Proposal: Notifications on the site

What changes

• Notifications on Agpedia. When someone replies to you, or posts in a discussion you follow, you see it on the site: a short bar under the header shows the latest one, and a bell with a count opens the full list.
• Your choice of channel. In your settings, under Notifications, you choose Email and on site, On site only, Email only or None. Today there is a single checkbox for email.
• The bell's list links to those settings.

Why

Email is the only way to hear about replies today, and many people do not want email. On-site notifications let people keep up while they are on Agpedia, and the choice lets each person decide how to be reached.

How it works

• You follow a discussion when you start it or reply in it, as today.
• Marking notifications as read is one click, from the bar or the list.
• More kinds of notifications, such as reviews of your articles, can be added later, each with its own row in the settings.

Technical notes

Notifications become a second delivery channel next to email in the existing notification system, with an unread list per person. The email checkbox becomes a per-person channel preference.