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1. timtfj
   Member
   Aug 31, 2012, 1:38 AM

   On my dashboard and various other pages, at the top right, next to my logged-in name, there's a s small icon which lights up to show when someone has followed my blog, when someone has replied to one of my comments on another blog, and so on.

   I don't want most of these notifications. I have email notifications turned off for pretty well everything except new comments in the moderation queue, and I'd like to turn them off here as well. Especially the idiotic "badges" or whatever they're called, which I find embarrassingly childish and annoying . . .

   Where is the setting to do that, please? The page where I thought I'd find it turned out just to be a list of all the notifications. I want to turn off everything except Likes and new follower notifications.

   Thanks in advance.

   The blog I need help with is timtfj.wordpress.com.

2. timtfj
   Member
   Aug 31, 2012, 1:40 AM

   Clarificiation: I want either to customise which types of notification the icon lists, or turn the feature off altogether (since the information exists elsewhere anyway).

3. jimharwood1956
   Member
   Sep 15, 2012, 11:54 PM

   I've had the same problem. I agree with your position on this issue. I beleive this subject has come up many times since the creation of that notification feature, and I suspect many others do not like it. I've taken the same steps you have, such as to limit notifications to comments, as far as email notifications are concerned. And I just took it one step further, for the notification feature at the blog, which might be useful to you too. The majority of irritating notices I get there are people "Liking" my postings. Problem is WordPress Stats and StatCounter I also use shows no visitors to my blog or a particular posting when it has been "Liked." I tuned off the "Like" buttons at my blog, and still I get "Likes" by people who have never visited my blog. I found out they are using the WordPress "Reader" at http://wordpress.com/#!/read/ where they can read and "Like" postings without being counted as a visitor at the blog. So it's like I have no visitors, but a hundred people "Liking" postings and me being pestered by that many notifications. I just figured it out, I hope. I used bulk action to delete all tags on all postings. "Reader" appears to be dependent upon tags. No tags, then my postings can't be found there in Reader. The loss of tags does not stop my blog from getting people who read postings at my blog and get counted as visitors, found via key words in title and text, still showing up in Google Search, BING, etc. That way I get real visitors who are counted and don't get pestered by notifications. I consider many of the "Likes" to be what I call "passive spamming" to get my attention, unlike "aggressive spamming" bringing the spam to me. No doubt about it, that the "Like" button is being abused in that way. And it's like Twitter users "following" me only to be "followed" back, not to read my tweets. Many WordPress users "Like" my postings only to get me to "Like" their postings or to "Follow" their blogs, without ever having actually read my blog. It appears to function as an attention getting social feature more than anything else or anything really useful to me. So, removing tags from your postings using the bulk option should reduce notifications without loss of actual visitor traffic, by stopping the social aspect of "Likes" by people who don't read anything anyway.

4. jimharwood1956
   Member
   Sep 16, 2012, 12:25 AM

   Further, my problem was the cause of the most unwanted notifications, being people abusing the "Like" button. They just sit there at "Reader" and "Like" everything they see in order to get attention for their blogs - usually not what WordPress would consider to be "spam blogs" but what I would consider to be "spam blogs" or otherwise there to push a product or service. By trying to get my attention to get me to go see who "Liked" my blog and what their blogs are about, they get me to come to the spam instead of bringing the spam to me such as in comments. That's what I mean by "passive spam" compared to "aggressive spam" via "Like" button abuse by using Reader. But a lot of the abuse appears to be social like Twitter, not a spam issue. I once posted a very long complicated political article at one of my blogs, which should have taken 20 minutes to read. In 10 seconds after posting it, it was "Liked" by someone who has never visited my blog - I got the notification - I checked stats and hadn't had any visitors yet that day. So it had to have been "Liked" from WordPress Reader. I don't want "Likes" or "Followers" or "Subscribers" causing notifications. I just want real readers who read what I write and get counted in stats as actual visitors to my blog. The "Likes" and relating notifications are just part of the WordPress social fantasy world, useless to me and the purpose of my blogs. However, timtfj, I do like your About page content http://timtfj.wordpress.com/about/ but I'm not going to "Like" it and cause an unwanted notification. Keep up the good work! I'll check you blog in the future.

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