Notification of new topic in followed profile forum

Unless I'm missing something, is it not possible for users to receive notifications when new topics are started in the forums of profiles they follow?

E.g., in the case of Our Town Story, a user follows the Springfield profile because they are interested in talking about it, but currently they never know if someone else starts a discussion there. Using the bands metaphor, wouldn't someone want to know if someone started a new discussion on one of the bands they follow?
updated by @iamtimbo: 09/08/16 12:25:39PM

Not at this time - there's nothing in the profile forum module to do this, and I could see it being VERY "chatty". Image a profile with 2,000 followers - not sure you'd want to be sending out thousands of emails every time a new forum topic is created.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

The issue I've got is as touched on in the other post about linked profiles. On our site are profiles for every town, village and city in the UK. They don't actively 'do' anything themselves; all they have are forums for discussing the history of that place, and a geo-referenced photo gallery.

As they never actually post anything themselves, nothing related to them ever shows up in their followers' timelines (people follow them because they are interested in that place, or are researching it for family history purposes, etc.). That makes the experience very stagnant for the average user - they have to go and actively check every forum in every place they're interested in, and if they repeatedly find nothing,then they'll give up.

It's the same with mentions. They would be interested in seeing if places they have followed are being mentioned in conversations, even if those conversations take another place's forums*.

You're right - very 'popular' places could generate a lot of emails, so perhaps it has to be a 'timeline only' entry, or a system similar to the one you already use for forum replies - you get a notification about a new forum post, but no more until you've actually visited the forum.

Volume is not something we have a problem with at the moment, but stagnation is.

*which reminds me - are you supposed to get a notification if you're mentioned in a forum reply - like this @brian?
updated by @iamtimbo: 06/08/16 11:31:46PM

Thinking about this a little more, and being entirely unaware (as I've not had a chance to look yet) as to the data available to search, I wonder if I can at the very least create a box to go above the user timeline that searches the profiles followed in the places quota and displays them alongside the number of topics in those profiles' forums.

Then at least when they log in, that might give them enough cause to go further and investigate them to see what's new. Ive never quite got my head around how you cross reference which profiles a user is following, but I will try and have a look later.