Show conversation history in blog alerts

[Paul Everitt]

Backlog ID: 18 (Est 8 hours)

Problem
===========

Bob adds a blog entry that generates an alert. People start replying,
creating comments, and Sue makes a proposal regarding the topic being
discussed. Steve agrees and emails a blog comment saying "Sounds
good."

The email alert only says "Sounds good". For any other context,
people have to go back to the blog entry and read the discussion.
Some KARL users, though, communicate with KARL primarily via email and
this is less helpful.

We need the blog comment alerts to contain more information about the
discussion.

Constraints
=============

- Since Outlook/Exchange doesn't implement standards for "in reply
  to", we have never been able to support threading. Thus, we can't
  know whether an incoming email is a reply to a particular comment or
  the original blog entry. This means we can't show in the
  conversation history the particular item a comment was commenting
  on.

Specification
==============

- Has no effect on alert email text for original blog entry

- All extra information is provided below the "reply to" separator

- Show the full text, author information, and date of the original
  blog entry, as well as the same for the most recent 3 blog comments.

- If more than 3 comments exist, show a note that X comments are not
  shown in the email with a link to view all comments

- Order the comments in descending order followed by the notice that X
  comments are not shown (if needed) then by the original blog entry
  text

[Paul Everitt (paul-agendaless)]

I'm going to move this 3.2 feature enhancement to beyond next week.

[Chris Rossi (chris-archimedeanco)]

The spec above doesn't mention digest formatting. I'm operating under the assumption that the history feature is not necessary for digest format, since it's likely that relevant preceding messages occur elsewhere in the digest. Of course, it is also possible that the relevant preceding messages were in a preceding digest--so if someone wants to argue that we need this for digest, too, we can have that discussion.

[Paul Everitt (paul-agendaless)]

Very good point, my oversight for not thinking to bring that up.

I think you're right, let's treat digest as a different case. If that
comes up from OSI, then we'll spec it separately.

--Paul

On Aug 19, 2009, at 10:00 AM, Chris Rossi wrote:

> The spec above doesn't mention digest formatting. I'm operating under
> the assumption that the history feature is not necessary for digest
> format, since it's likely that relevant preceding messages occur
> elsewhere in the digest. Of course, it is also possible that the
> relevant preceding messages were in a preceding digest--so if someone
> wants to argue that we need this for digest, too, we can have that
> discussion.
>
> --
> Show conversation history in blog alerts
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/403738
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in KARL3: In Progress
>
> Bug description:
>
> Backlog ID: 18 (Est 8 hours)
>
> Problem
> ===========
>
> Bob adds a blog entry that generates an alert. People start replying,
> creating comments, and Sue makes a proposal regarding the topic being
> discussed. Steve agrees and emails a blog comment saying "Sounds
> good."
>
> The email alert only says "Sounds good". For any other context,
> people have to go back to the blog entry and read the discussion.
> Some KARL users, though, communicate with KARL primarily via email and
> this is less helpful.
>
> We need the blog comment alerts to contain more information about the
> discussion.
>
> Constraints
> =============
>
> - Since Outlook/Exchange doesn't implement standards for "in reply
> to", we have never been able to support threading. Thus, we can't
> know whether an incoming email is a reply to a particular comment or
> the original blog entry. This means we can't show in the
> conversation history the particular item a comment was commenting
> on.
>
> Specification
> ==============
>
> - Has no effect on alert email text for original blog entry
>
> - All extra information is provided below the "reply to" separator
>
> - Show the full text, author information, and date of the original
> blog entry, as well as the same for the most recent 3 blog comments.
>
> - If more than 3 comments exist, show a note that X comments are not
> shown in the email with a link to view all comments
>
> - Order the comments in descending order followed by the notice that X
> comments are not shown (if needed) then by the original blog entry
> text

[Anthony (agalietti)]

Attached is a proposed update created by Jonathan Hooper. Basically, he wants to add 'RE:' in the heading, list ALL comments, not just 3, and add the full timestamp to the datestamp that is already there. Please see attachment for clarity.

[Paul Everitt (paul-agendaless)]

Moving back to in-progress. Jonathan echoed a sentiment that the new email format is confusing. In essence, he'd like to move to showing, in each email, the complete conversation history (no threading):

"""
Seems like the new “full thread” message notification for KARL is turned on by default (see message below). I think this option should probably be off by default for most people, or at the very least we should inform users about the change if you’ve decided to forgo a toggle switch.

Also, I think this “full thread” message could be simplified a bit. See attached template for some suggestions. Essentially I think we should include all comments and add a time stamp to the entries. The “Last preceding comments” and “One earlier comment not shown” labels are clunky and give a frustrating glance into some magic, seemingly arbitrary functionality.
"""

Anthony attached an HTML file that shows what should be the format of the email. I will add him as subscribed on this issue, so if ChrisR has any questions, he can communicate directly with Anthony.