Request for Feedback: Discussion Notification Volume Settings

Rob posted this in another thread and we realised we'd love to get some user feedback before moving ahead with implementation, and it deserved its own discussion. This is an evolution of our earlier work on Following. Let us know what you think!

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Following was never quite right, and we’re moving towards something called “volume".

How it will work:

• You’ll have your own personal volume setting for each discussion, and can change it any time you like.
• Email means you’ll get emailed any activity immediately
• Normal means you’ll see it in your inbox
• Mute means you won’t see it unless you visit the group page.
• You can set the default volume level for each discussion in a group, by adjusting the group volume level.

The Loomio 1.0 inbox has two modes: Unread and Recent.

• Unread will show everything that is not muted that you have not seen
• Recent will contain a handful of recent discussions for each group, even if you’ve seen all the content in the threads.

The ‘missed yesterday’ email will/should contain everything that is not muted that you have not seen. All activity will still show if you look directly at the group dashboard, and if someone @mentions you in a thread you've muted, you'll still get a notification.

Some of the confusion we had when we originally developed “Following” was that we wanted to tie the notion of participating with notification level, which made things a bit complex. So with the volume branch, the concept of “participating” in a thread will not be directly related to the volume level.

That said, they are related. There will be a user setting “When I participate in a discussion, email me any future activity”. And we’ll have a nice popup that, when you participate in a discussion, let’s you know that the volume level has been changed to email, and links you to the user settings page to turn the setting off. We don’t have designs for the interaction yet, but they’ll be ready soon.