Hi,
when you are subscribed to a forum and get an email sent with a new post this post is automatically marked as read in Moodle when forum tracking is enabled (e.g. when auto-subscribe and track forums are both enabled in the user profile). Is this correct? For some students this is confusing because they still want to read posts on the website and use the subscription only as a reminder that they should go and check their Moodle course. Once logged in the new posts are not highlighted. Is there any other setting that I missed to avoid this problem and keep posts marked as unread until they were actually read in Moodle?
Cheers!
Anatol
Hi Anatol
I think you may have just solved a problem for me! This is exactly what I have been experiencing, although I hadn’t realised it was the auto-subscribing that was causing the problem.
I am one of those students who have been confused by this issue. I was confused by the inconsistency…some forums were indicating that there were unread messages and others were not. I have just done a quick check of my email inbox and the list of forums to check which ones I am subscribed to, and what you are saying seems to fit.
I have unsubscribed to a forum that only has one thread. My understanding is that you become automatically subscribed once you make a post to a thread, so within a forum with several threads you would be auto-subscribed to the ones you have posted to and not subscribed to threads that you haven’t posted to. But the overall label for the forum is subscribed. Hope that makes sense. I will test this over the next couple of days. If it works, I am happy to just unsubscribe from everything.
My main reason for remaining subscribed had been to help in dealing with this issue. But you are right…you should be able to do both without a problem. I too wondered if there was another setting that needed adjusting, but I have no experience in setting up a course in Moodle.
I know this hasn’t answered your question, but hope it helps a bit…thanks again
Perdita
I think you may have just solved a problem for me! This is exactly what I have been experiencing, although I hadn’t realised it was the auto-subscribing that was causing the problem.
I am one of those students who have been confused by this issue. I was confused by the inconsistency…some forums were indicating that there were unread messages and others were not. I have just done a quick check of my email inbox and the list of forums to check which ones I am subscribed to, and what you are saying seems to fit.
I have unsubscribed to a forum that only has one thread. My understanding is that you become automatically subscribed once you make a post to a thread, so within a forum with several threads you would be auto-subscribed to the ones you have posted to and not subscribed to threads that you haven’t posted to. But the overall label for the forum is subscribed. Hope that makes sense. I will test this over the next couple of days. If it works, I am happy to just unsubscribe from everything.
My main reason for remaining subscribed had been to help in dealing with this issue. But you are right…you should be able to do both without a problem. I too wondered if there was another setting that needed adjusting, but I have no experience in setting up a course in Moodle.
I know this hasn’t answered your question, but hope it helps a bit…thanks again
Perdita
Hi Perdita,
thanks for the reply. It confirmed what I suspected: that forum posts that are sent to you by email are automatically marked as read.
Just another note which you probably figured out yourself: you can turn off the auto-subscribe in your profile (in Moodle 1.8+ that's in the advanced options so you may need to click the 'advanced' button first).
I still don't know if there is another setting to avoid the problem but I guess not.
Cheers!
Anatol
thanks for the reply. It confirmed what I suspected: that forum posts that are sent to you by email are automatically marked as read.
Just another note which you probably figured out yourself: you can turn off the auto-subscribe in your profile (in Moodle 1.8+ that's in the advanced options so you may need to click the 'advanced' button first).
I still don't know if there is another setting to avoid the problem but I guess not.
Cheers!
Anatol
Hi Anatol
I did work it out but not straight away. I think I was so excited that the problem was solved that I forgot to make that adjustment…I remember it from when I first started using moodle a couple of months ago. I had 24 hours of thinking “great it’s fixed” until the problem recurred. I had posted to some of the forums and become auto-subscribed again. I haven’t had any problems since and I don’t miss the emails…I prefer to go into the site regularly. What approach have you adopted with your students in response to this issue?
I think you should be able to adjust the settings so that you can receive emails and have posts marked as unread. I wonder if it is a bug or just that we are not aware of how to make that change.
Perdita
I did work it out but not straight away. I think I was so excited that the problem was solved that I forgot to make that adjustment…I remember it from when I first started using moodle a couple of months ago. I had 24 hours of thinking “great it’s fixed” until the problem recurred. I had posted to some of the forums and become auto-subscribed again. I haven’t had any problems since and I don’t miss the emails…I prefer to go into the site regularly. What approach have you adopted with your students in response to this issue?
I think you should be able to adjust the settings so that you can receive emails and have posts marked as unread. I wonder if it is a bug or just that we are not aware of how to make that change.
Perdita
Hi there
Do you happen to know if this is the same if you receive a digest i.e. all posts included in the digest are marked as read?
Cheers
Roger
Do you happen to know if this is the same if you receive a digest i.e. all posts included in the digest are marked as read?
Cheers
Roger
Hi,
a really late follow-up on my original post: I just had another try.
Here is the situation: By default when an email is sent out to forum subscribers the respective forum post is marked as 'read'. I don't think that this is the best solution. Just because I received an email does not necessarily mean that I have actually read it. Many students like to get the notifications but prefer to keep the posts marked as 'unread' - otherwise it's just too easy to miss out on something.
I commented one line in Moodle which seems to do the trick. It's in /mod/forum/lib.php in the forum_cron() function around line 469 (Moodle 1.9.2) just comment the line:
// forum_tp_mark_posts_read($userto, $userto->markposts);
The same line appears twice in lib.php, another time a bit further down. I guess that the second one is for email digests. I didn't test this yet, but I think you can also remove or comment that line (around line 746)
I think it would be good if the Admin could choose if posts should automatically be marked as read.
Cheers!
Anatol
a really late follow-up on my original post: I just had another try.
Here is the situation: By default when an email is sent out to forum subscribers the respective forum post is marked as 'read'. I don't think that this is the best solution. Just because I received an email does not necessarily mean that I have actually read it. Many students like to get the notifications but prefer to keep the posts marked as 'unread' - otherwise it's just too easy to miss out on something.
I commented one line in Moodle which seems to do the trick. It's in /mod/forum/lib.php in the forum_cron() function around line 469 (Moodle 1.9.2) just comment the line:
// forum_tp_mark_posts_read($userto, $userto->markposts);
The same line appears twice in lib.php, another time a bit further down. I guess that the second one is for email digests. I didn't test this yet, but I think you can also remove or comment that line (around line 746)
I think it would be good if the Admin could choose if posts should automatically be marked as read.
Cheers!
Anatol
We have this problem. Shouldn't this be the default or at least configurable option? Is this in the tracker?
Excuse my English, I'm Brazilian.
Making this fix in the file lib.php works.
Just comment on those two lines.
In my moodle worked.
Thanks for the tip.
Thanks!
I came across with the same issue.
The wierder think is that I did not experience this issue with the previous verion.
The issue appear after updating from 1.9.7 version to 1.9.10
I think this definitly shoud be considered for next verions.
Thanks for the solution.
I am experiencing the same issue. Did you get to any conclusion?
I am running moodle 2.7.
Hi Francesco,
This is still the same. Messages are intentionally marked as read once e-mailed out to a user.
This thread was last updated many years ago and I doubt whether any of the original authors are likely to comment.
Andrew