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Short version: Is there a way to get notifications about any comments or edits to a random question question?

Long Version I know you can get notifications about answers on a random question by marking it as favorite.

I've also read that there's a bit of an involved process in getting notifications about certain comments, like mentions (pings) or being the sole commenter to a question.

Some times I take particular interest in a certain question and would like try to answer it in the future, but often happens questions are incomplete or lack the proper information for a full answer in the first round

The natural course of action is of course asking the user for more info, screenshots, often post a blend file etc. So is there a sure way to get notified about any further edits or subsequent comments the user may make to his question, should the user add more information to it, so one may eventually revisit it or provide a proper answer?

They often get buried in the new questions stream and finding them in the Active pane is not always easy. Asking the user to mention us in a comment may work but not very reliable especially for newcomers.

EDIT

Just for the sake of completeness here is an instance where it actually happened. The question remained unanswered for quite some time, the user responded and commented on it but no one actually noticed until he luckily pinged one user and got some due attention.

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It sounds like you already read up on this, so there is not much more I can tell you.

Nope, you can not get notifications about activity on a question that is not yours.

You know about the favorite system (the best option SE offers now, still not great for this kind of thing, but I have used it for exactly this.)
You seem to know about how SE decides who to ping in the comments. In regard to your question comment pings are useless, unless the OP replies to your comment saying "see my edit" or something like that.

This has been discussed on the main meta before, and the same few answers come up: favorite list, RSS, your own list.
If you are hoping that an edit will notify commenters, that is very unlikely. As stated on the main meta, there are too many cases where those pings would just be noise.

I for one would vote for sortable favorite lists, where there are folders. That woulds sove a few issues that come up across SE.

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  • $\begingroup$ Ah i see, this would make a fine feature request for SE then. RSS might be a nice workaround for me since I do use a reader daily, but your suggestion of organized favorites would sure be great. This would allow for powerful categorization like a folder for 'true' favorite questions, one for saving frequent answers or references for duplicates that pop up often, and one for 'temporary' favorites that you just want to get back to. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Jul 10, 2016 at 18:56
  • $\begingroup$ Curiously an occurrence of this situation happened just yesterday. Added a reference link just for completeness sake. $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2016 at 19:53
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    $\begingroup$ good example case! $\endgroup$
    – David Mod
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 2:37

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