Summary/digest popular topics: based on last seen, or on last emailed?

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AI-generated summary

In a discussion about how Discourse’s Activity Summary emails determine which topics to include, ToddZ initially questions whether the system uses the user’s last visit date or their last email receipt date to calculate “since your last visit” summaries. He notes that if only the last visit date is used, inactive users might repeatedly see the same popular topics, which could reduce engagement. He references the official guide, which implies summaries are based on last visit, but he suspects emails should also count as a form of “seen” activity. In a follow-up post ToddZ, after further observation, confirms that summary emails do count as a “last seen” event — meaning topics created after the user’s last summary email are included in subsequent digests. This resolves his concern and suggests the system is more dynamic than he first assumed, improving relevance for users who don’t visit frequently but still receive emails. The thread highlights the importance of clarifying how “last seen” is defined to ensure summaries remain engaging and up-to-date for all users, especially inactive ones.

1

When I run a Preview Summary test under Email Settings, it asks for the “Last seen user” date, and the emails are subtitled with “Since your last visit”. (Nothing implies that a recent email counts as seen or visited.)

If I use the date that a very inactive user last visited, it appears they’d be seeing the same “Popular Topics” appear in their summary week after week, which wouldn’t be very appealing. I hope this isn’t the case.

Configuring Activity Summary emails says that “Popular topics for digests are extracted from /top topics with certain rules” including:

  • topic must be created after the user was last emailed

If that doc page is accurate, and topics are only included if new since their last summary email, this seems more useful. But then the wording on the Preview Summary (“Last seen user” date) is misleading to me, and the subtitle on the email (“Since your last visit”) is potentially confusing to the user as well.

My test dummy accounts are too active for me to test this. Can anyone confirm how the summary works?

2

After more observation I’ve concluded that summary emails do count as a “last seen” or a “visit” as far as including popular topics in subsequent summaries. My quibbles with the wording of things are trivial. I’ll self-solve this topic.