Last modified: 2012-05-08 23:12:29 UTC
Currently, email notification works something like this (I'm thinking of user talk notification, I presume the same is true for watchlist notifications): 1. User talk post made: email notification sent 2. a) User logs in: go back to 1. 2. b) User doesn't log in: no further notifications. The problem is with 2b. It's there as a hack to prevent many emails being sent (one per user talk post) - but a far better solution would be to provide some form of digest or summary. For example, a daily or weekly digest would be one email saying "X messages posted in the last day/week - log in to see them". Frequency of digest (and whether the user gets one at all) should be a preference option. This approach would help users stay in touch with a wiki, especially those users who don't log in very frequently. From the Wikimedia perspective specifically, it could be a significant boost for long-term editor retention, and if done for watchlist notifications it would be of particular benefit to smaller, lower-activity wikis.
Please detail how it should work if after the first sent mail the user doesn't log in.
(In reply to comment #1) > Please detail how it should work if after the first sent mail the user doesn't > log in. Well, the exact implementation matters less than the basic principle. But how about this: 1. User talk post made: email notification sent 2. a) User logs in: go back to 1. 2. b) User doesn't log in, and has "daily digest" option set: no further notifications for 24 hours. 3. 24 hours after the last email was sent, check if user has logged in since then. If not, send a digest email about the last 24 hours - unless the digest email would be "no activity", in which case, do nothing. 4. Go back to 3.
No activity in the last 24 hours or since last login? Suppose I'm on vacances for a week, and you left me a message the day 1. When I return, would I have 1 email (the normal one) or 7 (one per 24 hour) ?
(In reply to comment #3) > No activity in the last 24 hours or since last login? > > Suppose I'm on vacances for a week, and you left me a message the day 1. > When I return, would I have 1 email (the normal one) or 7 (one per 24 hour) ? Assuming that the day 1 message was the only one, then there wouldn't be any new emails (after the normal day 1 notification), since there wouldn't be any new activity. If there were new messages on say day 3 (1 message that day) and day 5 (2 messages that day), you'd have a total of 3 emails when you return: one sent on day 1 immediately after message left, one sent at the end of day 3 ("you had 1 new message today"), one sent at the end of day 5 ("you had 2 new messages today").
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 8911 ***
