How do notifications work in this?

There's certain areas where I'd like to be notified if someone posts something, but I can't figure out how to have it email me when that happens. I see a bookmark function but that seems more like a "come back to when you feel like" function than a "notify me whenever something here changed" function. I've also noticed that within a discussion (but not on the list of discussions) there's a checkbox next to bookmark. It has no label so I have no idea if this is what it does or not. I tried using the Oracle Community FAQ but