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General Discussions

A barnstar for you!

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	For never giving up on delivering the signpost and other newsletters, I hereby award you one (1) barnstar. Excellent work! Novato 123chess456 (talk) 01:47, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Replaced several sections

In this edit MediaWiki message delivery overwrote several sections of my talk page when delivering a message. --LukeSurl^{t c} 10:57, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi LukeSurl. You basically hit the same issue as Elvey which I've explained here. I fixed your talk page with this edit. This edit is the one that introduced the unclosed {{. Hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:16, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

As with LukeSurl, message delivery on my talk page disappeared several sections. I assume this is a bug with MediaWiki message delivery. Please help get it fixed. and... kudos and thanks for your many contributions. Anyone looking into it? --Elvey^(t•c) 16:48, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, I looked into it. My reply is here. In short: not a MassMessage issue. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:07, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

My goal was just to prevent lots of future problems with a tool that gets used a lot and I (mistakenly) thought had a new bug likely to cause widespread damage, some of which would go unnoticed, even if only a small fraction of its edits were doing damage like what resulted on my and LukeSurl's pages. Also, no one had initially responded to LukeSurl's message for several hours, or mine, so I felt it appropriate to wave a flag, so to speak, 23 hours after the edits had been made, which was (too?) effective. Anyway, I see the problem in both cases was mismatched curly braces. Perhaps User:A930913's User:BracketBot should be directed at draft mass messages. The documentation shows no way to opt a page in to BracketBot, only a way to opt mainspace pages out of it. --Elvey^(t•c) 14:18, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

The Invisible Barnstar

		The Invisible Barnstar
		For all the little, largely unnoticed things that you do that help keep Wikipedia's individual elements, projects, task forces, etc moving toward the same general goal of improving Wikipedia, I hereby award you this Invisible Barnstar. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:47, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Using echo

Is it not possible to use the echo notification system for Signpost notifications ? Shyamal (talk) 09:36, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Discussion regarding use of this tool

Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 48#Is Christmas spam an appropiate use of mass messaging?. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:40, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Error

I got a double copy of the most recent Signpost newsletter. I'm not sure what went wrong, but I just wanted to let the operator know. Best, Spencer^T♦C 10:03, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Likewise :o) — OwenBlacker (Talk) 11:52, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Awww I was thinking I was special :(--5 albert square (talk) 00:15, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Account re-name error

I believe that I am the only registered user on Wikipedia with the name, "JayJ47" so I therefore SHOULD NOT have to have my account re-named. A few years back, my account was temporarily re-named "JayJ4721" at my request but I reverted to using "JayJ47" shortly afterwards WITHOUT any problems. I therefore STRONGLY BELIEVE that you have sent me your message in error and ask that you please RECTIFY THIS IMMEDIATELY. JayJ47 (talk) 02:47, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Jay, the message is send to all accounts that do not have a global account yet. Since you had not unified your account you would be renamed if you had taken no action. We cannot know that all accounts are a single person. Now that we do, you will not be effected. You will not be renamed and no further action from you is needed. I apologise for the inconvenience. All the best, Taketa (talk) 05:23, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I appreciate it :) JayJ47 (talk) 02:00, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Renaming

Can you rename the other account? While I took a long break, I've been on this site since 2003. Why not change the other user named JoeM? I signed up over a decade ago. JoeM (talk) 20:41, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Double news

I guess the bot really wants to ensure that I read the Signpost, because I just got another copy of the April 1 issue. Has this happened to anyone else? --Biblioworm 18:24, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, it happened to me too. Probably just a small error or mistake. smileguy91^{talk - contribs} 21:00, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Or a hilarious APRIL FOOL'S JOKE! --Cyde Weys 00:57, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Wish it was :-); I got two copies last week and three this week, so it's time to let them know. Miniapolis 13:58, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Can you opt out inactive editors?

I visit a lot of user talk pages and I was wondering if there was a way to opt out long-gone users whose talk pages are just a list of Signpost and newsletter messages. I'm not talking about editors who are gone for a few months but those who have been absent a few years (say, inactive since 2012 or 2013) and are clearly not reading these messages. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:57, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Delete my email

Why Will you be deleting my email ? I got approved for the Apple account ? With the students and the documentary will be needing with the students and the documentary will be needing Wikipedia and I added my email like I was requested . Once I have the once I have. Apple software set up I can set up mobile me account until then Please can I keep this accoun i'm not they are good witht Wikipedia and meetings please be patient with me until it's all set up .WP.NICKNAME.22 02:18, 6 October 2015 (UTC) WP.NICKNAME.22 02:18, 6 October 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by WP.NICKNAME.22 (talk • contribs)

Signpost link out of date

Is there a way to use permalinks to a given issue when adding a Signpost ToC digest to a user page?

