OK, I got the author to show. Now, I want the messages to continue coming to my emails even though I haven't returned to the site.
A workaround for this:
no more notifications will be sent until you visit the topic
That way, members who subscribe may continue to read posts without coming to the site until they want to post. I'm looking now at the code all the way at the bottom of functions_posting.php for clues. I'm not a coder, just a hack with ambition, so I'm posting it here because they seem to go hand in hand as concepts. You want to read the post's content in your email to see if it's worth coming to the site. What if you don't want to bother for that post? You still have to come to the site or you won't get the next email to read the next post.
Am I being clear or just confusingly verbose?