MSC2673: Notification Levels

[timokoesters]

Rendered

[timokoesters]

Another feature this proposal makes possible is to quickly switch between "normal" and "work" profiles. Perhaps you set the notification settings in a way where you only receive notifications from some work-related rooms when a device is using the "work" profile

[joepie91]

I can see a potential issue here. For example, you might want mentions in a public channel to be highlighted but not cause any sounds or show any notifications (eg. when you do a lot of IRC support), but inversely you probably want PMs to cause a notification + sound but not highlight the message (since the entire chat would show up highlighted).

Basically, I'm not convinced that "highlight message" exists on a linear spectrum with notification intensity. Unlike eg. sounds or shown notifications, it is something that is done to the display afterwards, not something that grabs your attention in the moment.

[richvdh]

this is mentioned under the "Problems" section, but yes, this is my main concern as well.

[Sleuth56]

You can get around this completely by defining what actions can be taken and assigning a true or false value to each. These values would still be represented by a single number however. This number would work the same way binary numbers work. Convert the base 10 number into base 2 then use 1s and 0s as flags for each notification action. For example, the numbers 1-255 give you 8 possible "switches" each can be toggled independently. This makes it possible to easily extend this in the future to enable more complex/future types of notification actions. An implementation note, do not decode this number into a static amount of variables. This will cause issues when new types are added.

[kevincox]

I don't think we need to encode them into an integer bitmap but I do like the idea of a bunch of booleans rather than a linear list however it is encoded.

[richvdh]

I think there is another issue which is highlighted by a comparison with power levels:

Basically, (most) people would find a level-based system confusing and hard to use: the two dimensions of control (1. map events onto levels; 2. map levels onto actions) simply don't map onto the way people think. For power levels, we've solved this by giving magic names to some of the levels - "default", "moderator", "admin" - which helps people relate the number to something more concrete. but it's not obvious we can do the same thing here.

[timokoesters]

I think it's possible to create good UI for this using sliders.

Normal:        C___N___S___H___ 
Work:           ___C___N___S___H
Mentions:      #################
Displayname:   #########--------
DMs:           #########--------
Cool Groups:   #####------------
Spammy Groups: ####]
Ignored Users: ]


// Letters: Notification profile (C: Notification Count, N: Show notification, S: Play Sound, H: Highlight)
// '#' before up_to
// '-' between up_to and max
// ']' max
// ' ' over max

[richvdh]

interesting, though I'm still concerned it wouldn't be something that first-time users could understand easily

[lboklin]

I would suggest that notification settings for a space should propagate to each room contained within unless explicitly overridden. If a room or space exists in more than one space, the "noisiest" setting should take precedence.