One feature-request we keep seeing is users want to be notified when someone un-accepts an answer, so a few questions that follow are how often should these notifications be seen, under what conditions, and how should they be presented?
Using myselfmyself as a high activity user (~6,300 answers), we see the following over the course of a year:
- 4,110 total accepted answers
- 520 total unaccepted answers
- 201 still unaccepted answers (answers that weren't later re-accepted)
So that means approximately every other day (201/365) I'd get a notification of an unaccepted answer. Now, compared to a more closer-to-average activity-volume user, we'll use Samwe'll use Sam (836 answers):
- 267 total accepted answers
- 22 total unaccepted answers
- 10 still unaccepted answers
Granted this is over a period about twice a long, so we'll say Sam would get a notice about once every 1-2 months.
Compare these counts to yours and you can get a rough idea of the counts you'd see personally,
would this volume of notifications be helpful, or noise?
Too much? What if we reduced the volume? For example we could skip notification in some circumstances:
- Question owner changes the accepted answer to one of their own.
- Answer is subsequently re-accepted.
- You deleted your accepted answer.
- other cases?
Also, how should these notifications be presented in the UI?
- The reputation report
- A message bar (appears at the top of the page, like the site welcome message)
- An inbox notification
- A new tab on your profile only visible to you?
- other ideas?
