Mention notifications and unsubscribe

How to get there: Mention notifications are triggered automatically when someone uses <@user> in a comment. Recipients control them from the Unsubscribe link in the mention email, or globally from Profile → Notification preferences.

When someone @mentions a user in a comment, ProductLift emails that user. This article covers how the notification works and the three ways recipients can stop receiving them.

When a mention notification fires

A mention notification is sent when:

  1. A new comment is created containing <@user-key> syntax (see Mention users and posts).
  2. The mentioned user has receive_mention_notifications enabled on their profile (the global toggle).
  3. The mentioned user has not unsubscribed from mentions on that specific post.

If any of those three checks fails, no email is sent. Mentions in post descriptions or post mentions (#postkey (post not found)) do not trigger this notification.

The three unsubscribe options

1. Unsubscribe from this post only

Every mention email includes a one-click Unsubscribe from mentions on this post link. Clicking it:

  • Creates a mention_unsubscribes row for that user + post.
  • Shows a confirmation page with the option to resubscribe.
  • Leaves the user's global mention setting untouched, they still get mentioned on other posts.

This is the most common path. Useful when one specific thread is noisy but the user still wants to be reachable elsewhere.

2. Unsubscribe from all mentions

The same email also offers Unsubscribe from all mention notifications. Clicking it:

  • Sets receive_mention_notifications = false on the user's profile.
  • Stops every future mention email, on every post, in every portal they belong to.
  • Shows a confirmation page.

3. Toggle from the profile page

Users can also flip the global switch directly: Profile → Notification preferences → Receive mention notifications. This is the same flag the "Unsubscribe from all" link sets.

Resubscribing

From the post-specific unsubscribe confirmation page, a Resubscribe button is shown. It removes the mention_unsubscribes row for that post so future mentions email the user again.

To reverse a global unsubscribe, the user re-enables the toggle on their profile page. There is no email link for this since they no longer receive the emails it would be attached to.

What an admin sees

Mentions never appear in the post follower notification history. They are person-to-person notifications, separate from the follower email stream. If a user complains they never got mentioned, check:

  • Their profile has Receive mention notifications enabled.
  • They are not in mention_unsubscribes for that post.
  • The comment actually contains <@their-key>, not a plain-text "@name" string.