OK, that was a bust. Here was the whole test plan: Step 1: please do a reply in this Test Bed thread: Testing the notifications | UBC Botanical Garden Forums. That sets you up as watching the thread. Step 2: I will then do a posting, and you can tell me that you received a notice. Don't go back to the thread. Just tell me you received a notice, but don't click it or go to the thread. Step 3: I will do another posting. You should not get a notice. Step 4: When we've decided you're not going to get a notice, go back to the thread and click the Watch thread link at the upper right. Step 5: Then I will do another posting, and you should get a notice. Don't go back to the thread. Just tell me you received a notice, but don't click it or go to the thread. Step 6: I will do another posting. What we're testing is whether or not you get a notice, since you have specifically set up the thread to watch but you did not follow the latest posting. I will ask Willard to deliberately follow this thread; then I will send some notes and she will stay away from the thread and see if she keeps getting notified. I think she will, because when I went to look at my Watched Threads, it showed by default only threads that I'm watching that I have not looked at. I think I have not looked at the one thread that was displayed for several postings now, not sure.
Willard is watching this thread now, but will not be back here to check it. Theoretically, she will continue to receive the notices. I will post five times. This is the first.
Willard has not received a notification of the previous posting. Here is posting #3, should be her 2nd notification.
Willard says in an email: I don't get it, would be upset by now, except that on the two tests we did on real threads, she got the notifications she was expecting to get. She has received several notifications in the past 24 hours - it's not like they don't go out from this Test Bed. This thread is in her list of Watched Threads. She set it by going to the thread and clicking on Watch Thread. This has been a fair bit of work for Willard, whom I roped into doing this, and I have learned nothing.
Willard might actually not have been Watching this thread. She is now. So we're doing step 5/6 (I guess they're the same) again.
Oh, no, they're not the same. It's step 6 that tests the notifications continuing even after apparent lack of interest.
Willard did not get the notification for posting #6. Hmm. So far, it seems that signing up is not behaving differently from being subscribed by doing a posting.
Posting #7 is incorrect - she did get a notification at 10:48 last night, so that was the one after she signed up to Watch the thread. I don't know yet if she received the notification for posting #8. This is way harder to figure out than I was expecting.
Before I knew she did get the notification, I asked her to check whether she was still watching it. So that could have reset the indicator. And she got a notification just now. OK, 11:34, she checked the indicator, which probably reset it. She received the notification for posting #9. The question is whether she will receive the next two.
If I have pieced this together correctly, Willard went to the thread before 12:50 on Monday, Feb 15, and she received notification of my 12:50pm posting that day. I did postings at 1:04, 3:47, and 7:35, for which she received no notifications. On the thread itself, today her watch option says Unwatch. In her Watched Thread Alerts list, accessed via the User icon, this thread (and the other thread) are both listed. She says that she selected notify by email. So it seems that the notifications work the same way if Watching is set from the thread or from the User options: you get notified until you skip reading a posting. But the thread is still marked as a Watched Thread, and you can access the postings from the Alert Preferences | Watched Threads, which opens with Unread Watched Threads, and gives the option to see All Watched Threads.