Notification mails messed up since last release

[mundschenk-at]

Since the last release, the notification mails sent by Wordpress are compelete messed up. As the blog admin, I get empty mails like this:

Ein neuer Kommentar zum Beitrag „“ wartet auf deine Freigabe

Autor: (IP: , )
E-Mail:
URL:
Kommentar:

while the post author gets mails that contain the entire article in the "Comment:" field ("Kommentar" in the above quote). With the previous version, notifications worked fine.

[mundschenk-at]

Moved from pfefferle/wordpress-webmention#51

[pfefferle]

That is really strange, because this change was only made because of "messed up" comments #30

@dshanske can you reproduce this issue?

[armingrewe]

Just to confirm from the other thread (sorry can't link, on mobile phone with slow connection), I've got the latest versions of both plugins on my blog and it works fine. It's better than before as it now gives me the name instead of saying "Bridgy response".

[dshanske]

That was the change I made. It now enhances before the comment goes out whereas before it did so after, so it should show better notifications. It did in all the tests I did. That's consistent with armingrewe's report.

Sinc ethe change, I've gotten multiple webmentions and it shows the name. The comment field is blank, but that is mostly because without changing the function that generates the email, it displays a webmention like a comment, not like a ping.

[dshanske]

This, for example, came in last night...

A new comment on the post "Israel Reclassifies Heinz Ketchup" is waiting for your approval
https://david.shanske.com/2015/08/25/israel-reclassifies-heinz-ketchup/

Author: Ruth Shanske (IP: 107.178.195.220, 220.195.178.107.gae.googleusercontent.com)
E-mail:
URL: https://brid-gy.appspot.com/like/facebook/100002356503167/898565100232032/10202399685485986
Comment:

[armingrewe]

Confirmed, that's how mine look as well. Under comment it says liked this, RT or whatever the type is.

[mundschenk-at]

Maybe it's because these are internal webmentions (which I'd like to disable but can't at the moment) resulting from linking between articles. Until the update, they looked like this:

Ein neuer Kommentar zum Beitrag „Stefan Prieler verläßt die Brasserie Santner - (fast) ein Abschiedsessen“ wartet auf deine Freigabe
https://mundschenk.at/stefan-prieler-verlaesst-die-brasserie-santner/

Autor: Bei Katharina Prato im Palais | Der Mundschenk & Cie. (IP: 10.0.0.2, www.local)
E-Mail:
URL: https://mundschenk.at/prato-im-palais/
Kommentar:
This Article was mentioned on mundschenk.at

The mails were identical for the blog admin and the post author. Now, with the update, the mail for the blog admin is empty as described above and the mail for the post author looks like this:

Ein neuer Kommentar zum Beitrag „Durchs wilde Burgenland“ wartet auf deine Freigabe
https://mundschenk.at/burgenland-wein-2012/

Autor: Der Küchenmeister (IP: 10.0.0.2, www.local)
E-Mail:
URL: https://mundschenk.at/zur-dankbarkeit-podersdorf/
Kommentar:
Nach den Schwei­nen aus der Hölle hat­ten wir uns eine Stär­kung ver­dient. Zur Wahl stan­den zwei Lokale: Das Press­haus in Ill­mitz und das Gast­haus zur Dank­bar­keit in Poders­dorf. Die Wahl fiel uns nicht leicht – wir hat­ten in bei­den in der Ver­gan­gen­heit gut geges­sen und auch der als Ent­schei­dungs­hilfe her­an­ge­zo­gene Gault-​Millau führt beide Lokale mit iden­ter Punk­te­wer­tung. Schließ­lich gab die län­gere Zeit­spanne, die seit unse­rem letz­ten Besuch in der Dank­bar­keit ver­stri­chen war, den Ausschlag. [...]

[dshanske]

Well, there is a clue. The admin and the post author are different. In all my testing, they were the same.

Do you have any plugins related to comment moderation/notification installed? Just to eliminate the possibility of interaction.

[mundschenk-at]

WP Ajaxify Comments and WP Better Emails are installed on this machine. I can try to disable them for the moment.

[dshanske]

Try disabling Better Emails and doing a test.

In the meantime, I'll reread the WordPress code for generating the text, and look at how that plugin works.

[mundschenk-at]

Sorry to get back to you so late, but I've struggled with the WP 4.3 wp_batch_split_terms bug ...

Anyway, it looks like an interaction with WP Better Emails was the culprit regarding the empty mails for the blog admin. Now both addresses get the whole blog post in the comment - still not ideal, IMHO.

[dshanske]

Agreed, but that is because, to show the prettified mention that Semantic Linkbacks generates, we'd need a custom notification function. I fiddled with the idea a bit.

The change that started this was that before, the enhancement to the mention that Semantic Linkbacks makes were run after the email was sent. They are now run before.

[dshanske]

The question is, in the end, is this an issue that needs fixing? The notifications aren't perfect, but enhancing them before seems to increase their utility over enhancing them after the notifications.

I would say, on the face of it, we shouldn't revert the change.

[armingrewe]

My vote would be for keeping the new version, for me the enhanced emails are more helpful

[mundschenk-at]

Just had a look at the actual code. I'm sure there is a reason why you don't change the comment body in the database, but what is it? It's not as if the full text of the mentioning post (including HTML tags as plain text) in the database is actually useful for anything.