[SPIKE] Determine how and where automatic topic subscription preferences can be managed
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	• ppelberg
	Apr 24 2021, 12:38 AM

Description

This spike is about defining how and where people will be able to manage their automatic topic subscription preferences.

Context

Notifications are valuable to the extent they inform people when something happens they consider to be interesting and relevant.

Core to delivering on the above is ensuring people have easy access to settings that enable them to decide, with sufficient granularity, what events they do and do not want to be notified about.

This spike is about arriving at an initial opinion about what "easy access" and "sufficient granularity" mean in the context of automatic topic subscriptions.

Question(s) this spike should answer

Where is the preference for automatically subscribing to topics surfaced?
- See T281017#7135119.

Done

Answers to all ===Open questions are documented in the task description
Tickets are created for any new work that emerges in the course of answering the ===Open questions above
- See T284836.

Related Objects
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Status	Assigned	Task
Open	None	T276497 Scale DiscussionTools to all projects
Open	None	T251207 [Epic] Scale DiscussionTools to all Wikipedias
Resolved	• ppelberg	T284489 Deploy topic subscriptions (desktop) as opt-out feature at all projects
Resolved	• ppelberg	T284490 Offer topic subscriptions as a Beta Feature at all projects
Resolved	• ppelberg	T287277 Offer automatic topic subscriptions as Beta Feature at all projects
Open	None	T233447 [OKR] Increase response rates
Open	None	T273920 [Interventions] Notifications
Open	None	T263819 [Intervention] Automatic topic subscriptions
Resolved	• ppelberg	T282636 [Release Ticket] Offer Automatic Topic Subscriptions as Beta Feature at Initial Wikis
Resolved	matmarex	T284836 [Implementation] Automatic topic subscriptions (DiscussionTools)
Resolved	• ppelberg	T281017 [SPIKE] Determine how and where automatic topic subscription preferences can be managed

Event Timeline

• ppelberg created this task.Apr 24 2021, 12:38 AM

• ppelberg moved this task from Backlog to Triaged on the DiscussionTools board.

• ppelberg mentioned this in T279498: [SPIKE] Determine how Topic Subscriptions and Watchlists relate in the near-term.

What does "within tools" mean in this context?

• ppelberg renamed this task from [SPIKE] Determine how – if at all – topic subscription preferences can be managed from within tools to [SPIKE] Determine how and where automatic topic subscription preferences can be managed.May 14 2021, 10:02 PM

• ppelberg added a project: Editing-team (Kanban Board).

• ppelberg updated the task description. (Show Details)

• ppelberg mentioned this in T281016: [SPIKE] Determine how automatic topic subscriptions impact/relate to the existing edit-related Watchlist events in Special:Preferences.May 14 2021, 10:07 PM

• ppelberg mentioned this in T263819: [Intervention] Automatic topic subscriptions.

In T281017#7043970, @iamjessklein wrote:

What does "within tools" mean in this context?

E.g. a setting people can adjust when they have a Reply or New Discussion Tool open.

Question(s) this spike should answer

Where is the preference for automatically subscribing to topics surfaced?

To start, people will have two options for managing automatic topic subscriptions:

They will be able to opt-out of being automatically subscribed to conversations entirely by adjusting a to-be created preference in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing
They will be able to unsubscribe to conversations they have automatically been subscribed to by clicking the [ unsubscribe ] affordance that will accompany all talk page conversations

If the two options above prove to be insufficient, we will explore offering people more granular control over the conversations they are and are not automatically subscribed to.

Where "granular control" in this context could mean: exposing a setting within the Reply and New Discussion Tools themselves that allows people to explicitly decide whether they would like to be notified when new comments are posted in the particular conversation they are starting or commenting in without impacting the state of the setting within Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing.