Notifications - Phase 1

[memetic007]

Estimate: 5d

• [ ] Write and get approved some BDD feature description of this
• [ ] Add sharing of spaces
• [ ] change form for sharing Items and Comments
• [ ] use name picker on space share, item share and comment share forms
• [ ] Create third type of message "notification", adding to the other two types of "modmessage" and "message". The messages you get from folks replying to your comment or item post should be marked as notifications.
• [ ] Create notification menu for notifications
• [ ] Add unread count for all three notification menus

Notifications are messages sent by other users asking for the Attention of the target user.

Notifications will initially be of two types:

\1 invitations to join a Space \2 Attention notifications for an Item or Comment

The red oval next to "Notification" is the number of notifications received since last time the Notification link was clicked.

[memetic007]

Invitations to Space.

[memetic007]

_Attention Notifications for Items or Comments_

From Item Listing:

[memetic007]

Attention Notifications from Comments View:

[memetic007]

"In-Band" Attention Notification

From within any Item or Comment text entry box, a string in the form "@username" should be recognized by parser as Attention Notification to "Username" on that unit of content. Markdown (or equivalent) should convert "@username" into Link to username Page (lightnet.is/user/username).

[memetic007]

The content of the Notfication Messages are Menu Display format TBD.

However, each Notification Message will provide a link to "block Notifications from this User'

[memetic007]

We should include "Name Picker" for selecting usernames.

[inflector]

I'm still not convinced that this warrants a new menu at the top instead of the standard messages. Why can't this simply be a type of message?

I'd certainly support a better display for the messages than just a red envelope when there are some. So I like the red number with the number of messages to be read. I just don't think that notifications are different than messages in any meaningful way. They seem to me a subclass of message.

[memetic007]

Let's discuss.

It's increasing the salience that seems critical to me ... and you are right, perhaps that is just about making messages more visible. however, it is possible that 'not all messages should be equally salient'.

let's ponder and discuss next week.

=jim'

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 3:05 PM, Curtis Faith notifications@github.comwrote:

I'm still not convinced that this warrants a new menu at the top instead of the standard messages. Why can't this simply be a type of message?

I'd certainly support a better display for the messages than just a red envelope when there are some. So I like the red number with the number of messages to be read. I just don't think that notifications are different than messages in any meaningful way. They seem to me a subclass of message.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/new-day-international/reddit/issues/94#issuecomment-26163247 .

Jim Rutt JPR Ventures

[inflector]

it is possible that 'not all messages should be equally salient'.

True. Especially in the context of hooking notifications to email. Might want a checklist of types of messages so you can choose which ones get hooked up to email notification. Same would go for the notification level of messages perhaps.

[memetic007]

After looking further at Lightnet's way too heterogeneous "message box" (the envelop) plus the "moderate messages" (the Reddit head) and looking at parallels on Facebook, I'm thinking that we should:

• get rid of the Moderator Message Box
• limit the "message mailbox" (the envelop) to explicit "person to person" messaging, similar to the Facebook "message"
• add the 'red count number" to the message box
• hook ALL other message types (shares and notifications, moderator mail, post replies, item replies) to the new Notification Box.

thoughts?

[inflector]

The moderator messages can be actual messages from people addressed to "the moderators" which acts like a group address. Seems to me that these messages should be sent to the message mailbox while notifications about moderation should got to a Notification Box.

[memetic007]

agreed.

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Curtis Faith notifications@github.comwrote:

The moderator messages can be actual messages from people addressed to "the moderators" which acts like a group address. Seems to me that these messages should be sent to the message mailbox while notifications about moderation should got to a Notification Box.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/new-day-international/reddit/issues/94#issuecomment-27438803 .

Jim Rutt JPR Ventures

[inflector]

Couple of issues:

1. "Attention" seems like an unintuitive word here. I think "notify" would be much clearer. A verb versus a noun. All the other items: share, save, hide and report are verbs.
2. There is going to be confusion over the difference between share and notify. What's motivating two separate buttons? What does notify do that share didn't? Is it really worth the increased cognitive load?

It seems to me that we ought to clean up the sharing dialog (especially in anticipation of hooking in Twitter and Facebook) and just use "share". Here's how I'd cleanup share:

1. Make the email or username box use the name-picker modified to accept email addresses.
2. Remove the optional name and email address and just use the ones from the user's profile.

