**tl;dr:** we've noticed TopAnswers users sometimes 'lose the thread' — i.e. not realise when someone has commented or tried to ping them — and we have revamped room notifications to try to combat this.

### **The problem**

Most people using TopAnswers are familiar with Stack Exchange, and a lot of things work in a similar way here. For example, we use markdown, have voting and have topic-based communities.

'How chat pings work' is not on that list of familiar things — they are quite different here. The presence (or otherwise) of a '@username' in the message does not determine who gets a ping, it's just usually inserted for you when you are pinging as a convenience so:

1. you can ping someone without any visual indication in your message
1. you can have '@username' in your message without pinging anyone

This is a feature, and useful, once you are used to it — but it is a cause of confusion for new users, and we've been thinking for some time how to fix that. We've toyed with the idea of using notifications when 'subscribed' to a room (like when you subscribe to a question) but think they are too much of a sledgehammer for this nut.

### **What has changed?**

Instead of using notifications, we have expanded the 'unread chat count' feature. From now on, a user is auto-subscribed to a room whenever they do any of:

* post a question (so are subscribed to the brand new question room)
* post an answer (and this is the one we are a little unsure of — we may remove this based on feedback)
* post a chat message or comment

Once subscribed, the room will appear in your room list if there are any unread messages in there. That's in addition to the old reason for appearing (i.e. you have chatted in there recently/often). The unread message counter will show, unless:

* the room does not allow subscriptions (only the [sandbox](/meta?room=741) room currently has that flag set)
* you have 'muted' the room  
   \
   ![Screenshot 2020-04-15 at 14.41.46.png](/image?hash=9027638e70edab50c2a1f8775d423098a90fd2b1b23826a9339b9bf348ec8327)
* you post the `:see_no_evil:` monkey emoji in the room :see_no_evil:

Sorry Peter we are just kidding about the monkey :)

### **Is this going to be annoying?**

We hope not. If it is, we can consider some/all of the following:

* a 'mark all read' feature
* no auto-subscribe when answering
* a profile opt-out from auto-subscribing to question rooms when posting

### **Is anything else going to change?**

We have another UI change in the works due an experimental release soon. The room list is going to be in the footer area instead of down the right hand side, but hidden behind a single footer button (with a 'unread' indicator) by default. This is part of the decluttering drive and, we think, won't adversely affect navigation or 'unread counter' visibility significantly.