Favourites
A favourite is a bookmark. It puts an item on your list and does nothing else — no notifications, no state. Available on every content item.
Follows
A follow is a subscription to an item’s lifecycle: “tell me when this changes”. It comes with a set of switches, and which switches exist depends on what kind of item it is — a server can go offline; a mod cannot.
The switches
| Switch | Default | Fires when |
|---|---|---|
notifyReleases |
on | A new release is published |
notifyChangelogs |
on | A changelog entry is added |
notifyUpdates |
on | The item itself is edited |
notifyRoadmap |
on | Its roadmap moves |
notifyMedia |
off | Somebody adds to the gallery |
notifyDependencies |
off | Its dependencies change |
notifyComments |
off | Somebody comments |
notifyDiscussions |
off | Somebody posts on its board |
The defaults are the ones a new follower would pick: the low-volume lifecycle events on, the high-volume chatter off.
Server-only switches
| Switch | Default | Fires when |
|---|---|---|
notifyServerOnline |
off | It comes back up |
notifyServerOffline |
off | It goes down |
notifyServerMapChange |
off | The map changes |
notifyUsersAbove |
— | Population rises past a number you set |
notifyUsersBelow |
— | Population drops below one |
Following a server does not announce its current state
The notifier keeps its own snapshot of each followed server. A server you have just followed has no snapshot yet, so the first pass records the current state and emits nothing — you hear about the next change, not about whatever it happened to be doing when you pressed follow.
That snapshot is also why these notifications cost nothing on the scanner’s side: a job walks only the servers that actually have followers, rather than every scan paying for a comparison whether anyone follows the server or not.
Account settings win
Every switch is additionally gated by your account-wide notification settings and by the per-type preferences. A switch here says “I want this kind of event”; it cannot override “I want no notifications at all”.
Following a person is a different feature
Following a member is its own thing, with a fixed notification set — posts, comments, messages — because a person is followed for their activity rather than their lifecycle.
It also has one behaviour item-follows do not: its switches are tri-state. Left unset, they inherit your global “from people I follow” defaults, so you can either flip one switch for everybody or tune individual people.
followNotifyMessages defaults to on, unlike the other two, because it
gates the notification for a direct message from somebody you follow — and
defaulting it off would silently swallow messages. It exists so a follow can be
muted per person, not so following somebody opts you into being messaged.