Changing the default subscription mode for all users

My proposal involves changing the default subscription mode when starting a new thread (e.g. posting a question) in the Main Support forums (at the very least the General Help forum) to "Instant email notification" by default.

Background

From time to time I spent time answering posts that have not yet been answered (also known as unanswered posts). I mostly do this in the General Help forum. Most posts I answer are already a few days old, in some cases even more than a week. I've come to notice that in a lot of these the original author will no longer respond, even if your answer is guaranteed to be the solution to the posters question (most of my posts are what I call thread solvers, I only tend to answer threads when I know the answer).

I consider this troublesome for a number of reasons:

• It's de-motivating for the one answering the question. Even though I have provided the answer for well over a hundred questions I can count the number of times I've been thanked on one hand (as mentioned before, in most cases there is simply no response).
• The poster might not be aware that his/her question has been answered and feel like he/she was not helped. This will possibly lead to cross-posting or double posting, as some users tend to post new threads instead of bumping the old one (which they've lost track of).

Changing the default subscription mode when starting a new thread to "Instant email notification" by default will help in countering these two points and broaden participation.

It is currently indeed possible for users to choose a subscription type when posting a new thread (or even set a global notification type), however based on my experiences I am led to believe that most users currently neglect to enable this option. I do note however that this is an assumption.

Use cases

Ubuntu Forums:

• A new user posts a question to the General Help forum and forgets to subscribe. A week later somebody from the unanswered posts team notices that the user's question has not yet been answered and provides assistance. The user however is not notified and does not notice the reply and decides to post yet another thread.

A non-Ubuntu Forums example:

• At the time of posting this proposal the meeting date was still set for April the 20th. If I had not subscribed to the ForumCouncilAgenda wiki page I might not have been aware when the next date was set and forgotten to show up.

Examples

• _a custom gui bar menu on gnome-terminal? (cross posted in Desktop Environments)

• Change terminal text color based on IP adress

• On Remote Server, Nautilus sometimes can't create folders/files

• Command for Quick-Open Location?

• Beginner question on users ...

• Thumbnailer chose a spoiler.

And many, many more.

Technical implementation

I am not aware nor have I investigated if vBulletin currently supports this functionality (per forum default subscription mode when posting threads). If not, then if this proposal is accepted somebody will have to patch vBulletin or if possible write a plugin. I may be interested in implementing this. The most basic but least generic solution that could be implemented without too much effort would be to modify the code that renders the subscription dropdown to check if the forum being posted to is one from the Main Support categories and if so change the default option to "Instant email notification".

See also

• My profile at the Ubuntu Forums

• The unanswered posts team