Notification of edits

No, you're not supposed to be notified of edits to context. Would you expect to be?

We're working on a re implementation of notifications right now.

There will be 4 kinds of notification.

• @mentions and replies

• Announcements (when an admin request that people are notified about a discussion or poll)

• Subscriptions (which default to batching activity per thread, into 1 email per thread per day) and summarise all the activity that happened since you last read it

• Round up email - which is like missed yesterday, but for things you're not subscribed to, and you can choose which days of the week you get it.

Announcements won't be default course of action like they are now, with their own modal popping up. Instead you'll select a few people to start the conversation with (subscribing them) or mention a few people (notifying them once only), or you use the announcement tool to send it to everyone.

Not really enough time to explain it here, but it's been the focus for a while, we have good feedback and designs coming together.

I would.

Also context edits should be marked as Big or Small (like Wikipedia page edits) so you can opt for Big, small or all edits notifications.

I also kinda expect it. I mean, I've learnt to look at the context of a thread to be a live document that gets kept up-to-date as discussion happens. If that is the case, then participants need to find out if anything changes.

Also, if someone mentions me in a comment, and then changes it after I've seen it, I also need to know…

@martin ➬ and @Zeljko Blace thanks for the feedback.

I don't think it's important to notify subscribers about typo fixes and other non semantic changes (at all), but yes, if a comment or context is changed in a meaningful way, then subscribers should know.

So either we automatically detect the amount of change and decide for them (unreliable magic behaviour, yuck) or we ask the author when they save, if they're making a change that subscribers should be notified about.

So a checkbox.. "Notify subscribers" next to the save button eh?

Edited: Default on or off? (hahahhaha)

The new notification system will be async by default, meaning there will be a minute (or 2) delay before sending emails (or push notifications) out, to allow for currently online users to mark as read (preventing a notification) if they're following along in the app, and to allow for "oh whoops, better fix that" edits that happen right after posting.

That sounds good. Should be noted in interface and documented feature :)

Maybe it sounds paranoid but I think it should be on both ends.
Subscribers could opt-in for “notify on all content changes”.

Noted. It's very easy to decide to make lots of settings.. it's harder to make things as simple as possible and no simpler.

My intention with the next wave is to reduce the complexity and confusion people have around notifications. Most new users are overwhelmed by the number of emails, so my main focus is users feeling super confident in how to effectively use and manage notifications with refreshingly useful and timely defaults.

I agree with the sentiment very much. Instead of sending out emails, having a URL aggregate a changelog, highlighting the ones since the last visit, might mitigate this? The other possibility could be RSS, although that's all but dead isn't it?

I've seen many forums send out an email for a change to a thread, and then not send another email until the next visit. I'm actually unsure about whether I like this, but if on my next visit, I was given a comprehensive summary of what has changed since I last came here, it might actually be really good. What do you think?

By default we assume new users don't have a habit of using Loomio, but are trying it because (among other reasons) they believe it can reduce emails and improve communication in their group.

Your first suggestion is in the roadmap, we consolidate dashboard and inbox, and unread/new to you is a section on dashboard with a button: "read these together" which gives you a page of multiple threads showing just enough context to understand the unread components of each thread.

It's a useful way to think about consuming information, and it could be via the app or in an email itself, depending on the usage habits of people.