Auto Subscription to Your Own Topics

Only two comments really.

1. I can forsee that over the coming months there may well be more 'member related options' like this. The only one we have currently is the 'Editor' setting. On the form I think we should group these options together rather than have them all in separate fieldsets. I would be tempted to change the current 'Editor' fieldset to something along the lines of 'Personal Forum Options' and incorporate the new option for auto-subscription in with it. I think this may grow and we may as well prepare the ground for it now.
2. The same applies to the database as this option setting has to be stored. We are currently and correctly storing non-forum personal data in the UserMeta table and specific forum data in sfmembers. Again the Editor setting is the only one of it's kind (and I take the blame for not thinkng this through earlier). We should get rid of that column and move it into a 'members_options' column along with this new subscription option as a serialised array.

Auto Subscription On All New Topics

I don't think we should go here. I believe it's asking for trouble and if we ever did it should be an admins option first and a members option second. But on the whole I would see this as a mistake.

let me relate to another forum type on a board I visit often.

inorder to post to any one forum, you must join that forum individually. joining automaticly emails you on new topics, but there is an option available ON SCREEN in that forum to turn the e-mails off.

however, if you start a new topic yourself, you are automaticly emailed on any replies.

replying to any topic, and you have the OPTION of recieving followup posts but this is not generally set automaticly.

other than auto-magic forum topic subscriptions, all of the other options are in the profile. The group has over 20,000 members and there have been thousands of option requests and complaints about setting things in two places, not being able to find the button, etc.

I feel that logged in users, should simply be able to check whether forum topics are e-mailed, or if topic posts are emailed in a collumn on the front end.

Allow the Admin to select which, if any, are automatic for their users.

Radio: “I feel that logged in users, should simply be able to check whether forum topics are e-mailed, or if topic posts are emailed in a collumn on the front end.”

Isn't that what we have now? The user chooses to subscribe…?

Ref my comments in post 2 above:

I have just raised another user request – to allow a member to choose whether the forum uses their gravatar or an uploaded avatar – which would fit nicely into my proposed 'member options' collection.

Whoops. Sorry about the multiple posts!

I think it would also be a good move to consider the post option 'Subscribe to this Topic'. If the current user is already subscribed to that topic then we should change the checkbox to 'Unsubscribe from this topic'.

oh great, combining multiple things into one discussion 

actually, though not worded properly, I did plan to incorporate it into the editor area.

Wonder why we never noticed that about the subscribe button as its the way the watch is done. will open separate ticket to track.

on the database, yes was thinking it would go in the members table.  thanks for the heads up, I didnt realize the editor  options werent.  I will get that all organized together as part of this.

So, sounds like no clear cut path on the auto subscribe to topics.  As I explained, it would definitely be controlled by a global forum option set by the admin before a user would ever see such an option.  Dire potential warnings about impact on server would go with that global option.  Then, and only then, would users be able to select such an option.  Only bring it up because there was at least two requests for it.  One was for private forum with no rss capability today.  The other was a small group forum.  I am happy to abandon this one, just thought we should talk through it since we had multiple requests.