Extend "track all comments in this community" to non-members

[cesy]

Title:
Extend "track all comments in this community" to non-members

Area:
communities, notifications

Summary:
Extend the "members of a paid community can track comments on all entries" to be "anyone can track comments on all entries in a paid comm" so it is useful for comms like <user name=changelog> which cannot easily have open membership.

Description:
The feature to "track all comments in this community, on any entry" is available to admins in free communities and all members in paid communities. However, this leaves us a bit stuck where you want to restrict membership to just people with posting access, or for things like <user name=changelog>. I suggest that if the community is paid, or possibly just premium paid, the "track all comments" option should be available to everyone, not just members, just the same as for tracking comments on an individual entry.

Downsides: Possibly more server load, as more people will see the option and use it. However, they could already use it if the community has open membership, or by tracking every entry manually in a closed community. If it was made premium-paid only, that would be an incentive for communities to upgrade, which would counteract the extra server load. The feature is also already only for paid communities.

Poll #4518 Extend "track all comments in this community" to non-members

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 50

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
31 (62.0%)

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

Shouldn't be implemented.
6 (12.0%)

(I have no opinion)
13 (26.0%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[aedifica]

I assume this would only allow tracking of comments on entries the user had rights to see, of course.

[cesy]

Yes, that should already be built in to the code for members.

[arethinn]

I'm curious why this is dependent on the paid status of the community rather than the paid status of the user who wishes to do such tracking and on whose behalf the server load related to generating the notifications is incurred.

[matgb]

Simples. It's a feature that makes having a paid community actually useful. For the most part, there ar few reasons to pay for a comm, but this feature, in and of itself, would be worth paying for a comm for.

Because that way openID users who only come to the site for that comm can subscribe in full to the comm. In other words, it'd be a good feature for those of us using the site for public facing blogs.

Have it for both paid comms and paid users on non paid comms would be fine for me (as a mostly paid user), but I'd really like to use DW for public facing group blogs on a serious scale, and this would be a good revenue raiser for that use.

[denise]

and on whose behalf the server load related to generating the notifications is incurred.

But it's the community generating the load, and it's a lot easier to check "is the community paid" at the very beginning of sending out the notifications than it is to check "is each of these members paid" -- the former is one check, the latter could be thousands.

[ninetydegrees]

arethinn's comment made me think that if doing that would be problematic (due to the increased number of notification that would have to be sent) you could restrict this to paid users: paid users viewing paid communities could track all comments even if they're not a member.

[faithofone]

I'm not familiar with how adminning a community works, but isn't it possible to set up privilege groups within a community to keep posting down to authorized people, while allowing open membership?

[azurelunatic]

It's possible, but it can be a pain to maintain, if there are to be people added to the list. Though allowing everybody to post, and then having a moderation queue can be the least painful way of handling that.

[faithofone]

Is it a pain because the tools are inadequate? If so, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to try and fix that instead of adding another layer of paid privileges.

[denise]

We are already doing things to make it less painful, but there are times at which it just can't 100% work to allow everyone to be members.

[faithofone]

Oh, I should have figured if there was a weak spot you'd already have something in the works for it. Thanks for answering my question. :)

[fizzyblogic]

I like this as a premium paid option especially.

[azurelunatic]

Belatedly (now that it's filed for future development) not restricting the easy ability to limit all-comment tracking to only members does have a publicity concern -- while public is still public, I am guessing that community members/participants have a habit of looking at the membership/watchership list of a community to think about who might be regularly reading the comments. This could interact badly with allowing users who aren't visibly listed in connection with the community to get notified of all new comments.

I'm not sure how to reconcile this concern with the helpful uses for the idea. It seems silly to want to restrict ability to track all comments to people who publicly subscribe on their reading list, but...