55 votes

Notifications are now automatically marked as read when you take an action on the comment (voting, replying, etc.) - this can be disabled in Settings

Tags: changelog

This is a relatively minor update, but one I've been meaning to do for a long time. By default, comment notifications will now be automatically marked as read if you interact with the comment (currently, by: voting on it, replying to it, labelling it, or bookmarking it). This will happen regardless of where you take the interaction, so if you're viewing the thread itself and interact with comments that you also had notifications for, they will be marked read.

When you're on the unread notifications page, even though actions are resulting in the comments being marked read, they won't disappear like they do if you click the "mark as read" button manually. This is so that you can take multiple actions if you want (such as voting and then replying). However, if you reload the page, they will disappear.

If you don't like this behavior and would prefer to continue marking all comments as read manually, you can go to the Settings page and disable "Automatically mark notifications read when you interact with the source comment".

I've bumped everyone back up to 10 invite codes as well, which you can get from the Invite page.

9 comments

  1. [6]
    Algernon_Asimov
    Link
    Thank you! On literally the first day I joined Tildes, I suggested that clicking on a reply should mark it as "read", and I've been waiting patiently (or not so patiently...) ever since. This...

    Thank you!

    On literally the first day I joined Tildes, I suggested that clicking on a reply should mark it as "read", and I've been waiting patiently (or not so patiently...) ever since.

    This morning, I log in and my Notifications page is behaving strangely. Replies are vanishing without me marking them as read. I do some testing, but it doesn't seem to be consistent. Then I read this at the bottom of the Notifications page:

    Comments will be automatically marked read when you take an action on them (such as voting or replying).

    Yes! Finally! Thank you! Merci beaucoup! Muchas gracias! I appreciate this feature.

    Of course, after 10 months of working around the old algorithm, it's going to take me a bit of time to adapt to the new algorithm. But I'll adapt.

    Thank you!

    11 votes
    1. [3]
      cfabbro
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      And also thank you for providing a way to disable it in the user settings too, @deimos... since I often vote on replies to let people know I have read them, but still want to keep them in my...

      And also thank you for providing a way to disable it in the user settings too, @deimos... since I often vote on replies to let people know I have read them, but still want to keep them in my notifications so I can easily respond to them later when I finally get the time.

      p.s. Here is the commit from authored 6 days ago (for those curious):
      https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/commit/f29537adb7a581158d90948d498fbac53edd35eb

      7 votes
      1. [2]
        Deimos
        Link Parent
        Just to clarify: I wrote the code 6 days ago, but only pushed it to the repo about an hour ago. Git can be a little confusing since the commit date is separate, so it doesn't always work out...

        Just to clarify: I wrote the code 6 days ago, but only pushed it to the repo about an hour ago. Git can be a little confusing since the commit date is separate, so it doesn't always work out chronologically. For example, if you look at the commit list, the "6 days ago" commit is newer than a "3 days ago" one, because they were pushed to the repo in a different order than they were written.

        4 votes
        1. Algernon_Asimov
          Link Parent
          Yeah, I thought @cfabbro's timing was off, because this was definitely not happening 6 days ago.

          I wrote the code 6 days ago, but only pushed it to the repo about an hour ago.

          Yeah, I thought @cfabbro's timing was off, because this was definitely not happening 6 days ago.

          1 vote
    2. [2]
      Deimos
      Link Parent
      Yep, it's still not quite what you wanted, since solely clicking "Link" or "Parent" doesn't mark it as read, but it definitely takes care of a lot of the common cases.

      Yep, it's still not quite what you wanted, since solely clicking "Link" or "Parent" doesn't mark it as read, but it definitely takes care of a lot of the common cases.

      2 votes
      1. Algernon_Asimov
        Link Parent
        You're right: it's not exactly what I asked for. But it's close enough. These things are always going to involve a bit of compromise and, as you say, this implementation covers most common cases....

        You're right: it's not exactly what I asked for. But it's close enough. These things are always going to involve a bit of compromise and, as you say, this implementation covers most common cases.

        I'm not sure what my new workflow will be, but I can see it being something like: "I'm not going to do anything with that reply, so I'll mark it as read right now. I'll leave the others as unread until I can get to them later, and they'll take care of themselves at that time."

        1 vote
  2. Deimos
    (edited )
    Link
    Bah, and now I've noticed that I don't think this is updating the Mark new comments feature correctly, so this isn't quite done yet. Edit: I think this should be fixed now, please let me know if...

    Bah, and now I've noticed that I don't think this is updating the Mark new comments feature correctly, so this isn't quite done yet.

    Edit: I think this should be fixed now, please let me know if you still notice issues.

    5 votes
  3. unknown user
    Link
    No, this is a massive boost in user-experience niceness and one annoying nuisance less.

    This is a relatively minor update, (…)

    No, this is a massive boost in user-experience niceness and one annoying nuisance less.

    4 votes
  4. Catt
    Link
    Generally love this update. Thanks! However, it would be nice to have an option to only mark as read when I reply. I often vote or label something and then go back to write a comment, as that...

    Generally love this update. Thanks!

    However, it would be nice to have an option to only mark as read when I reply. I often vote or label something and then go back to write a comment, as that takes more thought and time.

    4 votes