[memetic007]

My initial reaction:

1. Notify is better than Attention.

2. We should separate "Share" and "Notify" ... Notify is very simple: just notify the recipient with a copy of the item or comment text like you would see here: http://lightnet.is/user/Jim_Rutt_1/

   I'd even suggest we drop the optional message box in the spec above ... JUST a multi-name NamePicker. Notify. I'd also say make the link/button stronger more distinct than the "share" link. Similar in weight to the "Reply" button, maybe just ta bit less. We want to ENCOURAGE the use of Notify for intrasystem signaling.

3. Leave Share as it (except maybe drop the username functionality? or at least don't mention it) We'll rework it in the future for Facebook Twitter etc.

[ffunch]

I think that makes sense. (Oops, I was talking about inflector's message) Calling it "sharing" both for internal user and for people with emails, and using a combined input box for that. Although, there's maybe not any good reason for mixing the two at the same time.

Facebook's way of doing it works well for me. There's a pulldown selection of how one has in mind sharing the item. Which could include at least to send a private message/notification, or to send an email to a non-member. But other possibilities would make sense too, once we have features/places in the system that match them. E.g. to re-post that item on the equivalent of one's wall, or to one of several personal or group lists one maintains, of important issues/discussions/to-dos, etc. Or to post it on Twitter, or Facebook

[memetic007]

Still seems to me the "Share" functionality and the "Notify" functionality are different.

Facebook, for example, uses "Share" to create a Clone of the Header of a Discussion in a new place such as one's Timeline or to a Group. The Header then grows a new set of "likes", "comments" etc from that Header Clone. In contrast, Facebook uses the @name convention to send a Notification which is a signal for user's attention to something in its original location and context, with its original "likes", "comments' etc. Very different semantics.

In the future I could see us adding Header Cloning or even Discussion Linking (where a Discussion lives in two different Spaces simultaneously with the same comments and votes) but that is beyond the scope of the current Issue Feature.

Let's keep the Notification feature separate at this time. If we want to "clean up" share, somebody should add an issue to do that some time in the future.

[memetic007]

The @name functionality doesn't seem to be working in test.lightnetb.org

[memetic007]

More info ... looks like the @name works in the top level Replies box, but not in subordinate ones.

[memetic007]

no "out-of-band" notification for comments

[myers]

@memetic007 A recent change that would remove your own name from the name picker may have introduced a bug that caused the name picker to fail for you. We are looking into it. <- @ffunch

[memetic007]

In seems to me that we have inadequately separated "Notifications" from "Messages".

If the user clicks on the Message link, they will see Notifications in the Unread queue. Reading "All" messages will also show Notifications.

Also the Notifications reader is implemented as merely a top bar option on the Message Reader.

The intent with this feature is to separate Notifications and Messages from a UI perspective (if not necessarily from an underlying data structure perspective).

Notifications should not show up under Messages, at all, while Notifications should have their own separate reader functionality with "Notifications" in the Blue Box. .

Thus clicking on the Notifications link should pull up a Notifications Reader

[inflector]

The behavior is as I thought best, but I know we've had some initial philosophical difference about how notifications and messages are not the same thing. So let's be more explicit here now.

So you want a completely separate page with no overlap between them? i.e. no notifications appear in the messages framework anywhere that messages show up.

Do you want the notifications only page to show only received notifications? Or both sent and received ones? Do you want it to mirror the messages with an unread section and a separate listing of all the notifications (both read and unread)?

[memetic007]

1. The Messages Page should show no Notifications
2. The Notifications page should show no Messages.
3. The Notifications Page should default to "Unread", but have an "All" link. A "Sent" link would be a "nice to have".

On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Curtis Faith notifications@github.comwrote:

The behavior is as I thought best, but I know we've had some initial philosophical difference about how notifications and messages are not the same thing. So let's be more explicit here now.

So you want a completely separate page with no overlap between them? i.e. no notifications appear in the messages framework anywhere that messages show up.

Do you want the notifications only page to show only received notifications? Or both sent and received ones? Do you want it to mirror the messages with an unread section and a separate listing of all the notifications (both read and unread)?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/new-day-international/reddit/issues/94#issuecomment-32791512 .

Jim Rutt JPR Ventures