Managing unread counts in conjunction with email

[jhogendorn (Joshua Hogendorn)]

I use our instance of discourse mostly through email as a mailing list. But when I hop onto the site, it shows me this huge long list of things I ‘havent seen’, even though ostensibly I have.

I propose a tracking image or similar is put into the mail out template so that discourse can detect opened emails and keep this feature reasonably synced.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Related discussion, though having a topic dedicated to this is probably a good idea:

@codinghorror

Can we mark things read that were read in email? Not sure this is even technically possible since most email clients block image pings and any other form of email web callbacks because spammers. Not opposed to it, I just think it is basically impossible and will lead to many complaints because the implementation will be so sketchy by definition.

@codinghorror

Just because you read it in email, doesn’t mean you’ve finished interacting with the post.

I typically “like” about 20% of the posts I read via email. Explain to me how I can accomplish that without opening the topic and actually, y’know, reading the posts?

I get the double read issue, when you read a post via email and then have to also read it via the web browser, but it seems like a fundamentally unsolvable and intractable problem. I guess it depends what fraction of posts you only read via email?

[jhogendorn (Joshua Hogendorn)]

You can enable always show images from a particular provider for long term use as a user.

You could utilise the alt text on the image to say why its there on the software end. “Enable images for site name so we can update your read topics” or similar.

Another issue thats probably worth its own thread is that in Gmail, you get a ‘double post’ when you reply to a thread, since you see your email out and the resulting email back. If you’re like me, you forget that, do something else for a bit, then go ‘oh look, someone replied… oh its just me. doh’

[ganncamp (G Ann Campbell)]

Hi,

I’m late to the game, but I’d also like things that were emailed to me to not be marked ‘new’ in the interface. I’m not even asking for the sophisticated “has it been opened” tracking requested by the OP. Just, if I’ve opted in for email notifications on a topic or category, assume I have read or will read new messages there and don’t mark them ‘new’ in the interface.

Thx,
Ann

[Mittineague]

Hi ganncamp welcome to the forum

AFAIK, synchronizing “email read” to “browser read” was never realized.

However, if you go to your New / Unread pages when you login to the forum, you should see a “Dismiss” button. That effectively sets those topics to Seen / Read status.

[ganncamp (G Ann Campbell)]

Hi Mittineague,

Yes, I know this was never realized. That’s why I bumped the thread.

And I understand I can ‘Dismiss’ (in 3 separate actions: New, Unread, Notifications) “unread” items. Unfortunately those dismiss actions are indiscriminate, but I have been discriminating about what I’ve set up to be emailed to me: I’m email-subscribed to a subset of categories + topics I’ve weighed in on. Those things come to my inbox and get priority. The rest, I read in the Discourse UI. As it is, I have to wade through the things I’ve already seen in my inbox to find the lower-priority items that I don’t have delivered straight to me.

Ann