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Conversation System: Add email notifications for comments
As a rule of thumb, for communication to succeed, both the sender and the receiver must be able to maintain a flow of information from and to each other.
In terms of an online conversation based on asynchronous communication, there should be a way to notify each party that the other has responded to its message.
This is usually done through email notifications that encourage the receiver to continue the conversation.
Plugins available:
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Comment Reply Email Notification by Arno Welzel
- Simple options: checked by-default, GDPR checkbox and policy link
- Lightweight Subscribe To Comments by Isabel Castillo
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Replyable by Postmatic
- Hourly, daily digest (Comment flood control)
- Clean solution and easy to use; good notification content
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Subscribe To Comments Reloaded by WPKube
- Very complex for our purpose
Issue related to #268
I did my diligence research to discover the main jobs-to-be-done from a user perspective:
- The comment author ~~wants~~ needs to know when the article author or someone else replies to its comment, so the communication loop between the sender and the receiver continues and the conversation is evolving.
- A commenter that steps into a conversation and writes a reply to a current thread, wants to stay in contact with the whole conversation.
- A reader wants to know where the conversations are going, without involving in writing its opinion in the comments.
To limit our purpose but making the experience better, I think we should narrow the solution to the first item and automatically notify the comment authors only about replies to their comments. The other two items from the list involve a higher level of complexity and 3rd party plugins might be needed to control all the use-cases.
I draw a comment notification scheme to see which users receive notifications and when. You can find it here and you can explore further variations if needed:
Starting from this motivation, I propose a set of guidelines that the solution should aim for.
Emails notifications triggers:
- Send an email notification automatically to the Comment Author for all the subsequent replies to its comment. (examples of email notification for a new comment)
- Provide an option in Settings → Discussion to stop sending notification emails for comment replies
Emails content:
- Provide a one-click unsubscribe link inside the email content
- Provide a reply link for easier comment form navigation
@vladolaru That’s my call on this matter. Now it’s up to you to decide if we should use a plugin or (better) you can load the functionality from an existing one. Let me know when you need my additional input or feedback.
@vladolaru Just remembered a mention here regarding the Falcon project for Email Notifications (by Human Made) — maybe it helps.