We've asked for public feeback/clarification on this ticket:

http://blog.musicbrainz.org/2016/01/29/notifications-and-messaging-in-metabrainz-projects/

Please leave comments on the blog!

Discourse.org was mentioned a few times as a possible forum/mailing-list replacement. If that were to happen, could the notification system in that be used site-wide?

I would tend to think implementing private messages would be the simplest part of all this (i.e. send message to user + have an inbox). If we have a way to contact people (especially with a read notification feature), it would help somewhat (it still requires tracking which user is responsive or not, but at least there is a solution).

There are cases where users are not responding which I really doubt come from intentional ignoring:

• User generally doing good edits and detailed edit notes. (one of them, at least two other editors have tried reaching without success)
• Doing something very time consuming for them (like not using an import script after being told it exists and how to install it)
• Doing the same mistake repeatedly which will be rejected for the same reason, again resulting in wasted time

Of course 2&3 could be masochistic trolls but I don't believe someone can be as dedicated.

Probably some of each. Solving b) would be a reasonable start, since those would be easier to win back.

Question:

Are people:

• intentionally ignoring the emails, because they want to keep making crappy edits and not deal with all the MB guideline BS or
• people miss that emails are important (maybe because of spam filter, spam mail accounts used, etc) and if the emails would arrive that they would read them and act on them?

Which problem are we trying to solve?

What filter / mail service are you using?

I wonder if the new https://gmail.com/postmaster/ could help diagnose the issues.

This is a much needed feature. Lately many of my notification emails keep getting eaten by my junk mail filter. I think having both a notice in the top of the page as well as supporting the web notice API would b a great thing.

I've been thinking that it would be neat to use XMPP in the backend for this. It could allow both already existing software (Jabber clients) to hook up to MB.o and get instant notifications there, and it could also help to empower a lot of other uses.

I haven't made a lot of noise about this earlier, because it is also yet another service to manage.

Edit: Some IRC discussion on this topic: http://chatlogs.musicbrainz.org/musicbrainz-devel/2015/2015-03/2015-03-09.html#T11-09-08-704042

This is badly needed, as many editors very obviously do not get the notifications (I suspect throwaway mails, overzealous spam filter, etc.), and in turn continue creating a stream of bad edits.

Ideally it would be red, flashing and take half the screen.