Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

I also receive a message from SoL on the email account I registered whenever I have new unread emails.

That's an individual account setting, but it has to be activated. It's NOT on by default, so few benefit from the service.

In some cases I know they've logged in since I replied, because I replied to later messages from them as well. I strongly suspect a lot of people don't know how the system works or don't know they can get a reply through it. The purpose of this thread was to raise the level of awareness of the system and the fact the yellow around the Mail link means they have a message to be read.

I can understand people taking a week or two or four before they check the messages, but the ones that are two months old or older are another issue.

BTW All but four of unread message are more than a month old, with most being 2 months old, and four are from the last 24 hours.

At least with my browser (Opera, don't know for others), I can log-in, get to multible stories – all in separate tabs – start to read one and send you a mail concerning this story.

In both Chrome and Firefox on Zorin Linux, Windows 7, and Android, the moment I open a new SoL story or change chapters or refresh the page the Mail link goes yellow if it has an unread mail message. The only times it doesn't update is when the page doesn't have the link on it ( a few don't) or the page isn't loaded or refreshed after the mail arrives at the centre.

Thus, the moment you log on or visit any SoL page except an author story list page, or an author blog page, or a forum page the mail link is there and visible to you. If you have no unread mail when you log on the moment you visit another of the general or story pages after you have an unread mail the link changes status and you can see it.

If I had opened five or more of your stories in different tabs, going to the next tab (the next story) does nothing new.

True,and any pages opened prior to getting a new unread message won't change it either. But sooner or later you'll be going to a new page and it will show. I just can't see someone not opening a new page or refreshing a page sometime during the month. Hell, I keep 4 SoL pages open all the time, but I still refresh them a few times each day to find what's new. I especially have an issue with the ones who send me a new message when they haven't yet read my last reply. If they don't want to read the replies, why ask me questions?

True,and any pages opened prior to getting a new unread message won't change it either. But sooner or later you'll be going to a new page and it will show. I just can't see someone not opening a new page or refreshing a page sometime during the month.

Unless of course, they lived in Houston, or Florida, or Puerto Rico or Northern California or any of the OTHER places experiencing 'once a century' disasters this year.

Though, given what happens when you go out of an open-air concert nowadays, I'm thinking more of us should stay home a read a new book, instead of going out into the new unsettling world. It seems fantasy worlds are much safer than the real one.

Hmmm, it seems to me there is another explanation for this possible:
At least with my browser (Opera, don't know for others), I can log-in, get to multible stories – all in separate tabs – start to read one and send you a mail concerning this story. As long as I don't log-out, close and restart Opera, or restart Windows, the tabs I created for your stories are not updated! So I can't see I got mail.

I do the same thing. I keep several windows I check frequently permanently open, like my current story stats page, the "Series Updates" Page, and of course the Forum page. However I don't typically check the SOL home page, and I check the other home pages (FS and Sci-Fi) even less.

I just had to go and check. Somehow I managed to get a database error. The error screen said that the webmaster knows about it.

This happens for a few minutes twice a day when the system updates the database. Wait a moment then check again.

A resend got me back to the home page. Then when I clicked on Mail again, it went kablooey again. Is SOL caching the crashing? ;)

AJ

A resend got me back to the home page. Then when I clicked on Mail again, it went kablooey again. Is SOL caching the crashing? ;)

The back-up takes a few minutes, and I got the message during that time as well, a little later it was good to go after I hit F5 - mind you, most browsers will put the database message in the local cache and a simple refresh may call it from the local cache, while and F5 will download from the site.

An SOL user has to train themselves to look at the upper right corner to see if there is any mail. If they don't know the Mail link is there, they won't check it.

I find the bright yellow box with read text extremely demanding of my attention despite the location on the large 28 inch 4K monitor size.

All my replies have been read, even those I was expecting to provoke further conversation. Considering the hallowed company, I'm not sure that's a good thing ;)

AJ