Discourse wants to send you notifications

AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around a notification prompt from Discourse that appears every 5 minutes, asking users if they want to allow or block notifications. jidanni finds this prompt confusing and annoying, as it doesn’t clearly explain the consequences of each action. Stephen clarifies that this is a browser message, not a Discourse prompt, and that it will not continue to ask if the user ignores it or hits block. jidanni then explores the option of disabling notifications at the source, wondering if there’s a setting in their Discourse user account to turn off notifications. Stephen explains that notifications are configured per-browser, allowing users to customize their notification preferences across different devices.

So there I am and every 5 minutes this pops up on my screen:


Okay, now as we recall I represent the average user. I mean my grandmother.
So here we are being faced with a tough choice.

We don’t know what to do. Because we don’t know what each action will do.

Because of course the message doesn’t tell us.

If we choose allow we are probably guaranteed a lifetime of annoying messages. Yes I know they’re probably helpful things about people replying to our post but still we don’t want to sign up for that just yet.

If we pick block, then certainly will never ever get the choice again because we blocked it for life and one day will regret it but it’s too late.

Sure, if we read the manual we can find there’s always a second chance. But I’m just telling you this from my grandmother’s perspective.

So we’re scared to push both choices. So instead we just hit our cell phones back button and then 5 minutes later we’re facing it again.

In fact that’s how we deal with this kind of message on every single site we’ve seen in our entire lives.

Now all those other sites just accept the fact that we hit the back button and don’t bother us again. Until maybe the next day. But for some reason Discourse likes bothering us every 5 minutes.

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That’s a message from your browser, because Discourse is letting the browser know it has a notification for you already. You’re actively using the site and receiving responses here.

It won’t keep asking if you hit block, only if you ignore it.

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Well by the way instead of me hitting block, maybe I can turn it off at the source. I mean that sounds much more nonviolent. So maybe there’s something in my Discourse user account Settings I can change so Discourse won’t waste its energy sending it in the first place, so I won’t need to block it anyway.

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Notifications are configured per-browser, because users may not want to be notified of everything everywhere.

Your choices are to allow, block, or see the prompt each time the browser realizes a notification is available and you’ve opted not to make the choice.

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