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Quora's Notification Settings

oothenigerian.com

22 pointsOoTheNigerian14 comments

Facebook has exactly the same interface (http://i.imgur.com/EwrHR.png) only much longer (~60 checkboxes not including one for each external app).

Horrible.

If that's not a middle finger to all users (is is that hard to implement a simple "Select All/Deselect All"?) I don't know what is.

Here is a bookmarklet I made to uncheck all those boxes automatically :)

http://cantuse.it/2010/09/how-to-disable-all-emails-from-fac...

People have been suggesting this design is some sort of mistake. I don't think so:

1. Email notifications have a very high value for Quora - they drive users back to the site. 2. A fair number of users unsubscribe by clicking the "unsubscribe" link at the footer of emails 3. This design ensures users clicking this link will only ever unsubscribe from a subset of email notifications.

This way, users end up with an inbox that looks like this:

http://www.contrast.ie/blog/getting-your-users-on-board/

If a user wants to unsubscribe from everything, they have to have the presence of mind to visit this page, and then untick every single checkbox. This is effortful. Geni.com were criticised for using this exact dark pattern and ended up adding a single-click "Unsubscribe me from all Geni emails" feature:

http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Roach_Motel#Example:_geni.com

The real question is whether Quora should be criticised for using this design pattern, or is it an acceptable practice?

I don't want to be coerced into vising a site just because it's hitting my inbox, I have enough incoming mail as it is.

If a site respects me by allowing me to easily remove all email notifications, I'll be much more inclined to respect it back by giving it my business.

> If a site respects me by allowing me to easily remove all email notifications, I'll be much more inclined to respect it back by giving it my business.

In the unlikely case that this is actually true for you, not just the way that you like to imagine yourself to behave, it certainly is not true for most users.

http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Groups/Which-has-more-e-mail-s...

As long as they have sensible default settings (which I think they do), having detailed control of the types of notifications you want to receive is perfectly fine. If they decide to change default settings to something less desirable, then I think this would be more of a problem.

Detail isn't the problem, it's that it's needlessly complex to just say "stop sending me email". I shouldn't have to click 20 checkboxes so I can stop being spammed--just make me choose one.

At the bottom of each email, Quora provides a link that lets you stop receiving all notifications from them. It's a two-click process.

Why not add the same link to the email settings page?

My guess is that they didn't think of it and no one has requested this feature. Here's a link to a list of feature suggestions submitted by active Quora users:

http://www.quora.com/Quora-User-Feedback/What-features-would...

Of all the suggestions, Khalid's suggestion seems most relevant to yours:

"I just signed up, and was a bit horrified to see 40 odd possible e-mail notifications I could receive. But I was disappointed not to see a link to an RSS feed of those notifications." (http://www.quora.com/Quora-User-Feedback/What-features-would...)

Note that his main suggestion is to have Quora provide RSS feeds in place of email notification as opposed to adding a button that lets users disable all email notifications.

Like I said earlier, their sensible default settings make this feature somewhat unnecessary.

There isn't much point criticising possibly the least used part of an otherwise well designed site. Quora are certainly aware of the page but have probably prioritised their efforts elsewhere.

Instead, let's be constructive. What things do you like about Quora's design or how would you redesign things that you don't?

If I were Quora, I would include a 'daily/weekly summary' option. That way, people will get one notification with all details.

What happens if you do this and a lot of users click the "report spam" button?

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