Delivered and read notifications?

[tobiaseigen]

@BobbyZopfan

I think one of the biggest factor of Whatsapp’s popularity is that sender of the msg knows (in most cases) whether (and when) user has received/read the msg or not. It gives him confidence, and in some cases, proof, that the user has read the msg.
It helps to clear the doubt from the minds of the both- sender and receiver of the msg. (because receiver doesn’t have to send acknowledgement to the sender that he has read the msg and thus now knows)

I think @BobbyZopfan and I are on the same page here. In parts of the world where internet access and communication is a challenge, WhatsApp has begun to dominate big time. I think a big part of their success is the immediacy of the messaging and the delivered and read notifications, which reassures people that their messages are actually being seen.

@sam

We have considered a “read until” kind of thing for group messages, so group members can tell which other group member read stuff, but its more in the “we are thinking about it” phase vs the “we are going to build it phase”.

I love this and hope you decide to move from thinking to building. Though in my case it’s in topics that it matters most, because (for other reasons altogether) we still stay away from group messaging.

@codinghorror

Discourse isn’t email (and email doesn’t really do this, anyway), and it isn’t a chat or instant messaging system. So the request generally doesn’t fit what the software is designed to do.

My request was not about email, but about WhatsApp parity when it comes to delivered and read notifications. I get it now that this is not straightforward given how discourse works (thanks, @Stephen!) or even suitable for most discourse communities (privacy concerns, etc).

Maybe we’re looking at a plugin or theme component that provides the “read up until” info on the user card for each user who has contributed to or been mentioned in a topic, viewed when clicking on their name. This could be enabled on a category basis, and perhaps only used for those categories where logistical matters are being discussed. Or maybe a different approach, allowing markdown to be added to the OP (a la DiscoTOC) to display a list of members who have read a topic and how far they have read? Not sure.

Incidentally, I am responding today because I just got an email from Loomio announcing a new Loomio 2.0 version. It looks like they have added “seen by” and “notification history” functionality,.

Thread “seen by” feature

In one click, you can now find out who read your threads and when.

Notification history

Like the new seen by feature, when you notify or invite specific people to threads or decisions you can now see if they’ve read it.