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What should our default notification settings be?

Monique vdB

Hi all! We're thinking about making some changes to default notifications and interested in thoughts from the community (whether you've changed your settings or not). I believe this would not change your current settings, but would only apply to new users. We will test this out for sure before making any changes.

You can click your avatar and then Manage settings > Notifications > Settings to check your own settings.

Current defaults are:

Screen Shot 2018-04-20 at 1.04.36 PM.png

I think it makes sensed to keep the automatic watch as well as immediate notifications for specific posts (such as replies to your questions), @ mentions, likes, and badges.

However, this can get overwhelming for users following busy collections. My suggested changes are in the screenshot below. The summary:

Users would see initial posts in collections and not replies -- unless they participate in or watch the thread.
New collection activity would be daily rather than immediately.
Users would not longer get notified of edits to posts by default.

Screen Shot 2018-04-20 at 1.07.05 PM.png

Let me know what you think, or if you have other thoughts or suggestions!

Comments

Jonny Adams

@Monique vdB The image links are busted.

Jonny Adams

Also, I really like the idea of a daily batch of activity. The individual alerts throughout the day probably don't receive their due attention.

Meg Holbrook

Post edit notifications are super annoying to me personally, I could do without.

Collection activity as a digest would probably be more effective. Right now I've got a couple of outlook rules to manage all the notifications. A typical user probably doesn't get as many as I do, but could still be spammy.

Monique vdB

@Jonny Adams I re-uploaded them; can you see them now?

Thanks for the feedback!

Monique vdB

@Meg Holbrook well you can definitely switch then off in your notifications for now. I agree that they're not that useful, except sometimes people add to posts and if I don't see the edited version, I'll miss something! I think as a default, keeping them off makes sense.

Thanks for the gut check on this!

Jonny Adams

@Monique vdB I can see them now. Thank you for allowing us to provide our input.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

I use the emails as a feed, and really would not find half of that setup useful.

However, I do think @Monique vdB has the right set up for users new to the community, those that would have a low volume of email and don't do what I do with the higher volume (I get everything and filter - not something I'd expect most people to want to do)

Steffen Opel [Utoolity]

Similar to Nic I'm primarily using the emails as a feed, and I agree that the setup looks good for new users, which is the important default case to retain usability and engagement - those few that want more can always opt-in later.

The resulting volume combined with the (apparent) lack of threading subverts prioritization within my email client btw. - while semantically related, I've started a new discussion Threading of community notification emails for separation of concerns.

Daniel Eads {unmonitored account}

Upvote to the proposed changes!

Do we know what Lithium considers minor edits? Does it do some sort of calculation, or is there a checkbox for "this is a minor edit" when you're saving changes and we just have the checkbox disabled?

I would like to get notifications if someone modifies their question. But, most times people are just tweaking the formatting in their post or correcting a typo, which would and should be a minor edit that doesn't notify.

Monique vdB

An update: if we change the default settings, it will wipe out everyone's settings and change them all to this. 😕

I still think it is worth doing, but we'd need to message it with a flag so users can easily change them back if they like.