Un-requested forum notifications via e-mail

DannyD

I'm noticing strange behavior with the Zotero forums. This has been happening for a couple of weeks now. Whenever I browse the forums, within a few minutes I receive e-mails showing forum updates from conversations that I never visited. I'm familiar with the way that Zotero sends e-mail updates, showing responses to forum conversations that I have "subscribed" to. However, these e-mails are showing updates from random conversations and they come as a result of my browsing the forums on-line.

adamsmith

Zotero does note when you visit the forums and emails new message from threads you subscribe to after your last visit. But if you've never posted nor subscribed to a thread you should never get a message. Maybe you accidentally subscribed to a whole category?

DannyD

I checked all the categories. I'm not subscribed to any of them. The really odd thing about this is how I always receive the notifications just after browsing through the forums.

For instance, Just a few minutes ago I was browsing the forums and a few minutes after that I received a notification of a post for a another random conversation. I could try and list all the notifications to see if there is a pattern, but that would take some time.

dstillman

What's an example? From your current user account, you're subscribed to 14 discussions.

If you click through from the email to a discussion you received a notification for, does it say "Subscribe to discussion" or "Unsubscribe from discussion"?

dstillman

The really odd thing about this is how I always receive the notifications just after browsing through the forums.

There's nothing odd about this—it's just how the forum software works. To prevent excessive emails, the forum software sends a notification and only once once after each visit. So whenever you browse, you'll get a notification in a subscribed topic the next time one is updated, and you won't get another until the next time you visit.

DannyD

Out of those 14 discussions, three are recent ones I've initiated. The others have all been dormant for several months. The notifications I'm receiving are not from any of those conversations (as far as I can tell).

The notification I most recently received was for this discussion:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/29041?page=0#Item_10

On the left-hand side of the conversation are options for subscribing to the discussion, but I don't see any options for un-subscribing.

DannyD

A bit of further observations... when I look under "Your Discussions" I only see 10 discussions listed. As I mentioned in my prior post, 3 of them are recent and all the others are dormant.

I wonder if there are 4 additional discussions that I am some how subscribed to.

dstillman

I wonder if there are 4 additional discussions that I am some how subscribed to.

I don't know why you're not seeing them all, but you were definitely active in 14 discussions. Maybe some were deleted. In any case, not related to the other issue.

The notification I most recently received was for this discussion:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/29041?page=0#Item_10

Can you forward a few of the notification emails to support@zotero.org, with a link to this thread?

DannyD

I just e-mailed the four most recent notifications I received.

dstillman

Thanks. Have you received any notifications not in the General category? (You don't appear to actually be subscribed to that, but it'd be helpful to know for debugging this.)

DannyD

When I view a notification (or a discussion) how do I know what category it is in?

dstillman

It says at the top of the thread, to the left of the thread title.

DannyD

A few days ago I received a notification for this discussion that appears to be in the "Sync" category.

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/28822?page=0#Item_10