Post News Articles - Avoid Notifications?

Morning all. I have a bit of a puzzle I need to figure out.

I need to move some content from a forum into news articles (copy/paste). But I very much need these new articles to NOT notify the members of the community because this group just isn't handling notifications well. Every notification they perceive as unnecessary is sending them into a bit of a rage.

Here's what I'm trying to do:

  • Create 4 articles with publish dates in the past. These are currently forum entries and the notifications from replies are aggravating the audience.
  • Do not send any notifications about these old articles to the members of the group. This is more about me getting organized than for them.
  • Continue to send out notifications for new articles that will come in the future.

Possible solutions I'm thinking of:

  • Write the articles elsewhere and move them in. Not sure if this would trigger any notifications.
  • Briefly turn off the notification that would go out for new articles, but not sure how long this would need to stay off for.
  • What else?

But most importantly: I'm under the impression that commenting on a news article subscribes you to the news article, but if you only view you don't get notifications on comments. Is this correct?

  • There is an option to disable notifications for specific API calls, however, this is not exposed directly through the UI. To use the UI, I would recommend disabling the notification types in administration, moving the content, then re-enabling the notifications. The notification types only need to be disabled while you are creating the content (assuming it is immediately published or published in the past).

    I'm under the impression that commenting on a news article subscribes you to the news article, but if you only view you don't get notifications on comments. Is this correct?

    Unless a customization is in place, members will not be subscribed to get updates to comments/replies just by viewing the content. Once a member has commented/replied, they will receive notifications about replies and other comments on the same content via the notification "Comments are made on content that I have commented on" or "Replies are added to threads I'm subscribed to" (for forum threads... members are subscribed to threads when they reply).

  • Disabling the notifications appears to have worked. Just re-enabled them a few minutes after completing the task, so we should be good!