Can anyone justify why alerts should exist for longer than a month

[Illuminati Order Official]

This is the only one I ever wanted to return to:

And I already have a screenshot of it.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Inactives coming back? I dunno, doesn't seem important to me.

 

[SCV]

The only thing I can think of is maybe you're away and then want to respond to replies you've gotten. Could alerts about replies last a few months and alerts about stickers last a few days? The vast majority of them are sticker alerts right?

 

[Spooky Space Kook]

Have reaction alerts expire after a while but if it's a reply keep the alert maybe. Or have a setting so people can choose how long the alerts stays active. I think people like alerts of reactions because it can show them how active the thread it but that could be done away with if people are encouraged to just follow the thread instead to get notified.

 

[Wright]

Honestly, there's probably no good reason for it. I'm humored by having the ability to check and see what alerts I had years & years ago, but I only rarely do at best. Probably not worth having a 160 million row long table for.. And it seems you've already allowed it to start truncating so lol

 

[Skint]

Completely removing reddit karma notifs again would suffice imo, since I expect them to be 90% fo all bloat, but a simple blanket 30-day expiration is also alright.
If someone who's been away for a longer while wants to see if they've been quoted, they can just pick up from where they've left off in threads they're following and go from there or go by their post history page.
There's no reason for not having only generic mentions/quotes notifs across profiles and forum enabled, and simply actually use the Watched threads page for tracking your interests instead of doing it through notifications.

 

[Mankirk]

Wouldn't the reactions received portion of the profile capture at least the reaction notifications? I could see preferring to keep mention and quote notifications, but maybe you can write a filter to expose that without requiring notifications anyways.

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

160 million is a lot of rows, that’s gotta run like ass. I’m good with deleting alerts after any period greater than 14 days.

 

[Pelican Bones]

I think there are some people that have not clicked that bell just to see the number go up. IIrc someone had like 20'000 Notifications.
They won't be happy about that change.

...like tears in the rain.

 

[FramerGirl420]

Lots of people take long breaks, they're the only ones I'd consider really. How will @FramerGirl420 know we mentioned her? Think of the sloth, Ooperator.

It does take me a while to log in these days with my advanced age, thank you Frond~

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

Fucking delete it.

 

[Preacher ✝]

Users who haven't visited the site for long is the only case I can come up with ad hoc

Is there a way to make it only apply to alerts that have been read?

That way it won't remove them for people who have been going for a while, and if someone wants to preserve an alert for some reason they can just mark it unread.

 

[Local FloRida-man]

Because its fun for my reptile brain to see the little number go up

But nah, just nuke all of them. Even for replies and quotes. If a user really cared about the conversation that much they can physically go back to the thread and check for themselves like a fucking man.

 

[Tealeaf]

delete alerts older than a week from their last recorded login date. That way users who irregularly log in can catch up with their (You)s if they like

Also, don't delete any alerts from users that are currently actively logged in so you won't immediately rugpull their alerts as they check them out. But if they log in, ignore their alerts and go away again, let it get swept.

 

[Autistic Joe]

I would say 90 days but I'm always paranoid about data removal. I can see people taking a month off from the forums, but 90 days would cover peopel touching grass during summer vacation. If we're needing to improve forum performance, 90 days is better than 'forever' but much less aggressive than 30.

Also seconding: If separating them is an option, if its just sticker reacts, yeah flush that after 30. Replies and quotes should hang around longer.

This is the best idea in the thread. If it's possible to separate them then 30 days for sticker reactions, 90 days for the rest - at least for the unread notifications. Once they're read it could be even sooner, like 7 days for stickers and 30 for the rest. This would probably cut down 95%+ of the storage, if they're currently being kept indefinitely.