Batching notification emails

[tim]

Title:
Batching notification emails

Area:
email notifications

Summary:
Combine multiple email notifications into a single email based on temporal and topical similarity.

Description:
It's pretty common for someone to grant access to user X, subscribe to X, and maybe even send X a private message explaining who they are, all at the same time. As it is, I would get three separate emails if that occurred. I suggest batching up all similar email notifications that are generated within a given time period (say half an hour?) and combining them into a single email. "Similar" could just mean involving the same user (in the above example, I would get one email saying "X granted you access; X subscribed to you; X sent you a message") or even combining multiple subscription notifications into a single email, for all those really popular people out there.

Poll #3898 Batching notification emails

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
8 (17.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
7 (15.6%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
21 (46.7%)

(I have no opinion)
7 (15.6%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (4.4%)

Comments

[cesy]

I like getting them separately.

[ratcreature]

On one hand having them bundled would be convenient. OTOH having these separately makes finding things in my inbox easier later on though. Like if I want to see all who subscribed to me, I can search in the subject for subscribed, it's not buried in the body, where subscribed occurs in far more contexts.

[tim]

You need to use an email program with a better search feature :-)

[ratcreature]

I don't think so. I use mutt locally, but it is still easier to write do a "l subscribed" and limit the display to messages with subject containing subscribed than to write some regular expression. Same with gmail which is what I use on the web.

[kyrielle]

It also makes it easier to later junk one and keep another if you only want to keep one after a while.

[melannen]

An option for "digest" notifications - say, a daily post that bundles all your notifications for 24 hours - might be useful for some people, but I suspect that if you tried to group them by topic, nobody would agree which methods of grouping were useful.

(FTR, you can turn off e-mail notifications some of your example things separately, if you're getting too many emails - I get emails for comments and circle adds but not PMs, for example, so that version of grouping wouldn't even apply to me.)

[jadelennox]

I suspect that if you tried to group them by topic, nobody would agree which methods of grouping were useful.

+1

[existence]

+1.

[jazzfish]

+1

[cheyinka]

I can definitely see the use for "digest" notifications, but I wouldn't want it to be the default.

[thorfinn]

+1

Digest for *all* notifications, with options for frequency. See mailman again for options and behaviour: http://www.list.org/mailman-admin/node19.html

Note that this includes options for digest type - MIME multipart/digest or RFC1153 plaintext digests

The only type of grouping option I might see as a useful thing to have would be "separate digests for each notification type" or "digest all notifications".

[pauamma]

Yes, and deciding whether X's reply to your entry/comment in your journal/a comm/another user's journal posted around the same time X added you to their circle and PM'd you should be bunched with their other actions in the notification email sent you, because that depends a lot on content. If it's an introduction or a well-written comment, yes. If it's spam, trolling, flaming, abusive, or otherwise something that requires immediate action, probably not. And there's no way that DW can tell those apart.

In addition, this may cause drama if notification emails for the same comment are deferred for one user (eg, the entry author) and not another (eg, the flamebait commenter).

FYI

[yvi]

A daily comment digest feature has been suggested and pickedfor implementation already: http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1687 http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/54674.html

[sorchasilver]

The "digest" idea might be a good option to offer on a per-user basis, but as it stands this reads as a change to thee default approach, and it's not one I would want. I like the current set-up.

[kyrielle]

+1

[charamei]

+1

[havocthecat]

So long as comment notifications don't get batched, I actually really like this idea.

[pauamma]

Actually, batching comment notifications and poll answers in the same entry (and by the same user) may be useful, for suggestions if nothing else.

[tim]

Yes, I certainly wouldn't suggest doing that.

[kareila]

If implemented, this should be an option to turn on, not a change to the default behavior.