Topic on Talk:Notifications

Email notification defaults

4
Sroc (talkcontribs)

I'm new around here, so I hope this is the right place for this. I posted this yesterday at Talk:Echo (Notifications)/Feature requirements#Email notification defaults after reading about this at Echo (Notifications)/Feature requirements#Email settings:

Apparently the default setting is to send individual notifications as they come in via email? How is this good practice to apply this automatically? Aside from likely pissing users off, this could violate spam laws by sending unsolicited emails. Email notifications should definitely be opt-in.

To my mind, activating this setting by default seems to be a major oversight. Personally, I prefer not to receive emails from WMF about most things (instead to be notified when I visit), so I am both surprised and annoyed that this has been activated by default without my intervention. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will have such a reaction, especially users who unexpectedly receive an influx of emails from WMF without warning.

WhatamIdoing (talkcontribs)

It's perfectly legal, and you did technically agree to this. It says in section 17 of the Terms of Use: "You agree that we may provide you with notices, including those regarding changes to the Terms of Use, by email, regular mail, or postings on Project websites." Those e-mails are "notices", and you received them "by email".

I agree that one e-mail per message is a bit much. It would be much better with at least some sort of rate-limiter, like only sending one message per page/per day.

Steven (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Note that to receive emails, you have to confirm your email address. Just because you sign up with an email address doesn't mean you'll get notifications of any kind.

Sroc (talkcontribs)

Thanks for your comments. My point, as WhatamIdoing has also said, is that one email for every notification could be a lot, particularly for a new feature that has been activated automatically. This will result in users suddenly getting email notifications for events that they didn't before. Regardless of the legality based on consent from the Terms of Use, this sort of unexpected behaviour does have a tendency to annoy. IMHO, it would have been better as an opt-in, or at least set at one of the less-frequent digest options, perhaps with an introductory explanation and instructions of how to change to more frequent emails if desired.

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