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Because comments can be deleted but emails are permanent (until the receiver decides to delete them), can we have the full comment included in the email notifications, not just the first line.

I understand some people change their minds about comments and delete them, but if I've been notified of a comment, I'd like to know the whole comment without having to ask a moderator to tell me what the deleted message was.

This has happened to me a couple of times on different sites.

Further to the comments here: This is a feature of the global inbox (which I've now added as a tag), and the comments are truncated there too, so this is really a bigger feature request than I first considered.

The email notification is not immediate. E.g. I did not receive emails for the comments here before I've already seen them myself, even though I was away from the computer for over an hour while they were added.

It is only for curiosity: the original poster of the comment has deleted it for a reason, but it was around long enough for the email to be sent, so I believe I should be able to see the whole message.

Anyway, here's the example partial comment I saw this morning (from Politics.SE):

Oct, 8 How is constitutional monarchy perceived in Commonwealth realms other than United Kingdom?
comment: @MarkHurd totally agree, we have other things we like to do, hehe I am a bit shell shocked coming...

Note I'm not even informed who the commenter is.

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  • Why? Comments are intentionally second-class citizens. They were always meant to be temporal.
    – Makoto
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 2:15
  • My guess is sending email notifications for comments would put a heavy burden on whomever keeps Stack Exchange's mailers off of spam lists.
    – Andrew Barber Mod
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 2:22
  • Where are you even getting comment emails?
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 2:23
  • 1
    @Makoto I agree comments are temporary, but if they've been around long enough for them to be emailed to me, I should have the right to see the whole comment.
    – Mark Hurd
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 3:31
  • Well...so long as the comment isn't deleted, if you have over 10K reputation, you can see most comments that were directed to you. What would one gain from having this?
    – Makoto
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 3:32
  • 2
    @Makoto Most of us don't have 10K.
    – Mark Hurd
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 3:36
  • Point taken. But, you haven't quite answered my question - what would one gain from this? All I see is a whole bunch more notifications coming from yet another site that I have to somehow manage in e-mail, as opposed to dealing with them here.
    – Makoto
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 3:38
  • @Makato It's not always about what you need or gain. Sometimes it's about curiosity.
    – Cole Tobin
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 3:43
  • @ColeJohnson: If I were developing this, then I'd personally need a more satisfying reason to build an entire system designed to send out tens of thousands of these sorts of messages per day, besides the curiosity of a handful of users. I'm still not seeing the rationale, and you'll have to forgive my tardiness in not seeing the innate curiosity right away...
    – Makoto
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 3:59
  • 1
    @Makoto Remember we are already receiving these emails, contrary to the implications of the earliest comments here. I'll add the example email notification I received to the question in a tick.
    – Mark Hurd
    Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 4:43
  • It happened to me again, but this time I saw and responded to the comment that was then deleted and I deleted my response in response to the deletion. I may not have actually cleared the item in the "Global Inbox", so receiving the email at all probably wasn't a bug (but it still was truncated and anonymous).
    – Mark Hurd
    Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 10:45

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