I’ve labelled a few favourite tags here (and more on other sites). I appreciate them being highlighted on the question page.
Sometimes, however, I take breaks from Stack Exchange that can be anything between weeks and months. If any cool interesting question that uses my favourite tags happens to be asked during that time, I’m going to miss it. I don’t like that.
But I also don’t want a fixed e-mail notification for the following reasons:
When I’m active I don’t really need it, so I consider the e-mails spammy.
I actively want to stay away when I’m staying away, so I don’t want e-mail notifiers in that time.
I typically only check the e-mail account that is associated with SE once a day or less. I might well not have time to visit SE then and thus forget about the notification.
Stack Exchange and that e-mail will be open in different browser windows, so my brain does not do well connecting them.
Rather, Stack Exchange has a beautiful feature that leads me exactly to those places that seem interesting once I log on: The comment notification inbox.* That inbox also logs information about bounties (automatically) and chat responses after fifteen minutes. It is a beautiful place to send favourite question notifications to, because it is right where I want it. With the added benefit of me actually wanting to spend time on SE whenever I log on and see that notification icon. (They don’t go bad even after three months.)
Therefore I would like to request the feature that subscriptions to tags should be possible to the SE inbox rather than e-mail.
Additional clutter could be removed by an intelligent system that realises if I opened the question within 15 minutes of it being posted and then discards it from the notifications list. This already happens with chat replies and other users’ edits to one’s posts. Furthermore, it knows who I am and doesn’t need to send me notifications of my own questions.
Notes:
*: Feel free to suggest a better name …