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I clicked the link "Read this Signpost in full" for the 20 May 2015 Signpost message on a User talk page and it took me instead to the 14 October 2015 issue (the latest one, I presume). I'm actually interested in an article in the May 20 issue, not the latest one. Permalinks to the issue in question would be more user-friendly. (And I'd still like to view that article.) Mathglot (talk) 19:29, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	For delievering the Signpost so I can catch up on Wikipedia's news. Thanks for your help! The Pancake of Heaven! 12:15, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Respect nobots

Please respect the nobots template. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.93.60.82 (talk) 01:01, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom election notice

I was just wondering what the basis was of who was selected to receive the ArbCom elections are now open! messages. As I've participated in editing ACE2015 pages and I have an active account, I was surprised not to receive a notice. I'm obviously aware of the election but it made me wonder how many other editors did not receive a message and what criteria was used to select who did and who did not receive this notice.
In order to get wider participation of Wikipedia's editors in this election, it would be worth sending out a second message to those who didn't get one in the first mailing. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 11:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Liz: The notification is still running, per this discussion it's going to notify over several days as there are many thousands of eligible people! --Errant ^(chat!) 13:18, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, Errant, because I couldn't figure out the logic of who received the notice. I spot-checked about 15 of the recipients in the first run this morning and they were all abandoned accounts, that hadn't edited in years, in couple of cases, they had been inactive for 8 or 9 years. I would think that the recipients should have been any editor who has edited in the last six months because otherwise, they are unlikely to be checking their user talk page.

Then, the second round of notices was equally baffling as I saw the notice on the talk page of ArbCom candidates, so it seemed like the opposite extreme (from inactive accounts<->ArbCom candidates). Now that you say that these messages will go out in bunches, I expect that other editors like myself with a few years of regular activity will be notified. I am not concerned about duplicate messages which are easily deleted and I understand you are working out the kinks. My concern was primarily that these notices get to editors who are likely to see them, that is active editors. I looked on the Mass Message page and selecting active editors was one of the possibilities and I don't understand why it wasn't chosen but I'm sure these issues will be worked out before ACE2016. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:50, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I also have a question : why did you also send an email, in addition to leaving a notice on my talk page ? My email preferences on enwiki are quite simple : I have unchecked everything in the preferences, including "Enable email from other users". So, why do you consider that you should send me an email when I explicitely requested not to receive emails ? --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 14:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@NicoV: I'm not sure that MassMessage lets you email users directly - especially as you have the feature turned off. Are you sure it wasn't a talk page notification (triggered simply by having your talk page editing)? Check the notifications section of your preferences. --Errant ^(chat!) 14:33, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm wondering why I got the same talk-page message twice, 20 minutes apart. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:30, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Also, whatever list was being used includes several articles - my watchlist has several instances of messages like "Delivery of "ArbCom elections are now open!" to Frédéric Chopin was skipped because target was in a namespace that cannot be posted in". Nikkimaria (talk) 14:42, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I got the message for the ArbCom elections being open three times today. I don't think it's that important to reiterate. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 18:47, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I got the message despite voting 1 day and over 12 hours ago! , Sorry to moan but was it really worth messaging so many people ?, I mean it's great people are being notified but if they've not been on in over 4 years then to me it's kinda pointless, Me thinks something needs changing as sod putting up with this every bloody year! , (Thanks Mdann for taking on the task tho!). –Davey2010^Talk 17:21, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I do not mind getting a talk page message and the email about it, but getting an email for every talk page on my watchlist is overfilling my inbox.--☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(ring-ring) 17:49, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

There are some settings for email notifications in your Preferences -> Notifications page. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:36, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Temporarily disable that feature (actually, I didn't even realise it was a feature!!) for the next couple of days maybe? (thousands of items on my watchlist so I can't imagine how badly that would fill my inbox ;)). FWIW @Mdann52: is the person, I believe, who has run this MassMessage in the end (I just happened to be the person who closed the community discussion about it) so they will be better placed to answer all of the above questions. --Errant ^(chat!) 19:36, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

To answer some of the points above:

I'm looking into duplicate notifications. Some were my fault (there was some replag that I failed to check, so the message was sent out on an old list)
Some duplicate notifications were due to redirects - unfortunately, I didn't have a way to filter out alt accounts, so this was fairly inevitable. I'll look into this if this is repeated again next year
Next year, I plan to organise this better (some sort of check against active accounts maybe) - unfortunately, there was not enough time to develop a process/tool/script for this this year.
Emails are auto-generated by the system, as this is a talkpage post. I cannot supress these unfortunately.

