Email Post context user setting
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Continuing the discussion from So is the migration thing still happening?:
This is really frustrating:
<img src="/uploads/default/2816/8902f3e1cd32a34d.png" width="690" height="195">
Some people like this default, for some it is atrocious. I will add a user setting so you can override it.
Can you make a topic for this so I don't forget?
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I suggest you delete your alternate account as well so we do not get blamed for "erroneously" emailing digests to you, also.
Or disable emails in the prefs of that user, also, whatever works.
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Done.
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I set it to 0 here for now here.
Let's see if anyone complains about lack of context, can you re-enable emails?
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Sure. When the other issue mentioned is sorted:
Oh, and that the e-mails arrive wildly out-of-order.
Otherwise I'll pass, ta.
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Email is in correct order, its the context that is throwing you off.
Only delay is a 5 minute delay to account for ninja edits (also configurable as a site setting, but if you turn that buffer off people will ninja lots of confusion into your mail box)
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Hmm. Ok. I'll try it then.
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Note, we suppress emails to you while you are browsing the site (if you still want emails while browsing, be sure to disable that in your user profile)
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Testing 123, you should get this emails in 5 minutes. By itself in a non confusing format.
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I've already had post #6 in email.
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Are you happy with it?
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It's certainly closer to what I was used to with CS.
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Email is in correct order, its the context that is throwing you off.
Nope. Compare the Received and Created columns:
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What does received vs created mean? How much of this is in our control vs the client polling your pop3 endpoint and mandrill?
Also, keep in mind we wait 5 minutes to avoid sending you emails pre-ninja editing. Could this be part of the problem?
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I'd assume that “Created” is “originating timestamp for the email message” (possibly client-generated; depends on how you send email) and that “Received” is “timestamp of when the email hit the mailbox”. They're not expected to be the same, but they're usually in the same order.
Don't have to be though. Email routing is WTFy enough for its whole own site…
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What does received vs created mean? How much of this is in our control vs the client polling your pop3 endpoint and mandrill?
Received means the time my client downloaded the messages from POP3 server, and Created is the Date header in message. My e-mail client checks for new mail every 5 minutes. If you look at the first 3 unread messages in the picture, they have been created at 22:52 to 22:53, but downloaded at 23:32. However, the very next message was created at 22:54 (meaning at least a minute later than those 3 messages), and received at 22:55, more than half hour earlier (and only about a minute after it was created).
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If it helps, all our servers run UTC time, and should have time synced with some external atomic clock, though I should check that with our sysadmin.
I think we'll need some detailed spelunking into email headers and comparing that to post times (click the time in the upper right) to really troubleshoot this in any detail.
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I blame leap seconds!
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Email isn't guaranteed to be delivered in order. It never ever was.
Check the Received chain on various messages, both fast and slow, to see where things got held up. If it's away from the DC instance, there's nothing that @codinghorror (or @apapadimoulis) can do about it.
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@PJH feel free to weight in here if you want to:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-context-can-cause-confusion/16848
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Meh. I'm happy with no context.
Your topic does highlight one problem I did have with the context - I never could figure out how the context should be read; top to bottom, bottom to top? Seeing more than one post in a row (monitor height permitting) do you get:
- 1
- 2
- 1
- 3
- 2
- 1
- 4
- 3
- 2
- 1
or
- 1
- 2
- 1
- 3
- 1
- 2
- 4
- 1
- 2
- 3
Either way is "not conducive to blah blah..." and is not easily parsable, hence why I turned it off at the beginning.
I'm quite happy with
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 6
- 4
- 5
- 7
... and can usually spot/recognise the occasional #6 when it comes along.
Given the confusion around context, I got the strong impression mails were being sent, and hence received, out of order, because I was seeing stuff in the context that I didn't remember seeing in the thread/topic prior to that email.
