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I have come upon the situation where I see a question that really interests me.

I have nothing to add to this question at the moment, not a comment not answer but I'm particularly interested in what people have to say about this.

This leads me to think that in this situation, the favorite isn't enough.

My argument:

One of the main ideas of this site is that the questions you post may help others too, so that "allows me" to be as interested as the OP in the answers and comments to that question. (Even though it's not mine).

This is why I think that the favorite doesn't "notify enough", in the case where you want to be a very active participant/viewer of the question, even though you didn't ask it yourself.

Just to clarify, you should receive the same notifications as if you had asked the question.

The counter-argument:

I realize that this is particular situation, it is not every question that you would need to do this in every question.

It would probably need another button in the SE interface, and that is a BIG change.

It may mean too much information if over used.

Conclusion:

Despite this I think it would make a pretty good and useful feature that would benefit the site because of a greater user involvement in a question.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: As ChrisF points out in his comment there is also the RSS feed, I'm not a big fan and I like to keep my inbox very clean, but it true that it is quite similar to what I have "requested". The difference is that this feature keeps everything on-site.

Somehow related: Please allow me to follow questions

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  • There's also the RSS feed for the question at the bottom right of the page.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Dec 9, 2010 at 21:17
  • @ChrisF thank you for the heads up! I've edited my question.
    – Trufa
    Dec 9, 2010 at 21:27
  • i want this feature too. to follow interesting question and unfollow when i got answer.
    – Bonshington
    Jan 30, 2011 at 16:46

2 Answers 2

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I'm not sure why you think Favorites isn't enough. Right now, adding a question as a favorite means you get notified whenever the question receives updates, new answers, and new comments.

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  • 3
    @R. Bemrose I swear I´m not gettin any :) really? Thats weird! I´ll keep trying, but I'm sure it's "not working"
    – Trufa
    Dec 9, 2010 at 22:25
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    @R. Bemrose I've just favorited a whole lot of question, they have changed, and yet, I haven't received any notifiaction stackoverflow.com/users/… Maybe the problem is that my notifications are just not working right, is this even possible?
    – Trufa
    Dec 9, 2010 at 22:37
  • @Trufa: It's possible... you'd really need one of the SO team to weigh in on that one, though.
    – Powerlord
    Dec 10, 2010 at 15:25
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    I too think this should be a feature, cause I think favoriting a question is like saying this was a really good question, but sometime when I come over a question that just makes me think "LOL, WTF?", I'd like to follow it without it having to be a "fav".
    – Alxandr
    Jan 31, 2011 at 0:19
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    Yeah, I use favorites as sort of bookmark too. I guess you can use that as a workaround but somehow it feels tacky (IMHO).
    – Mrchief
    Jul 29, 2011 at 23:21
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    A year on: I don't get any notifications from my "favorites." Maybe that aspect of this "favorites" feature got removed?
    – spring
    Aug 12, 2012 at 15:19
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    I agree with @Alxandr; if that is really the intended use of the Favorites feature, calling that feature Favorites is a severe misnomer. As it is publicly visible how many people marked a certain question as a Favorite, it may very well be detrimental to overall question quality when poorly-written questions with a high significance to many people get higher Favorite votes than well-written questions about more specific topics.
    – O. R. Mapper
    Sep 29, 2012 at 10:38
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There are settings on the Prefs tab of your account page that control notifications for favorites. I've turned mine off since I use favorites more like bookmarks. There may still be a case for having the option to be notified or not on a per-question basis.

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    are you sure it works? I don't receive any updates from my favorited questions...
    – Florin Ghita
    Apr 9, 2012 at 8:27

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