Change text in discussion settings for email notifications

[simonwheatley]

Currently there's two settings in Settings > Discussion, which are titled

Email me whenever:

• Anyone posts a comment
• A comment is held for moderation

This leads the user to believe that they are setting an option on their user account, when in fact they are setting a global option for the blog as a whole. Further, this option triggers notification of only one administrator (whichever is in the admin_email option, which I believe is set on installation).

Preferred Behaviour

• Remove these options
• Add user options to allow subscribing to these notifications on the profile page for users with permission to moderate comments
• On installation, default the initial admin user to being subscribed to these notifications
• On migration/upgrade, default the current admin_email user to being subscribed to these notifications

Quick Fix

Relabel the option so it reads: "Email [insert admin_email value] whenever:"

(This would require translation work.)

Actually, this setting is already used for e-mails to individual users, so the quick fix wouldn't solve this problem.

The admin doesn't gets mailed any longer with every comment, this setting affects the e-mails the post author gets, which means it should be a per user setting. Here's the code, found in wp-includes/comment.php in line 738.

		if ( get_option('comments_notify') && $commentdata['comment_approved'] && $post->post_author != $commentdata['user_ID'] )
			wp_notify_postauthor($comment_ID, $commentdata['comment_type']);
	}

Notice how it gets a global option, but triggers the wp_notify_postauthor function. This is really confusing, hope it can be fixed. This setting should either be used for comment notifications to the admin, or the setting should be moved to the user profile, so that each user can decide whether or not to receive e-mails of new comments. In this case a plugin can take over e-mailing the blog admin of each comment.

I believe this has been fixed in 2.8

These email settings (and the wording) are still there in 2.8. Planning to look at settings in-depth for 2.9/3.0 including personal options vs blog options, so changing this ticket to make simple text change in 2.8.1, and we will address the bigger problem in 2.9.

Change "Email me" to "Email blog admin" if that is still the functionality that is triggered.

This could be clarified with a simple wording change... like the attached diff, which changes the label to "E-mail the post author whenever [checkbox] anyone posts a comment" (rather than "Email me whenever...". How about it?

(Changing back to a defect, as the language is *wrong* and changing it is a correction not an enhancement. Hope that's OK.)

I did not check the patch if it needs refresh as this ticket is on future release.

Fix the label wording to reflect the system actions

Amended wording in the patch to take into account that the post author is emailed when comments are published on their posts, and the admin email address is emailed when comments are available for moderation.

The wording could be better, any suggestions?

• Settings group heading & legend (screen reader text): "E-mail me whenever" => "E-mail notifications"
• "Anyone posts a comment" => "Email the post author when one of their posts is commented upon"
• "A comment is held for moderation" => "Email the admin email address when a comment is held for moderation"

I like the clarification. That's makes it far more useable. The information who is mailed for what is currently missing and it's worth to know. This will help to run a Blog/Site.

Dupe of #6286?

@johnbillion Yes, so there's several a few patches for this problem. I like the language simonwheatley proposed, but change "upon" to "on".

Related: #761

Closing in favor of #6286, which recently got some traction.