ruby on rails - Verification of approach for notification email sending -

every , again find myself building feature , doubting whether approach makes sense or entirely out of whack. hoping might able verify strategy here.

i'm building system notifies users via email actions have been taken within site comments, posts, etc. have model called actionevent tracks of these interactions. anytime user posts comment, example, new actionevent created documents action (who posted it, posted to, , context). ideally, when these action events created, want send out notification email. there tons of events warrant emails, , events cause more 1 person notified.

things little hairy @ point, because don't want flood people's inboxes emails if, say, posts 3 comments in 5 five minutes. decided build action_event_email model track emails have been sent, , reason. idea before emails sent, system check sent emails make sure no emails of particular type sent particular user within acceptable timeframe before delivering email. make sense, or missing obvious here? i'm worried once build infrastructure it's going rather difficult modify down line.

has done before? , if so, how did it?

thanks!