Please repeat a ping at most once when a message is edited

Question

Please repeat a ping only once when a message is edited

If a message containing a ping is edited, only re-ping the user after the edit time limit has expired.

Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.

Rationale

If I get pinged in chat, the ping is repeated every time the comment is edited. If a user needs to edit and re-edit their message to me, this can get annoying because of the repeated ping sound. (Actually, it's not really a ping, more like a *BONK*).

I can understand that a user needs to be re-pinged if a message is edited. But to avoid repeatedly pinging a user in rapid succession, limit it to a single ping once the regular edit time limit has expired. That way, I get re-pinged, but only once.

Similar Request

A similar request has been made before:

Don't repeat the ping when editing chat messages

However, that didn't propose a solution and has been declined, mainly because it would create the need to decide if an edit was minor or major.

My proposal doesn't need that decision; if a message is edited, the ping is repeated — once.

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Old version:

Chat notification is repeated for every edit: drives me bonkers

The chat notification, especially the *BONK*, is repeated when a message is edited. Repeatedly.

This can get really annoying. I propose the *BONK* is only repeated after the editing time limit has expired. That way, even if multiple edits are made, only a single *BONK* will be emitted.

The *BONK* is the most annoying part of the repeated notification, but this bug / feature request is about the entire notification. Even when muted, the repeated notification can be annoying.

Answer 1

I think this is behavior carried over from the rest of the site. Most of the SE network is static, or relatively so. It is designed to be read days, even years after it was written as well as seconds. Chat, on the other hand, is usually live. Not always, but at the very least far more often.

Therefore, I don't need to be pinged if you've changed something you wrote to me. I can see it myself. Or, if it is so important, you can choose to ping me manually.

More importantly, unlike most other types of posts we have here, chat is faster. It is something you type more or less as fast as you can do so. Consequently, the number of typos in chat messages are probably several orders of magnitude above what you get in questions or answers. This, in turn, leads to multiple edits, each of which causes a ping. This is extremely annoying.

For example, I often hang out in the English Language & Usage chat room. A place of wordsmiths, grammarians, linguists and lexidigitators of all stripes. In the land of the language geeks, having a typo stare you in the eye is extremely bothersome. Now, I happen to type on a rather crappy keyboard and, especially when typing fast, make frequent typos. I often don't notice until I've posted and end up editing my message once, twice or even more times. The poor sap I pinged will get repetitive notifications of something that rarely, if ever, changed the original meaning of my message and which rarely, if ever, deserves to be pointed out.

Is it really worth getting repetitive ping each time we go from

Thats hard.

through

Tha'ts hard.

to

That's hard, damn this keyboard!

How often does the edit really change the meaning? In my experience, the vast majority of edits are minor and don't really change the meaning of what was written. As I said above, if I feel that the change was so important, I'll let you know. I pinged you the first time so, presumably, I am quite capable of pinging you again:

@chatbuddy Oy, see the edit!

Now, in an ideal world, there'd be no ping at all for this sort of thing. I honestly can't think of a single time where that ping was more helpful than annoying. Not a one. At the very least let's make it so a ping isn't issued for minor edits or for edits that are made immediately after a chat message was posted.

Answer 2

I recently triggered a notification on chat thusly:

@ryan 4 months is easier than when they are 4 years old. If that

Whose idea was it to put quotation marks just off the home row in favour of the colons? Arg. Okay. Let's edit this thing:

@ryan 4 months is easier than when they are 4 years old. If that's any consolation.

So to put myself in Ryan's shoes, if the edit doesn't trigger a ping, how will he ever know I completed the thought? (I mean, obviously he's going to go back and read all my chat messages regularly, but what about an edit from a less brilliant chatter than yours truly?) In a busy chat room, there might be a dozen new messages by the time I figure out where the single quote key actually sits.

So the notification can be handy to let people know the occasional times a message directed at them had a typo that got fixed. (Another common scenario is when a chatter forgets to type "not" and thereby says exactly the opposite of what they mean. Fixing that is often important for effective communication.)

If you are getting repeated notifications from edits, I suspect the problem has more to do with other people abusing edits than with the design of notifications. You might start by asking the person pinging you to not do that any more.