8. A method in a document management system, wherein each user of the document management system is associated with a user identifier, the method comprising: storing a document in a document management system, wherein the document comprises text portions, each text portion authored by a user; receiving a first comment for the document, the comment associated with a selected text span in the document; creating a thread, the thread having a comment list, a text span element, an audience, and a notification element; associating the selected text span with the text span element of the thread; associating the comment with the comment list of the thread; receiving a plurality of comments for the document subsequent to the first comment; associating each of the plurality of comments with the comment list of the thread, each comment including comment text; identifying in at least one of the plurality of a comments a user primitive mentioning a user, the user primitive comprising a predetermined token followed by a user name of a user; determining which of the prior comments received prior to the comment including the user primitive have not been sent to the mentioned user; transmitting to the mentioned user a notification message, the notification message including a subject line including an extract from the text span, a body including an entirety of the text span and each comment that the user has not been previously sent to the user, and link including addressing information to access the document and the comments in the document management system.
8. A method in a document management system, wherein each user of the document management system is associated with a user identifier, the method comprising: storing a document in a document management system, wherein the document comprises text portions, each text portion authored by a user; receiving a first comment for the document, the comment associated with a selected text span in the document; creating a thread, the thread having a comment list, a text span element, an audience, and a notification element; associating the selected text span with the text span element of the thread; associating the comment with the comment list of the thread; receiving a plurality of comments for the document subsequent to the first comment; associating each of the plurality of comments with the comment list of the thread, each comment including comment text; identifying in at least one of the plurality of a comments a user primitive mentioning a user, the user primitive comprising a predetermined token followed by a user name of a user; determining which of the prior comments received prior to the comment including the user primitive have not been sent to the mentioned user; transmitting to the mentioned user a notification message, the notification message including a subject line including an extract from the text span, a body including an entirety of the text span and each comment that the user has not been previously sent to the user, and link including addressing information to access the document and the comments in the document management system. 9. The method of claim 8 , wherein determining which of the prior comments received prior to the comment including the user primitive have not been sent to the mentioned user, further comprises: storing for each of the first comment and the plurality of subsequent comments a notification element, the notification element including a list of users to whom the comment has been sent; identifying each comment for which the user mentioned by the user primitive does not appear in the notification element of the comment; and including each identified comment as a prior comment that has not been sent to the mentioned user.