaving you new comments and which post (so this fully widens the scope and not just the newest post). You can click the link to jump right to the post to read the comment that somebody made.

Here's some additional thoughts about trying to manually notify people when you comment by @tagging them. If you are trying to notify the author of the post of your comment, you don't need to @tag the author. When the system is working, it automatically notifies them of the comment. Tagging a person in their own post could be also a valiant workaround attempt to let them know it since the main notifications are broken. However,  the system ignores tags when you tag the author of the post. (I just double checked).

However, the system does notify a person if you @tag somebody who is not the author of the post. 

Since notifications are not working for comments and replies to comments. How do you know when to check to see if you got a reply to your comment? One great clue that it is a good time to go check is if you get a notification that the author has liked your comment. There's a good chance you'll also find their reply at that time also!

Finally, replies are better when they are threaded. This is because the reply is connected to the comment and everyone reading it can connect the conversation. However, the system has always failed to notify the commenter when they receive a threaded reply (wishlist item!). The next logical thing would be to @tag the person in the reply, but the system ignores tags in replies. ugh!

However, even though there are notification bugs, I still prefer threaded replies because in my opinion a connected (threaded) reply is easier for everyone to follow the CONVERSATION. So my suggestion is to make your reply and then use the like button. Clicking like will send a notification and would also be a hint to the person to come see what you wrote in reply.

 

You may have already realized some of these thoughts but it is good to give some consideration to your options. I also wanted to highlight that many believe they are tagging to help the problem, when in fact, tagging is not doing what they think it is (so is just a waste of time). But don't forget the first note above about using your points page as workaround method to get notifications. That is one of the main takeaways from this post. So when new comments are made on your posts so you can go check them out!

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