[copied from an email thread]
Right now if you send to a group the thank you is anonymous because we
don't know which of them clicked the thank you link. Since we are
sending one email to a group, we can't give each of them a different
identifiable link to click. But since clicking the thank you link loads
a page from the feedme site, consider the following hack.
1. When a mail goes to a single user, put a distinctive url in the
thank-you note (or just remember who it was sent to)
2. When that thank you note gets clicked, deposit a cookie identifying
the user onto their browser
3. In the future, check for the identifying cookie when someone clicks
a thank you link.
However, what should we do about email lists, like
haystack-group@csail.mit.edu. What happens if I click thank you from a
haystack email (assigning me a haystack identity), then I click thank you
from an email sent to margaret.leibovic@gmail.com and another user (so the
browser uses my haystack cookie identity)? I guess if multiple users who
have already been identified clicks thanks from the haystack email, we
could determine that it's a list, but that relies on accurately identifying
people first. Also, keeping track of email lists may be tricky to implement.
Let's suppose we ignore the problem. I send a fm to haystack-current
mailing list and someone thanks and gets a cookie associating the
browser with haystack-current (we can think of the cookie as just
containing the unique recipient email address). so in the future, when
they thank, we can send "haystack-current says thank you"! Not
terrible. More complicated is if we _also_ deposited a cookie on that
browser for a different fm addressed to the single user of that
browser. Now we have two different email addresses cookied with this
browser---how do we know which one is a more "specific" personal
address? Especially since both or neither might be (one person can
have two email addresses, or they can be on two different mailing lists).
We do have a heuristic: if two browsers clicked thank you on an FM that
went to one address, then it must be a mailing list. So, we can keep a
blacklist of such mailing lists and ignore cookies from them. Note that
we _cannot_ use this heuristic if two _different_ FMs to the same
address produce thank you clicks from two different browser, because it
is possible that one user is using and thanking from two different
browsers. However, I think we can ignore the possibility that one user
is forgetful and says thank you for the same FM from two different browsers.
So: if two browsers thanked the same single-address FM, then the address
is a mailing list.
Otherwise, should we just use the most-recent email-cookie on the
browser? Or should we use all of them, e.g.
"haystack-current@csail/marcua@csail/marcua@gmail.com says thank you!"
Or a blend, say the three most recent email-cookies?
Minor point, but perhaps it is worth taking a mailing-list cookie if we
don't have anything else. e.g., if the thanker has a cookie for an
address we've identified as a mailing list, and no other cookies, isn't
it better to send use the mailing-list id rather than nothing? that way
if someone sends to two mailing lists they know which one thanked.
Original issue reported on code.google.com by margaret...@gmail.com on 27 Apr 2010 at 6:44
Original issue reported on code.google.com by
margaret...@gmail.comon 27 Apr 2010 at 6:44