In their never-ending battle to end all interest in blogging, they have implemented yet another unwanted feature.
They have decided that it would be a great idea (!!!) to make “Notify me of follow-up comments via email” be automatically selected for you, because certainly you aren’t smart enough to check the box if you really want such a thing:
So if you’re getting weird emails about having recently followed a blog’s post, that’s why.
I do not have the option of making the default unchecked – I can only have the box there or not, so I have removed it. My apologies to anyone who actually wants this option, but I’m guessing most people don’t. If the WP idiots decide to change the default, I’ll put it back, but I don’t expect that to happen.
For other WordPress blogs, be sure to look for that checkbox when you write a comment, and uncheck the box before posting your comment.
For anyone else with WordPress, here’s how to eliminate the checkbox, as explained by tita buds, whose post helped me figure it out:
- Go to your Dashboard, then Settings, then Discussion.
- Scroll down until you see the two large ‘boxes’.
- Below that there are three options. One is to ”Show a follow comments option in the comments form’‘. It is checked by default. Uncheck it.
- Scroll on down and click Save Changes.
- Wait for the page to re-load then check if the change you made was indeed saved. If not (it wasn’t for me at first try), rinse and repeat. [Cheryl’s note – it didn’t save it for me the first time either! But the second update worked.]
What this will do is get rid of the Notify me of follow-up comments via email’ checkbox. The option to be notified via email when a new post is made (in other words, to follow your blog) remains.
If you have already managed to somehow get subscribed to a blog or post, you can unsubscribe this way:
1. Log in to WP.com.
2. Open a new tab or stay on that tab but open this link: https://subscribe.wordpress.com/
3. You will be directed to a page where all the blog sites and comments you subscribed to are listed. Under the logo and the ‘heading’ WordPress.com, there’s ‘Sites’, ‘Comments’, and ‘Settings’.
4. Very important: Default view is on ‘Sites’ but you don’t want to unsubscribe from those so click on ‘Comments’.
5. Check all that you want to unsubscribe from.
6. Click on the downward arrow beside ‘Bulk Actions‘ on top, choose Unfollow, then Apply.
CabledSheep 
Maybe they want to go out of business but don’t know how to tell all y’all.
lol. I thought I had just clicked it accidentally.
Of course, I actually follow discussions via email on a number of book blogs… 🙂 Actually, I was following them via RSS, but apparently they broke the RSS feed option when they added the default email setting. GRRRR.
On the plus side, with a self-hosted blog, this stuff doesn’t happen unless I choose to do it.
Thanks! I couldn’t figure out why I’d accidentally checked that box. You’re right, WP is making blogging not fun. Seems like silly ideas come rolling along there pretty frequently.
I’m just happy to see that it’s not only Six Apart/Typepad making bonehead assumptions & decisions about things like this.
I had to “unsubscribe” to comments on a post yesterday. All the platforms are messing about and it’s about to drive us from blogging!
Because I have an old WordPress account, I can’t even comment any more with my usual email address unless I sign in. No idea what my password is. So I used a 10 Minute email.
I figured it was something like that. There are already a million distractions from blogs lately (okay, Ravelry), but I wish they’d stop mucking around with the. I’ve been annoyed since Google put auto refresh on my feed reader.