Email Notifications

To get the talkbackist really involved (and maybe even worked up ;-)), and boost activity and virality of the site, we need to email a user when additional activity has happened on an item he was involved with. If he voted on an item, or commented on an item, he will now receive mail notifications. He can also receive notifications on items he “Stars” (Just basically a simple star icon next to objects such as MK’s, Laws, etc. which can be enabled/disabled via Ajax).

But Isn’t this Spam?

This is not considered spam, because the user has actively participated on a subject. This indicates that he is interested in the subject, and receiving news/updates on that subject is actually a welcome thing. See how Facebook works for a great example of how that feature keeps bringing users back to Facebook again and again.

Ok so how does the mechanism work exactly?

Instead of “blindly” subscribing the user via some hidden database table, we just toggle the “Star” for that object for the user. This behavior is more transparent, and it also allows the user to turn off the Star at any time if he no longer wants to get notified on updates to the primary object of interest.