34 replies to this topic

[G Fox]

I would like an option to allow inline notifications when someone votes up (+ rep) a post. It would be important that the +rep notifications clump themselves up so you do not get 50 notifications for the same post; it should instead say "50 people liked your post".


The writer gets a good feeling, and it creates a positive feedback, which in turn creates more + voting behaviour.

Note I am using the rep system with positive only enabled (I disabled negative rep via ACP).

[Michael]

I would like an option to allow inline notifications when someone votes up (+ rep) a post. It would be important that the +rep notifications clump themselves up so you do not get 50 notifications for the same post; it should instead say "50 people liked your post".

What happens then when you get a notification that 50 people liked your post, then a 51st person likes it too, do you get another notification?

It does sound cool to get a notification when you get this, but it seems to me like this would be either way too resource intensive or something people turn off because they're sick of being notified of this.

[Ryan R]

I personally support this notion.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about implementing a "Like" system similar to what people are seeing at XenForo (and originally Facebook). IPB's reputation system is honestly almost identical to XF's Like system, which not many people realize...There are only a few things that make them slightly different, and notifications on "Likes/Positive Rep" are one of them.

I say add it and give the user the option to turn it off.

[rastaX]

I can think of worse problems than being overwhelmed by notifications that a lot of people gave you positive rep.....................

I gotta say, the first time I got a notice at xf saying someone liked a post, I did get a little bit of the warm fuzzies. If anyone got tired of this, they can always stop making good posts.

[G Fox]

What happens then when you get a notification that 50 people liked your post, then a 51st person likes it too, do you get another notification?

You shouldn't object for technical reasons.
Really, think of a user-interface reason, it's more helpful!

The answer is yes, you'd get another notification.

Technically, the way you clump 50 together is through a simple window of time, which is going to be defined as the gap between your last login and the current one, or if you are online, the "rep notifications" could be clumped together into notifications every 10 minutes. Easy, low resources.

[Michael]

You shouldn't object for technical reasons.
Really, think of a user-interface reason, it's more helpful!

Why exactly shouldn't one object for technical reasons as long as they're valid?

[Matt]

I like the idea. I'd just send out a notification each time. User can switch off or just have inline as per notification options

[CallieJo]

I love this suggestion!

[Olivier Turbis]

Love this too!

[G Fox]

I like the idea. I'd just send out a notification each time. User can switch off or just have inline as per notification options

cool. Be aware that if you get 10 + rep votes for the same post in between your last login and current login, you'd get 10+ notifications, which might be annoying. Thus the clumping idea I included.

[Matt]

The issue is that "clumping" is an 8 letter word that will spawn 5,000 lines of code. To lump together notifications you'd have to have a task that ran every 15 mins or so that looked through the DB for reps given since the last notification and then send out a combined list.

[Ryan R]

If you find the notifications annoying, then you just turn them off. Personally, I would not enable the immediate popup notifications for this feature, but instead just the notification bubble/number at the top right, whatever you call it. That's how I have it set at the XF forums, and it works quite well. It's enough to make me aware of the event but not too much to be annoying or obtrusive.

And let's be honest, how often do you make a post that more than just a few people give you positive rep for?

[Fishfish0001]

Why not just have it only popup once with the last rep when you login, rather than trying to clump them together?

[Michael]

Notifications are created as soon as they are triggered, in this case when you get rep for a post. To only show the last one, it'd have to delete any existing notifications when new ones are created. If the notification type selected for this was an email, that email would have already been sent by that point, it can't very well be deleted.

[Luke]

Uh.... OK I can see a reason why you'd want to know when and how you've been given a positive/negative rep.... But I can see notifications getting annoying really fast. It's already difficult enough keeping track of notifications when clicking on the drop down marks them all as read... (I love the someone quoted your post feature)...

Instead how about a listing page to see who repped you and where? Essentially make the reputation counter in your profile clickable to see all your rep points in order, similar to positive/negative feedback on ebay.

[G Fox]

The point is it feels pretty cool to know you got positive rep.
It'd be nice if the popup menu knew that you had not viewed all notifications (ie. the way notifications are all marked as 'not new' after your first click into that menu), but I'd like to distinguish that problem from the suggestion in this thread.

[Ryan R]

But I can see notifications getting annoying really fast.

Let's put this into perspective.

You've been here for 6 years and have over 5k posts. You have an overall reputation of 204. Doing some simple math, this means that if you had notifications enabled, you would have received, on average, 1 notification every 10 days. Is 3 notifications a month really that annoying?

And remember, if you think it's annoying, then all you have to do is turn it off. Nobody's going to force popups in your face if you don't want them.

[Michael]

Let's put this into perspective.

You've been here for 6 years and have over 5k posts. You have an overall reputation of 204. Doing some simple math, this means that if you had notifications enabled, you would have received, on average, 1 notification every 10 days. Is 3 notifications a month really that annoying?

And remember, if you think it's annoying, then all you have to do is turn it off. Nobody's going to force popups in your face if you don't want them.

The notifications system has been here for only about a year. He would have gotten one notification about rep a little more than every other day. Others would have gotten several a day. It likely would be the most common notification issued on a lot of boards.

[Ryan R]

He would have gotten one notification about rep a little more than every other day. Others would have gotten several a day.

Then turn it off:

If you find the notifications annoying, then you just turn them off.

And remember, if you think it's annoying, then all you have to do is turn it off. Nobody's going to force popups in your face if you don't want them.

Why are you guys so against letting others enable a feature they want?

I've posted fairly frequently at the XF forums, and let me tell you first hand that the red notification bubbles when somebody "Like"s my post is very effective, and I do not find them annoying - I welcome them. I don't have it set up to throw a popup in my face every time somebody likes a post of mine - just add a +1 to my notification counter. Have you ever experienced this "notification for positive rep" in production? Hop over to the XF forums. Get involved. Then state your opinion.

[rastaX]

Choice is the key function here.

While folks like you (Michael) who help a lot of people and receive a lot of rep could get tired of all the notifications, it could really make someone else's day, week month or year. As long as no one is forced to endure excessive notifications, it should be all good.

We all know the vast majority of users never post. A smaller group posts rarely. A very small group posts regularly. This is not really for the regular posters as much as an encouragement to get the wallflowers to post more frequently and maybe to get some to post at all.