# Receiving multiple notifications about the same reply

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/receiving-multiple-notifications-about-the-same-reply/393486>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Tags:** notifications\
**Created:** [January 14, 2026, 11:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/receiving-multiple-notifications-about-the-same-reply/393486 "2026-01-14T23:41:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![Moin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/moin/32/554653_2.png) [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2026, 1:49am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/receiving-multiple-notifications-about-the-same-reply/393486/6 "2026-02-11T01:49:44Z")

</div>

Above all, I do not want to receive another notification if nothing has changed in the post that would cause a notification. Correcting a typo should not notify me if I have already been notified just because 2 notifications about the same topic were collapsed before. And I never noticed that for years until it happened in December.

I asked ChatGPT to write a summary of what it told me about this issue, when I tried to find repro steps based on the code

> **Summary: Why duplicate notifications are normally prevented, and why it fails here
AI**
>
> ## Core issue
> 
> Duplicate-prevention relies on finding a **reply notification that is still scoped to the edited post** , but reply notifications are **collapsed, destroyed, or re-attached to a different post**.  
> As a result, edit-time suppression cannot reliably detect that the user was already notified about the reply.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Duplicate notifications are prevented in `PostAlerter` by:
> 
> 1. **Tracking users already notified during post creation**
> 
> ```plaintext
> notified = []
> 
> ```
> 
> 1. **Suppressing secondary triggers if a reply notification exists**
> 
> ```plaintext
> if [:quoted, :linked, :mentioned, :chat_quoted].include?(type)
> return if existing_notifications.find { |n|
> n.notification_type == Notification.types[:replied]
> }
> end
> 
> ```
> 
> This is meant to avoid notifying a user twice about the _same post_.
> 
> 1. **Collapsing reply notifications**  
> Reply notifications (`:replied`) are collapsed per topic:
> 
> ```plaintext
> destroy_notifications(user, COLLAPSED_NOTIFICATION_TYPES, topic)
> 
> ```
> 
> The surviving notification is re-attached to:
> 
> ```plaintext
> post = first_unread_post(user, topic)
> 
> ```
> 
> so the notification no longer represents the post that originally triggered it. As a result, suppression logic that relies on matching `post_number` cannot reliably detect prior notifications for edited posts.
> 
> * * *
> 
> ### Why this fails in the repro case
> 
> In the repro:
> 
> - The user **is notified about the reply** initially
> - When multiple replies exist, reply notifications are **collapsed**
> - The collapsed notification:
> - may no longer exist for the edited post, or
> - exists with a **different `post_number`**
> 
> - On edit:
> - reply logic does not run (`new_record == false`)
> - suppression checks only for a **post-scoped `:replied` notification**
> - none is found → suppression fails
> 
> - Quote/link detection runs again and creates new notifications
> 
> From the user’s perspective:
> 
> > “I was already notified about this reply.”
> 
> From the code’s perspective:
> 
> > “There is no existing notification for this post.”
> 
> Both are true.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/receiving-multiple-notifications-about-the-same-reply/393486)._