Finer control over comment notification.

[tyggerjai]

Title:
Finer control over comment notification.

Area:
Notification.

Summary:
At the moment, I have selected to receive an email when someone comments on my post (or on a comment to my post, etc). While notification of the initial comment is great, I then seem to get another email for every edit. Please, let me make the madness stop.

Description:
I know people do reply from their inbox/email, and they'd want the latest version of the comment in case something significant has changed, so the ability to choose to receive edits is important.

But I always reply from the post page at DW, so I will always have the most recent version there. I don't need 7 emails "fixing a typo" once I know there's a comment.

Can we add an option to send notification only of the original comment, not every subsequent edit?

Poll #5121 Finer control over comment notification.

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 64

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
22 (34.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (4.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
19 (29.7%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (29.7%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (1.6%)

Comments

[tyggerjai]

But I can opt out of comment notification entirely, in which case presumably I see none of it.

Why, out of interest, would you vote no for an option for me to have finer control over my DW experience? I can understand you voting no if my suggestion was *no-one* should receive notification about edits, but I'm not sure I see the rationale for voting no on allowing me the option of what I do or don't have delivered to my inbox.

And aren't spammers just going to choose "minor edit" anyway? It's a vanishingly small risk with which I am prepared to live, and that I'm not proposing on forcing on anyone else. What precisely is your objection?

Not that it hugely matters, I can do it in my spam filters anyway. But then that's so many emails a week that just don't need to be sent.

[matgb]

I didn't vote no, I said with changes.

And your point about spammers is correct, makes me more inclined to switch to no (not going to, but). Personally, I didlike that people can completely opt out of notifications, they should always go somewhere, at the very least for public posts. But that's a restrictive step and we'd need reasons to do that (I don't mind no email, but on site notifications should be there.

I, frequently, get comment notifications for edits that completely rephrase comments, or add additional clauses and similar.

There have been times when I've not needed to reply to an original comment, but the eidt prompted a need to reply.

Several people are used to being able to edit comments in order to ask corrollary questions. If this were to be implemented, I think some sort of warning saying you've turned off edit notifications would be a good thing.

[cheyinka]

Out of curiosity, why do you dislike it that people can completely opt out of notifications?

[matgb]

I hate spammers.

Specifically, I've done work in search optimisation, and I do that work legitimately using well crafted sites and organic link generation (ie make sure the content is good and links will come).

If you're posting publicly, and not getting notified, then your older entries will be getting spam. If you're ignoring that, then you're helping spammers.

There're other social interaction reasons, but that's a personal preference. But helping spammers by inaction is something I dislike allowing. Curenntly, DW doesn't have a massive spam problem, and spam from logged in users is almost non existent.

But as the site grows and gets established, that Will change. And old open entries on defunct LJs are a very nice place to be planting spam comments. Opting out of being told you've been spammed just strikes me as irresponsible.

I have no problem with it on that level on locked entries, I still think it's wrong, but not something I'd want to stop you from doing.

[cheyinka]

It makes sense why you wouldn't like people keeping notifications off on public entries, but why not on locked entries?

The reason I don't have notifications on in most places is because when an entry's old enough that I'm not checking it for new comments myself, it's old enough that I don't care if anybody's left me a comment; it'd be annoying to be reminded of comments to entries I don't care about. I can understand why you'd want to make sure people knew about spam, so that if they continued to ignore it it was their choice to do so, but spammers can't hit locked entries, so...

[matgb]

To reiterate, I have no problem with it on that level on locked entries. I'd like you to know I've commented, even on an old entry, as that's social interaction stuff. But if you want to turn it off, that's your choice, on locked entries.

But on public entries? Kill all spam dead, those that fail to do so encourage more spammers.

[kyrielle]

But if someone is not interested in notifications and is only going to ignore them or trash them, then forcing them (whether it's for the initial comment or the edits) serves only to annoy the person, and not to catch spam (as they're not going to read them). So it doesn't really accomplish the goal in any case.

I actually do like getting comment notifications and edit notifications and wouldn't turn them off, but someone who doesn't will not be reading them either way. (And trust me, the on-site inbox can be completely ignored if you want to. In fact, I believe that is the best way to use it, as I deeply dislike the thing. I send things I want to read to email. And as noted above, email can filter the things and toss edits into spam if you really want. Or everything.)