No longer receiving publish notifications... broken by new format?

[+CarolynCL]

Since the format of the notifications have changed, I have ceased to receive any notifications of new publications. New pulications were the only thing I was monitoring for, and they have come successfully for the last two years. This was one of the two biggest benefits to having a membership (the other being the pocket queries)... I feel like I have lost half the value of my membership

 

I have tried everything to get them back, and no dice. Adding other types of notifications to the same query successfully delivers them (i.e. I can get archives, requests for maintenance, notes, etc.... everything but publications). I even added a new gmail account to my profile, and I can get publish notices to come there, but that is relatively useless to me, as my Blackberry email account is my IBM Notes account, so I've essentially lost the real notification feature. I have to go to a website and run a pocket query or go to the website and login to gmail to look for a publication... some effect, and that isn't a notification IMHO.

 

I am wondering if it is all the unnecessary junk that has been added to the subject line? Is it possible that this is making it look like spam to my server? It's not ending up in my junk mail folder, so I can only imagine something about the format is considered to be SPAM. It's the only thing that I can see that seems to be unique about the publish emails.

 

I'd like to know if anyone has any ideas, and I would dearly like to have an option to have the old format back.

 

Thanks

[+CarolynCL]

One more peculiarity, I can forward the email about the publication manually from my gmail -> my notes. Those come through fine.

[+ecanderson]

You don't say what your primary email client is, so I have to ask -- have you set up any rules for it? Recent changes to email may have broken any rules you may have set up.

[+CarolynCL]

You don't say what your primary email client is, so I have to ask -- have you set up any rules for it? Recent changes to email may have broken any rules you may have set up.

No rules... everything comes to my inbasket.

[+Burton Kidz]

Just noticed that I'm not getting notification of newly published caches either! I'm using Outlook on two different computers, both running Windows 7. Missed a possible FTF today, 8 mile away.

[+CarolynCL]

Just noticed that I'm not getting notification of newly published caches either! I'm using Outlook on two different computers, both running Windows 7. Missed a possible FTF today, 8 mile away.

 

Well, at least I'm not alone...

 

Can you get other notifications with the same query? I can turn on archives, enables (pretty much anything). Those come to me, but not the publish.

[+MartyBartfast]

Is it being detected as junk mail by your Email provider? May be worth lookin in the Junk folder (or equivalent).

[+CarolynCL]

Is it being detected as junk mail by your Email provider? May be worth lookin in the Junk folder (or equivalent).

It's not in my junk mail folder, I check there daily. And it isn't in any other folder either. I think it is being blocked as SPAM and not delivered to me at all. Curiously though, all other Groundspeak emails get through. You would think if one was blocked, all would be blocked. It is a puzzle.

[+ecanderson]

Curiously though, all other Groundspeak emails get through. You would think if one was blocked, all would be blocked.

That's not always the case. Though I don't think it applies in this case (but throwing it out just in case), gc.com is using different servers to produce different mailings to members. There have been times in the recent past where gc.com's mailing list has been in poor condition, with many 'dead' addresses. By sending out mail to so many 'dead' addresses, gc.com's server develops a bad 'reputation' with various ISPs mail servers, and those servers can on that basis refuse to talk to gc.com's mail servers. When that happens, mail doesn't flow from gc.com to the ISP, so you wouldn't even see it in a spam area. There's some possibility that your ISP is unhappy with whichever server gc.com is using to deliver these particular email messages.

 

gc.com says they've been working on cleaning up their mailing lists and clearing out the dead addresses, but it could be that an ISP tightens down on their rules. The ISP does this because with many bad addresses being detected, it looks like the mail is coming from a spammer who is just shotgunning emails out, hoping some of them get delivered.

[+CarolynCL]

Curiously though, all other Groundspeak emails get through. You would think if one was blocked, all would be blocked.

That's not always the case. Though I don't think it applies in this case (but throwing it out just in case), gc.com is using different servers to produce different mailings to members. There have been times in the recent past where gc.com's mailing list has been in poor condition, with many 'dead' addresses. By sending out mail to so many 'dead' addresses, gc.com's server develops a bad 'reputation' with various ISPs mail servers, and those servers can on that basis refuse to talk to gc.com's mail servers. When that happens, mail doesn't flow from gc.com to the ISP, so you wouldn't even see it in a spam area. There's some possibility that your ISP is unhappy with whichever server gc.com is using to deliver these particular email messages.

