For a long time, we've been promising improvements to our email notifications system. The promised improvements have finally arrived.
We had a problem initially with the number of meails being sent out - the frequency control wasn't working. Sorry about that. The issue has been fixed now .
The key change with the new system is that you decide how frequently you want to receive notifications and you can set different intervals for different types of content. So you could set "Immediate"* for forum posts, allowing a more "real-time" participation in on-line discussions, whilst setting "daily" for everything else. If you don't want to receive so many notifications you might set the interval to weekly.
Your settings are easy to change from your account page ("my account") by selecting the "Notifications" tab. You have to log in first. The options are more-or-less self-explanatory, but we have added a help page. (If you have problems logging in, there's a help page for that too).
*Note: "Immediate" means "sometime within the next hour" as notifications are batched and distribtuted hourly.