Birthday notifications on the day of

[archersangel]

Title:
Birthday notifications on the day of

Area:
notifications

Summary:
You could choose to have birthday notifications the day of in addition to, or instead of, two days before.

Description:
Under the Notifications section in My Account Settings where it says "One of the people on my access or subscription lists has an upcoming birthday", have a sub-section appear when someone checks that box which has the option of getting a notification two days before, the day of or both.

Poll #3973 Birthday notifications on the day of

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
25 (61.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
2 (4.9%)

(I have no opinion)
14 (34.1%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[noxie]

I love this suggestion! I always forget b-days when I get the notification two days early.

[zvi]

I don't think this really requires an option, and if the new calendaring system is progressing, it renders the birthday notifiers obsolete anyway.

[denise]

Just for some context: the reason that b'day notifs are sent out up to two days early is because of timezones and because the process that sends b'day notifs only runs once a day. On LJ, it used to be the day before, but people in the far eastern time zones wound up semi-regularly getting notifs after the birthday had passed, due to mail delays and the fact the worker only ran once a day. Or, someone in, say, Hawaii would get the notif for a b'day of a friend who lived in the Philippines after the day had passed. So, two days before wound up giving it just enough leeway.

This has been your LJ/DW history lesson for the day!

[sophie]

So I found this suggestion just now when I was searching before submitting my own suggestion for this (which I haven't done now because this existed) and I'm a little curious as to why this was rejected; having an additional option would be useful, and LJ itself has done this as part of its birthday notifications for some time now. (It's incredibly handy!)

Would this be worth another suggestion submission?

[denise]

Mostly because mucking around with the notification system (ia ia cthulhu f'tha'gn) is not done lightly, and timezones are messy, and two days before is Close Enough for most purposes, really. I mean, we could add a "notify me on the day of a friend's b'day instead of beforehand" notification, but that would be another option (and options are bad) and eat up another notification slot (and free users only have a few of those) and timezones would mean that no matter what time of day we scheduled the notifier to run, it would arrive too late (or sometimes way too late) for a not insignificant subset of people. I don't really think the change would be worth it.