# Problematic interaction between mail notifications and edits
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/problematic-interaction-between-mail-notifications-and-edits/72124
**Category:** UX
**Created:** [October 16, 2017, 2:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problematic-interaction-between-mail-notifications-and-edits/72124 "2017-10-16T02:35:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mathew](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mathew)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2017, 2:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problematic-interaction-between-mail-notifications-and-edits/72124/1 "2017-10-16T02:35:34Z")
I recently encountered a problematic combination of features:
1. Discourse sends e-mail notifications, and allows people to reply the thread by replying to the notification e-mail.
2. Discourse allows people to edit postings right after posting them.
3. Discourse _does not_ re-send updated notifications when there’s an edit.
Unfortunately these features can cause a problematic interaction like this:
- User A posts something, immediately sees they forgot something and edits to add the missing thing.
- User B gets notification containing the _original_ post, and replies by e-mail some hours later, condescendingly pointing out the missing thing.
- User A sees user B as having complained about something that was actually posted, and concludes that user B didn’t bother to read before replying.
Result: Thread derails in acrimony, civilized discussion ends.
I think if you’re going to allow people to reply by e-mail, you need to make a best effort at ensuring that the thread they see in their e-mail resembles the thread on the web as closely as possible in content — even if that means sending more than one notification message.
Either that, or web edit should be disabled when e-mail reply to notifications is enabled.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2017, 2:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problematic-interaction-between-mail-notifications-and-edits/72124/2 "2017-10-16T02:41:00Z")
This is already more or less handled since email notifications by default don’t send for 5-10 minutes after posting to give the poster time to edit. If edits occur way after the fact, I don’t see any way around this, I would classify it as human error.
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### Author:  [@fefrei](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fefrei)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2017, 11:43am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problematic-interaction-between-mail-notifications-and-edits/72124/3 "2017-10-16T11:43:47Z")
Also note that (by default), the ninja edit window is shorter than the delay for sending out mail notifications, so any edits made after mail notifications have been sent will be recorded in the edit history (for public posts at least).
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### Author:  [@mathew](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mathew)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2017, 1:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problematic-interaction-between-mail-notifications-and-edits/72124/4 "2017-10-16T13:48:58Z")
I’d be inclined to disable edits after the mail is sent, then. Config error on the specific instance, I guess.
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### Author:  [@schungx](https://meta.discourse.org/u/schungx)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2017, 2:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problematic-interaction-between-mail-notifications-and-edits/72124/5 "2017-10-16T14:40:36Z")
What is wrong with setting `email_time_window_mins` to a large enough number?
You know, you’ll _eventually_ need to send out the email. You can’t wait forever. And _theoretically_ it is possible that the original poster will edit his post 1 year after he posted and had some new thoughts. However, you’re unlikely to want to wait that long. You’re likely to want to set some reasonable time limit.
So just increase `email_time_window_mins` to a value you are comfortable with.
If you set `post_edit_time_limit` to be shorter than `email_time_window_mins`, then you effectively disallow editing the post after the email is sent.