Feel free to fire any more questions at me! Mdann52 (talk) 19:44, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

The redirects issue has an easy clarification for next time. Hi, -> Hi username, make is clear why people are getting duplicates. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:47, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Clogging up watchlists

Would it be possible to arrange that MediaWiki message deliveries do not trigger watchlist entries? My watchlist is rapidly filling up with notifications that everyone I have ever interacted with has received the Arbcom election message. JohnCD (talk) 14:04, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Seconded! Voceditenore (talk) 14:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

You can click the "Hide bots" checkbox on your watchlist. Legoktm (talk) 14:44, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

So I can. Thank you. JohnCD (talk) 15:38, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Which is of little use to those of us who want to see when bots edit articles. This campaign is ridiculous; a site notice should have been used instead. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Given that we already have seen nearly twice the number of polls as last year, and several hundred more than the year before, it does seem to have effect. As to clogging up watchlists, really? I have tonnes of talk pages on my watchlist and it's perfectly manageable. Just ignore them? --Errant ^(chat!) 22:35, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

No-one denied that it had had an effect; whether the disruption - which is no less real because it doesn't happen to effect you - is worth it is another matter. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:13, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

ACE delivery

I'm not sure how good this delivery is. It's not notified me,and it's notified some users twice. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:50, 25 November 2015 (UTC).

It hasn't notified me about the Arbcom election either.Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:51, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

A brownie for you!

You work hard forever! I salute you! SupremeRulerGFG (talk) 16:10, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Message Delivery

Hi, MediaWiki message delivery. I just want to drop a message that I had just requested for a newsletter of WikiCup but I am late because I requested it on 8th January, 2014. May you please deliver the newsletter to me? Thanks. Dinosaur Fan (talk) 07:17, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Hiiii md usoof alam 00:21, 28 March 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Md Usoof Alam (talk • contribs)

Season's Greetings

File:Xmas Ornament.jpg

To You and Yours!
FWiW Bzuk (talk) 20:40, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Right Rashid~enwiki (talk) 15:15, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Couldn't figure out Ping

This stumped me: "The comment must be signed and belong to a section in order for the notification to work."

Well, yes, my field was English. In the 60s, as you know, there was a lot of turmoil and in particular students in the US were agitated, to say the least. I had five friends: 4 switched from math to English, and one switched from English to math. My motivation was that I wanted to do something in a broad area where I could explore all my interests. I'm a curious guy. Also, I wasn't very good at math ;). I took a classics course and was surprised that I really enjoyed the Iliad and the Odyssey. The teacher in that course was terrific. It seemed like that would be a good base. Hal — Preceding unsigned comment added by Halcatalyst (talk • contribs) 19:47, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

add an article

i want to add new article in wikipedia Mukesh maharjan (talk) 11:06, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Is this a bot? - No its mass spaming

If this account is automatic, shouldn't it haver a username that reflects it as such? Also, why is it ignoring the "nobots" tag on my user page? Optimist on the run (talk) 18:50, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Optimist on the run: This account is not a bot in the normal sense, but rather a part of the MassMessage extension of MediaWiki, which is probably why it ignored your tag. It's a relatively new feature that allows any user with the "massmessage" user right to send mass messages through Special:MassMessage. If you want to opt-out of all mass messages through this feature, add your user talk page to the category Category:Opted-out of message delivery. Mz7 (talk) 21:46, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

So instead of delivering messages to people who care it spams everybody? Great invention ..Sicherlich ^Post 22:28, 21 November 2016 (UTC) yeah you can opt out; after you got the first message and you figure out who acutlly wrote to you ( not the person who signed the message). pretty much like spam; just configure your spamfilter and it's not issue

The messages should be from a named account, a point of contact if you feel, like I do, that the messages are spam Vicarage (talk) 23:48, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

This thing is heinous

Mass spam messages should always be opt-in, not opt-out. This thing is completely backwards. And yes, I'm using "spam" as a general pejorative for anything that someone else has decided is so important that they need to shotgun blast it to the entire world because their pet cause is a special snowflake. -- Legalize (talk) 22:23, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Why did the "ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!" message get sent to me twice?

As the subject line header says, why did the "ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!" message get sent to my user talk page twice, just six minutes apart? I don't mind getting it once, but why twice? Is there some content difference between the two messages that I'm not seeing? —Lowellian (reply) 23:22, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

I resent having my talk page invaded even once. Vicarage (talk) 23:40, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Delivery requests