search

riparias / gbif-alert

GBIF Alert is a GBIF occurrence based alert system.
https://gbif-alert-demo.thebinaryforest.net/
MIT License
8 stars 2 forks source link

include species name in subject header of alert email #184

Closed timadriaens closed 1 year ago

timadriaens commented 1 year ago

when you have a number of alerts set, and you receive a ton of emails from the system the subject header is not very informative on which alerts you have to consider more closely, for example:

[alert.riparias.be] 8 unseen observation(s) for your alert "Alert #47"

It would be much more informative to have either the species name instead of "Alert #47", or the user-defined name for the alert (the webpage should then specify that this name will be shown in the alert email subject header. So for instance:

[alert.riparias.be] 8 unseen observation(s) of _**Cabomba caroliniana**_

damianooldoni commented 1 year ago

Hi @timadriaens! I understand your concern, but allow me to point you some aspects which could be important for this topic:

  1. using a good name for an alert will help you already a lot (really a lot!) to understand and prioritize your alert mails. So, please remove your "Alert # 47" immediately 😄 During the next months/weeks @niconoe will work on editing alerts (#136) so that you can improve the name of any alert whenever you want 🚀 in this way if an alert name is not catchy anymore maybe due to a new alert quite similar, you will be able to improve it. At the moment, just delete and make a new one, sorry.
  2. your example is an easy one, but what if you have many species or a combination of species/locations/datasets? In these cases the alert name will still be the best option. And so, returning to your (easy) example, naming the alert "Cabomba caroliniana in Belgium" will help (see screenshot)

So, IMHO your feature request will add more complexity in code than the benefits for the user.

image

timadriaens commented 1 year ago

Speaking for myself, I just ignore emails that do not have an informative subject header and I think many other people do to. So, indeed, as you point out, can we programme the alert email in such a way that it shows the given name for the alert?

damianooldoni commented 1 year ago

@timadriaens: yes, that's already the case. Here below, the header of the alert mails I receive daily:

As you see, it's all about giving good (enough) names