topic Repeated Notification and Email in Community Site Feedback

Repeated Notification and Email

MauriceC — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 08:30:24 GMT

I got 5 Notifications at roughly 2 minute intervals from a single mention in this post
https://community.plus.net/t5/Plusnet-Feedback/Line-cease-and-new-contract-feedback-ish/m-p/1354781#M72392

See screenshot

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jaread83 — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 08:36:27 GMT

Hi @MauriceC,

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. It has happened a couple of times to me as well but only when the @ mentions are used. Noone else had flagged it up so I assumed it was just me or that someone was going back and editting a post with my name in it...

I have a hunch on this as it seems to happen with long posts, posts that would initiate the autosave feature.. maybe it is triggering when being autosaved? I will keep to experiment a bit and see if I can replicate the behaviour.

While I experiment and try to narrow down what I think is happening, I will contact Louisa and get this raised as a bug to be investigated by Lithium.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jaread83 — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 08:47:12 GMT

Hi @MauriceC,

Okay, I have just had a closer look at your screenshot and the link to the post. You were getting the notifications at 10:44pm, the linked post was created at 10:44pm so this is correct. Then you received a notification every few minutes afterwards in no consistent time intervals. Looking at the message, the user editted their post 5 times in 6 minutes until leaving it alone at 10:50 which is also the time of your last notification.

I am not sure if it is possible to change this behaviour as if an editted post contained new @ mention, those users should also get a notification.

I will still ask Louisa to raise a support ticket to see if there is anything we can do about the multiple mentions for the same post though. This isn't something I have any control over unfortunately.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

MauriceC — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 09:05:35 GMT

Thanks Jack, it just looks very clumsy, another component of the 'unfinished' Notification system.

I really like the idea of the Notifications but in the current state of release it just gets in the way and could be removed without much loss?

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jaread83 — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 09:19:06 GMT

I use it all the time as I am used to notification systems on modern platforms. I don't think I could keep up with everything without it.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

Chris — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 09:26:53 GMT

From a staff perspective notifications are incredibly useful, although I have also been hit by this issue when someone modified a post several times while mentioning me.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

rongtw — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 09:37:56 GMT

It also happend to me

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jaread83 — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 09:38:08 GMT

I have asked Louisa to raise a support ticket to see if there is anything that can be done about it.

I have my doubts that anything can be done as the notification still needs to be sent for when a user edits a post and creates a new @ mention and I am not sure if the system is able to detect if the original user had already received a notification.

I wouldn't want to get rid of the notification system though as a lot of users find it helpful and without it you are then relying on your email for notifications or have to keep a very close eye on the threads/boards you are subscribed to.

Let's see if Lithium can provide a solution for the multiple notifications on editted posts though.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jaread83 — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 09:41:20 GMT

@rongtw wrote:

It also happend to me

I noticed your name on that post as well @rongtw so you would have had the same thing happen to you.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

MauriceC — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 10:09:22 GMT

@jaread83 wrote:

Let's see if Lithium can provide a solution for the multiple notifications on edited posts though.

A severe case of optimism developing here Jack.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jaread83 — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 13:21:28 GMT

I am an optimistic person you wouldn't have guessed I have been in the web dev business for almost 10 years with this kind of optimism!

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

Anotherone — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 02:47:29 GMT

I've had it happen as well, just another of those "features" which was low enough on the priority list to warrant a serious mention.

@Chris wrote:

....... although I have also been hit by this issue when someone modified a post several times while mentioning me.

Ha, must remember that when I need your attention

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 08:04:36 GMT

Of course 'fixing' this may not be as easy as it sounds. The system knows the thread’s been edited so could maybe use that information to prevent the subsequent notifications, but what happens if in that edit a new user has been referenced using @? This would then mean that all @ references in the message would need to be tracked so they could be excluded when / if additional ones are included in subsequent edits, but how easy, if at all possible this is, I don’t know.

Then there is the issue of later notifications when a post isn’t edited until later in the day, with the existing code you’d know this happened but if a solution similar to the above is implemented then you’d have no idea, but it (the edit) could have a significant bearing on the content of the post and / or your response to it.

To me it would make sense to only issue an ‘edit’ notification when the user referenced using the @ has in fact read the original post, otherwise there is no need to as the edit would have no or limited effect.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jaread83 — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 08:11:20 GMT

That was exactly what I was thinking Mook although you explained it better than I could.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jaread83 — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 08:24:46 GMT

I had spoken with Lithium engineers to look into this and it appears to be fixed now. I have tested this on a private board with a seperate user, @ mentioned them, got the notification appear on my avatar, got the user to edit the post multiple times and I no longer get multiple notifications for the edit.

Consider this bug officially squashed!

Thank you for your patience on this matter.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

Anotherone — Sun, 19 Nov 2017 18:31:50 GMT

Well @jaread83 perhaps this thread needs to be unfixed as the problem seems to have raised its ugly head again. Was there a Software upgrade since the 17th? because I'm getting multiple Notification emails for every edit since this post on that thread. To be clear I have only had the one Notification in my Notification Feed but it has been updated to the latest post (the correct behaviour).

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jelv — Sun, 19 Nov 2017 21:17:37 GMT

I received two emails for this post, timed 15:35 and 15:37.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

jaread83 — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 11:53:07 GMT

@jelv,

Looking at the post, it was created at 15:35 and editted again at 15:37 which correlates with the emails that was sent... so you would have got another email when it was created and when it was editted. I know that the email isn't clear about that ... it uses the same template and doesn't highlight what was changed.

Re: Repeated Notification and Email

Anotherone — Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:53:27 GMT

@jaread83 wrote:
............. so you would have got another email when it was created and when it was edited. ............

@jaread83 Haven't you missed the point? In Message 15 you implied that " I no longer get multiple notifications for the edit."

Unless I've missed something (I will check when I have time), ~~I've not noticed that I've been getting multiple emails when posts have been edited until the one I highlighted in Message 16 .~~

Edit: corrected Jack's spelling in the quote

Edit2: Having checked, it seems I have had repeated emails for edits prior to my example. I haven't checked back that far, so the question is how long has it been happening and was it ever fixed for emails?