Notifications system stopped again :( Can mods fix again?

We are making changes to our mailing systems, for several reasons. I am hopeful that this will help with consistent delivery of notifications from the forum. Obviously it will take some weeks and months for you to confirm that this is the case.

Regards

I noticed a whole bunch of notifications in my junk mail folder the other day and reported them as not junk.

It's entirely possible that the server was temporarily blacklisted on email spam lists, and some mail providers just delay emails rather than block or filter them, especially if they are being forwarded from one email to another automatically when they first arrive.

I emailed in to recommend that somebody contacts the outgoing email provider to see if they can advise what is causing it and how to prevent/limit it from happening.

Edit: I just realised I already commented before that it might just be blacklisting... Whoops

And - it's broken again.    No updates from yesterday Thursday 12th March.     

Please can someone put some money in the meter or plug the cable back in or give the server a bit of a nudge again?

That's good to know (well, maybe not 128 messages at once!) Did anyone other than Plastic have this issue on this occasion? At the moment, I think notifications were still going out, so I'm not sure it was the same as the previous issue referred to above.

Thanks to whoever fixed the problem -  128 messages have just arrived,  

Yeah - that's what I was wondering - that's why I mentioned it - I don't know if anyone else on different providers are having the same problem.    On the previous 4 or 5 occasions, it's been a blockage in this site's server so restarting their application fixed the problem.

I happen to work for a web hosting company, so I'm familiar with a lot of the systems.

Depending on how the server is sending the emails, it could be that the server has been temporarily blacklisted somewhere and is unable to deliver messages to some recipients until that has expired.

There are so many things that can go wrong with email systems though that it's a wonder email works at all!

There's a reason why a lot of internet service providers no longer provide email... simply put it is a pain to maintain.

I don't know about others on the forum but historically, it's a blockage from the server here - once restarted, I get a flood of all the messages stuck in the blocked system.

Incidentally, I use an outlook.com e-mail but I don't know what systems others are using.

We'll check. I'm sorry for the problems and I'll report back. However, we're running the fix automatically every day, whether it's needed or not, to avoid any issues.

In the end, email is like the "real" post - indeed there are a number of features that it copies. There's even a "Post Office Protocol" (POP). One of the similarities is that, once mail goes out of our door, we have no real control, oversight or knowledge of delivery, which relies on other intermediate services including your local delivery office. Also any kind of notification or mailing to multiple people is particularly subject to being misidentified as spam and blocked.

Obviously, if no-one's getting notifications, it's probably us, but if only some users don't receive them, it's more likely to be elsewhere in the chain.

You can get the same notifications at the top of community pages - although obviously you have to visit and sign in to get those.