Receiving multiple notifications about the same reply

[lindsey (Lindsey Fogle)]

@sam

@lindsey there is a bit of a product question here, when should we suppress a notification?

I think Moin describes the ideal from the user perspective, but I think we’d struggle to get this part right:

@Moin

I think, in case a trigger is replaced, I would rather like the existing, unread notification to be changed (or replaced) than receiving a second one.

Perhaps we could manage that for in-app notifications, but we can’t unsend push notifications or email notifications. (In general I’m hesitant to add more complexity to notifications, so while some might be okay with in-app and email/push for the notification being different, I’d prefer we forego this.)

I agree with this, though:

@Moin

In general, I would expect no additional notification because of an edit if all the triggers had already been in the post when I read it before. Fixing a typo unrelated to mention/link/quote shouldn’t result in a new notification.

• If a post should notify a user (e.g., post author quotes User A), notify the relevant user(s) (e.g., User A gets a notification that they’ve been quoted).
• If an edit to that post does not change who should be notified or why (e.g., post author edits a typo), don’t notify anyone.
• If an edit to that post does change who should be notified (e.g., post author mentions User B) or why (e.g., the post author mentions user A), notify the impacted user(s) (e.g., User B gets a mention notification, User A gets a mention notification).

@moin does that sound right to you?