On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 14:59:53 +0100, Thomas Gries <mail(a)tgries.de> wrote:
but for me
it's significantly harder to receive every message as a notice in my inbox
_One_ email notification is sent once the page, you are watching, is
changed by someone else than you. Further changes do not trigger.
I think Kate's point was not about how many notifications, but about
the difference between being notified that a change has been made, and
actually reading the message directly. Using a mailing-list
subscription, or a newsgroup viewer, there are 2 steps to reading the
message:
1) pick the conversation you want to read (by its subject)
2) read the messages therein
With a mail-notifying discussion forum *of any kind*, there are 3:
1) pick the conversation
2) follow the link in the notification
3) read the message
This would make it significantly *harder* to "browse" a large number
of discussions, because you would be constantly switching between
mail-client and browser, and you would be less able to use additional
features of your client to deal with the discussions in ways that
suited you personally.
What's more, the "receive one notif and then no more" feature is
actually something of a *disadvantage*, because (if I understand
rightly) it removes the behaviour common on traditional threaded
environments of new posts "bumping" a thread, even if it is a reply to
something that happened a long time ago. If you go away, don't check
the notifications, and come back, you will not know which are still
active.
Please don't think I'm criticising your work on eNotif *in general*,
but with the general consensus being that discussions on MediaWiki
leave something to be desired anyway, I don't see that just having
this one enhancement suddenly makes them better than longer
established mediums *for the same purpose*.
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]