How AskLibO assembles email digest of question page

All AskLibO users are on mailing list that provides daily links to new or updated questions. In addition, after contributing an answer or comment to a question, one becomes part of a small mailing list subset dedicated to that question: Whenever there is activity on the question, a digest of the page at that point is mailed to previous contributors.

Is that understanding correct? If so, how does AskLibO assemble that digest? I have seen cases where a comment or follow-up question in the question page digest is not on the page! (or, at least not on the page when I go to check it)! This can result, for example, in answers in the thread to questions that are not in the thread. How does that happen?

Please remove tag common since this is a question about AskLibO exclusively ant this is covered by tag meta. common is for issues affecting all LO applications.

Thanks. I wondered about that. Unfortunately, “retag” does not seem to work: I delete “common”, and it comes right back as soon as the tagging box is closed; What am I missing?
Also, how do you style the tag “common” – as you did in that hint?

You must press Enter twice to exit retag modr.

Question formatting is largely based on MarkDown. This kind of highlighting is done by enclosing the word(s) between backticks `.

Great, thanks! I have learned more than anticipated from this question. Every day is a school day.

In the email alerts of your user profile, you can choose which alerts are sent to you. This is not mandatory; you can opt for “never”.

The second alert mechanism is the red mail icon appearing in the top line aside your account name when activity has been detected on questions/answers you’ve contributed. In my case, I rely solely on this mechanism so that my mail boxes are not saturated with alerts. This does not matter for me because the AskLO page is opened by default in my web browser as I am a regular contributor.

I am not sure I understand the point in your question.

There may be case where you receive an alert but clicking on the link results in “Sorry, content no longer available!”. This is caused by someone deleting the question/answer/comment before you had an opportunity to read it. This is why it is recommended to leave a reasonable duration between your decision to delete data (unless it is obviously spam) and the deletion itself. Closing a question with an adequate reason is preferable.

The AskBot engine used by AskLO is not perfect and experiences sometimes “glitches” but I am not sure your description falls in these cases.

Please, edit your question to improve it.

EDIT to answer a question in a comment below

You mention a case where I commented a suggestion in a comment. I reacted only after I got a notification through the alert system which you also got. But when you came back, only my comment was there.

My interpretation is the author’s comment estimated my argument was strong enough to invalidate his claim. He then decided to remove the comment (by pressing the small gray X at right of the comment).

The alert system is not perfect:

  • on every edition, your Notifications page contains the previous content (except for the first insertion displaying the new content)

In case of deletion, the deleted content is in the Notifications page but when you click on the link, the question is displayed in its present state. If the question (and perhaps an answer) is deleted, you get a yellow header with “Sorry, this content is no longer available”.

Comments are considered as “weak” or secondary content and don’t trigger the warning when missing.

To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!

In case you need clarification, edit your question (not an answer which is reserved for solutions) or comment the relevant answer.

I would love to edit my question to improve it, but I think it asks exactly the intended question, as precisely as I can. What I can do (and probably should have done) is provide an example:

Question 272450 https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/unable-to-change-default-image-anchor-type-in-writer/57862, which you answered (as did I), includes your reply to a comment by Hagar Delest – a comment which is not on the page! However, a comment from Hagar Delest (presumably that same missing comment) is in one of the emailed digests that alerted me of activity on the question. I had intended to reply to it, but could not, because it was not on the page when I got to it. (And yet you did reply to it. Was it on the page when you replied, or was your reply in response to the emailed digest of the question?) How does a question get into the digest when it is not on the page?

[BTW, again I must ask about how to format as you do, beyond the tools provided in this editor.]

This is an example of spurious deletion by question/comment author. I update my answer with a possible explanation.

Formatting can be made in simplified form with MarkDown. When it can’t provide what you’d like, you can use HTML.

Oh, of course: It’s just that simple. I should have seen that (but then would have missed the side education in Markdown). Thanks again.