 

gc.com says they've been working on cleaning up their mailing lists and clearing out the dead addresses, but it could be that an ISP tightens down on their rules. The ISP does this because with many bad addresses being detected, it looks like the mail is coming from a spammer who is just shotgunning emails out, hoping some of them get delivered.

 

Intriguing possibility... still hoping for a definitive explanation from Groundspeak. I've been emailing back and forth with one of their "community advisors" - unforunately the suggestions posed so far have not been helpful (I feel like I'm dealing with level 1 support when really level 2 or 3 is needed for this issue).

[+ecanderson]

The reason I brought it up is because I became aware a while back that they were using a different server for the weekly newsletter vs. other cache status emails. All status emails were getting to me, but weekly newsletters were not. Turns out that the newsletter server had such an awful 'reputation' with Comcast's mail server (my ISP) that they were rejecting most of the traffic from that server at gc.com. Nobody at gc.com was looking at the logs so did not realize why this was happening. Finally took a call by ME to Comcast to find out that it was a reputation issue for the IP address of gc.com's newsletter server. They've since moved the newsletter to a server that Comcast wasn't so unhappy about, and assured that they would start cleaning up the gc.com mailing list so that this didn't occur again, but ...

 

Who knows how many different servers are involved in all of the mail we get? Anyway - that's why I brought up the possibility.

[+EngPhil]

Who knows how many different servers are involved in all of the mail we get? Anyway - that's why I brought up the possibility.

 

As of the last week: watchlist, owner, bookmark, PQ *and* publication emails have been received from:

 

signal.Groundspeak.com [66.150.167.157]

 

and the weekly spamnewsletter has come from

 

signal2.Groundspeak.com [66.150.167.158]

 

So blocking based on connecting server seems unlikely; it's more likely the content of the message that's tripping up a filter somewhere.

 

Yet another argument for allowing us to choose the format of email that works for each of us.

[+stone-cacher]

Hmmmm... I still receive notifcations for new released caches (even though they are in this terrible HTML format).

But I'm afraid this does not help you at all.

 

Sometimes it helps do disable an option, log out, log in, enable the same option... Maybe this is also the case with the Groundspeak application

[+CarolynCL]

Hmmmm... I still receive notifcations for new released caches (even though they are in this terrible HTML format).

But I'm afraid this does not help you at all.

 

Sometimes it helps do disable an option, log out, log in, enable the same option... Maybe this is also the case with the Groundspeak application

That's a good idea. I think I will delete that query entirely. I am out of town anyway, so publish emails would do me no good anyway. When I get home to will try to set it up freshly, change up the choices a little and see if that cleans it up.

 

Of course, if I could choose to have my email in non-HTML format, I suspect I wouldn't have to do all this fussing... sure hope I can find a solution, as publish emails were one of the things I liked best about being a member.

[+jamagama]

We've been having similar problems. We will receive notifications on our primary e-mail address (via Gmail) but only for one type of cache at a time. Adding more notifications does not help, nor does turning them off and then on again. Plus, we would also like to know why adding a secondary e-mail address seems to do nothing, that is is why the 2nd e-mail address does not receive any notifications at all. We have checked the spam box, that's not the problem. We do not block anything actively via the mail program and monitor our mail via Mailwasher Pro directly on the mail server. This has caused us to miss new publications and of course the chances of ever getting a FTF are rapidly decreasing too. We check our mail via Eudora on a Windows 7 computer and on our phones (Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung's own email app). Other mail arrives normally and without any problems.

 

Please fix this ASAP, thanks.

[+The A-Team]

We will receive notifications on our primary e-mail address (via Gmail) but only for one type of cache at a time.

I'm not quite clear on what you mean by this. Do you mean, for example, for a few days you'll only get emails for your Traditonal notification, then for a few days only the Multi notification, etc.?

 

As for the secondary email address, there's no such thing for notifications. Each one can only be sent to one email address. If you want them to go to multiple email addresses, you either need to set up some kind of automatic forwarding on the email address outside of this website, or set up a duplicate notification using the second email address.