New notifications feature

We're debuting a new notifications feature on Comic Vine and Giant Bomb. What we've done is split up notifications and private messages into two separate systems. As such, you'll now have a notifications indicator and a PM inbox in the upper right corner of your screen. Notifications will still let you know when another user follows you, comments on your content, posts on your wall, and so forth, whereas the PM inbox is now exclusively for your private messages. This should reduce inbox clutter for the most active members of our community.

In addition, we've simplified the large number of notification options that we used to feature on your Settings page into a smaller group of options to choose from. You should check your settings page to ensure that these options are up to date. (To do so, hover over your avatar in the upper right corner of the screen and select the Settings button.) We'll also soon be adding the option to get email notifications as a weekly digest if you prefer not to get individual emails for each notification.

Notifications are marked as read when you view them, but you can always view older notifications by visiting the Notifications tab of your profile.

Let us know what you think, and feel free to post any feedback on these new features in this thread.

Also, as a note: we know you guys miss the icon that used to show which of your friends were currently online. We're looking into a system that should be launching next week that will hopefully replicate some of that functionality. I can't guarantee it'll work exactly the same, but you should notice it pretty quickly when it goes up.

@rorie: I like the new feature, but I can't seem to get the darn thing to mark the 1 notification I have as read even though I checked it out. Having that little 1 next to the flag is effecting my profile OCD.

Just saw it right now as I logged on. I like it. It's a great way for me to separate the pm and my reply, follow and other notification flow. Good idea!

@decoy_elite: we'll look into that.

Thanks.

Okay, so the 1 is gone now and it seems to be working fine.
Although when I scroll over the notification indicator it shows every notification I've gotten so far not just new ones, don't know if that's intended or not.

@rorie: Okay that explains it what just happen then.

Hmm, can you try clicking on the icon to go to your notifications page? That might clear it out. If not...let us know!

Edit: nvm. The timer is cached to 30 minutes, so it'll go away eventually.

@rorie:

Yeah, although now it seems to be set to 0 even when I get a new reply, and I'm hearing others are having the same issue.

Also, might just be my settings but replies from you and mrpibb didn't show up for some reason.

Wait, your last reply just showed up so I guess it got fixed with whatever go the 1 to go away.

@decoy_elite: currently we show all notifications. They are automatically marked as read, and unread vs read have a different highlighting.

Ah, I see. Okay then everything seems to be working as intended.

Just went into my settings to ensure that the proper ones were checked and then wall posted myself with an alt and got no notification/PM message for it.

Then got wall posted by somebody else and got no notification for that, either.

@rorie: So I am having so problems with the new system where they notification is not showing up at all .I check the ones that I need but nothing is showing up?

I figured it out (kind of), but the notification meter is stuck at 2 and I'm not receiving notifications for replies.

@mercy_: Try mine someone post on my wall and it didn't show ?

Damn, I'm gonna get nothing but notifications. I'm such a loser :)

@rorie: It would be nice to have wiki follows say on characters and volumes to show here instead of the feed. Depending on the number of followers you might miss when somebody edits a page your active in updating as well.

I. Hate. It.

I thought it was the follow tab at first ¬_¬

Anywho while the number pop up appropriately the notifications I've read don't leave.

The notification number isn't disappearing..even when I check it.. >_>

In theory this is a nice system, however in reality it doesn't appear to work very well, and it lags the PM system.

LOL This is such a step back for the forum its unreal. You cannot even PM reply somebody who mentions you anymore. Stupid.

Until the glitches are worked out..this is pretty bad. I figured out how to make my notices go to 0, but now, everytime I hover over them, all of the past notices still show. Also...how do you PM replies now??

@lady_liberty said:

Pretty much this.

It's nice, it really is. However, it really does need some fix-up. I also think the old system was okay too. Always open to upgrades, but eh. I'm fine with or without it.

It's a nice idea, but I honestly don't think this was a change that needed to be implemented.

Same. It's really....if out of all the changes done recently pointless and makes the site TRULY worse, not an opinion....it just makes the site worse, we lost the ability to reply to Wall posts and Mentions...what was the point in that?....even if the staff loose face, They need to implement the old system as this is going to kill activity undoubtedly and harm the site majorly.

This should reduce inbox clutter for the most active members of our community.

Oh, so that explains why I'm not finding the usefulness. I'm just not that popular.

I do appreciate the thought; thank you very much for that. But I do find, personally, it was more helpful when I had my things stored as PMs, so I could reply to a comment or a wall post inside that same private message. But again, I'm just not that popular (most of the time). Also, I think there's a problem where my old notifications still show up notifying me after I've already seen that I've been notified.

Thank you for your consideration. ^_^

Same problem here. When it was only PM I could enter the message and then it showed that I had seen it. Now the notifications stays even though I have seen them.

@pyrogram:

Honestly, I'd prefer if they put this effort into bringing back the Who's Online feature...

@jedixman: Same. This is truly pointless and just a waste of time.

I'm getting no PM's it's all just going to the notifications.

Can we have some sort of link that goes to the thread the user has replied from? All my notifications are from differentr forums and threads and it's all in one page so it's kinda confusing what thread it's coming from..

I agree. I respect the coders decision and they hard work they've put in but, I don't see why this was necessary. Much easier when it was all in the inbox in my opinion.

Although I don't wish to demean or belittle any of the hard work that went into this I must say it follows the pattern of the new site- Removing useful features and replacing them with features that don't work very well, and don't provide as much functionality.

I haven't changed any of my settings. And I am no longer receiving notifications or e-mails (that, or they are hugely delayed).

anybody else think that they were flagged alot? hahaha

Looks like the delay window is down from 25 minutes to about 7.

Why do you think you were flagged? O_o

@vortex13:

Same problem here...

Exact same problem here. As for the latter question..what do you mean?

Haha I actually did, for a second. For a moment I was like, "Who's this &^*%$ tryna flag me?"

I'm not really a fan of this new system - I much prefer the older message one. But I can live with it.

The old system was just fine. This change was completely gratuitous.

Not receiving any notifications even after I've entered the thread...ಠ_ರೃ

Okay this is weird....I'm not even getting notifs when people tag me....

I am not a big fan of this change, i like it better when i was getting everything on my inbox . Personal preference i suppose.

This exactly. I respect the effort and the obvious attempt to make it better for users. We know your not out to make it harder for us. But as LL said, it seems like a pattern of changing out helpful simplified systems for unneccesary ones, in an attempt to be more like a general social media site like Twitter or Facebook.

I'm in the general consensus. Since it's been almost 2 days since its implication, I'm not a fan of it. I do appreciate the hard work you guys put into making this place usable, but when we got all the notifications in one place, things were much easier.

Exactly how I feel. I respect the coders hard work into this but, maybe it would of been better if they asked for user feedback first? Sometimes I don't even get notification of who writes on my wall. I gotta check their profiles or mine to see the posts. Very cute icon by the way. =D