Like Notifications are clearing without viewing the Post

Bug
1

Okay, I’m not sure when this started, but I’ve seen it happen multiple times now.

Clicking your avatar clears like notifications even if you don’t view the post.

Repro steps:

  1. Have a like notification appear
  2. Click avatar
  3. Notice highlighted items
  4. Wait a second or two, highlighted like items automatically are now not highlighted (not expected)
  5. Notification Bubble is now gone (expected)

Expected:

Highlighted like notifications should remain highlighted until clicked or the post is viewed (not working)
Notification bubble should disappear (working)

Edit: Updated after reproducing on my own sandbox that is up to date.

2 Likes
2

This is a tad bit frustrating, because when you have multiple like notifications, you don’t get a lot of time to read them to know what posts were liked recently.

But the highlight disappears quickly and without any user action, which makes it hard for me to identify what notifications I had.

1 Like
3

I’m having the opposite of this happen – notifications aren’t disappearing even when viewing the post; clicking the avatar menu clears them. I was moaning about it here earlier:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-should-make-the-notification-bubble-go-away/17589/10?u=clay

4

I just noticed this as well on Stonehearth.

Repro steps:

  1. Make a post
  2. Have someone like the post (it was a moderator, but that shouldn’t matter)
  3. Click avatar
  4. See like notification
  5. Open a different notification (probably not necessary)
  6. Click avatar
  7. Notice like notification is no longer blue, despite the topic containing the like never being opened.
5

This is by design but I am going to improve it some. It is tedious forcing people to visit every like notification.

My tweak will be to push back the clearing 10-20 seconds.

1 Like
6

I disagree. If I get a notification, I want it to be there (highlighted) until I open it, or in the case of a like, read the post that received the like. There is a nice easy system for people to get rid of likes if they don’t want them, the Mark all notifications Read button.

5 Likes
7

Same. I don’t see a point in receiving a notification if it is going to clear without my interaction or opportunity to clear it myself. Why send it to me? I’m 100% against auto clearing notifications. Either they shouldn’t be a notification or the nofication should not auto-clear. Facebook doesn’t auto clear any.

2 Likes
8

I disagree, there is zero new information in visiting a like notification.

Highlighted in blue means you should visit it, forcing people to constantly visit like notifications is busywork of no value

3 Likes
9

Tell that to Facebook. It works the way Discourse used to. What you are saying is Likes shouldn’t be a notification at all.

1 Like
10

They should be notifications but forcing you to visit a topic you already posted and read, just to see that bob liked your post, when the notification says that bob liked your post is silly

If we do not notify how can you tell someone liked your post?

1 Like
11

I strongly agree with @cpradio here. If I receive a notification I want to handle it in some way.

I see where you are coming from Sam, but a notification should be a notification. If I have to handle every other blue circle that appears, I would be very confused as to why like notifications are disappearing on me (unhighlighting).

Further, if a thread is very busy, the notification gives no context as to whether my first post was liked, or my 16th. I have to open the notification to know that. There are times I have gotten likes on a month+ old post. Even with the topic title I would have no idea what was just liked.

3 Likes
12

Why do you find it acceptable to tell me how to handle a notification I received? There are a plethora of services that handle likes today, none of them have the audacity to clear that notification on your behalf. I find it offensive. As it is the system saying, “hey, here is a notification”, then making a decision on my behalf on how to handle said notification. If you don’t like visiting them, don’t do it. clear the others and then use Mark as Read. That is literally what every other service out there promotes.

3 Likes
13

I think there may be a case for a user preference here… I think the preference could even include being notified for every like instead of just the first like (though this might require rolling things up).

I agree with @cpradio that modeling things after facebook is worth consideration.

I admit that I sometimes visit the likes received page due to my vanity and the lack of this feature.

I suspect the current defaults are biased towards being more user-friendly for people like @sam who may be deluged with like-noise if things worked like FB and were not configurable via a user preference.

2 Likes
14

Silly, perhaps, noise for some. But I think in a small subconscious level it provides positive reinforcement.

eg. What did I post that someone liked? Oh, that. I’ll try to do similar more often.

4 Likes
15

I’ll change this back next week when I clean up some other things around notifications, I can not justify adding another user setting for this it is too inside baseball.

In particular our internal mechanism for clearing these things is way too delayed, in lots of cases you could very simply visit the like hit back reload and have it still be lit up.

I definitely want to start adding N people liked in the notifications, bumping to the top though would be potentially very very noisy

6 Likes
16

FWIW, average likes per day for the top 50 users on meta this past week:

 23.1,
 21.4,
 10.3,
 8.9,
 8.4,
 6.9,
 6.7,
 6.6,
 6.3,
 6.1,
 5.3,
 4.4,
 4.4,
 4.1,
 4.0,
 3.9,
 3.6,
 3.3,
 2.9,
 2.9,
 2.6,
 2.3,
 2.1,
 2.1,
 2.0,
 2.0,
 2.0,
 1.9,
 1.9,
 1.9,
 1.4,
 1.4,
 1.4,
 1.3,
 1.3,
 1.1,
 1.1,
 1.1,
 1.1,
 1.0,
 1.0,
 1.0,
 1.0,
 1.0,
 0.9,
 0.9,
 0.9,
 0.9,
 0.9,
 0.9,
 0.9
17

How about having the notifications cleared on click for like since we don’t need to track that the post is read for our own post. :smile:

18

All notifications need to be properly cleared on click, they are now cleared using special case logic

My plan is to add a cookie to inform server that a notification needs clearing on click, that way we don’t have to add any extra Ajax call and the clear specific notifications hack on GET can die

19

I tend to agree with Sam here it is nice to be notified of a like for sure but people should not be forced to visit the like to clear the notification.

20

Why? As in that case it should either be reusing the existing notification, or clearing the prior one for that given post (which I believeone of those options is what Facebook does too).

In Facebook, I may get a notification for a single like, or I may eventually have one for 3 people liked it, I don’t have one for 3 people and an individual one for each like.

The only way I’d be okay with self clearing notifications is if they self cleared after a few days and I didn’t interact with them. As it sits now, if I have 20-30 notifications (which is typical upon my return), you may be clearing notifications that I haven’t seen because they are not in the quick view that I get.

I’ve yet to see what exactly is broken here. If the solution is to help ensure they clear properly, fix that, but auto-clearing doesn’t magically solve the underlying problem. As moved posts would still never clear unless you use mark as read, changing it to when I click or visit the post, clear the notification, would likely solve that case a lot better (and you still have mark as read if you really don’t want to visit the other notifications).

If going to the Notifications Profile view is too far to clear the notifications, let’s take a note from Facebook and place it in the drop down, maybe at

Pasted image327×667 54.9 KB

That way, those who really don’t want to deal with them, can clear them quickly. All of the time in two clicks.

3 Likes