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Don't add duplicate notifications if an unread notification for the same event type and parent post already exists
I was away from Codidact for a few hours and, coming back, saw that I had ⑨ unread notifications.
Practically as I was watching it, the number grew to ⑩.
This wouldn't be so bad, but it turned out that they really were for just three comment threads.
Getting one notification for each comment being added, before you have even had a chance to react to the notifications already in your notification inbox, can get rather overwhelming.
Hence, I propose that: if there is an existing unread notification, for the same type of event and relating to the same parent post (new answers to the same question, edits to the same post, comments within the same comment thread, new comment thread on the same post, etc.) then no further notification should be added to the inbox.
2 answers
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I thought we did this already, so I had a look. Turns out we were using the wrong link to check for duplicates, which I've updated. You should find you only get one notification per comment thread when there are any number of new comments now.
I think it's worth showing in some way that there are multiple of each type of notifications - for instance, that there are four new comments in a single thread. It more clearly indicates what's new and what you need to catch up on.
Maybe it'd be best to collapse notifications in such a way that you are shown a (3) in your inbox, but if you open it up it'll show "there are three new comments in this thread". So you could have a (9) in your inbox, but your inbox contents themselves would show "you have two new comments in this thread", "five new comments in another thread", and "two new answers to your post".
I don't know how easy this would be from a development point of view, but I think that'd be the best of both worlds.
1 comment thread