Help talk:Notifications

Why aren't alerts provided when posts are made to a user subpage?

My question relates to this post of mine at the Teahouse where I normally answer other people's queries, rather than seek help myself. But today I am stuck. I am not receiving alerts when another user posts on the talk page of a sub-page of my own userpage (see User talk:Nick Moyes/Adoption/Clovermoss), and I find this very restricting. Is there a way to resolve this, or does this Phabricator ticket mean the issue is known about, but has been pushed into the long grass?

How can I best get this issue picked up and addressed?

And shouldn't this page make it clear that web-based alerts are only generated for edits made by others to one's main user page/talk page, and not to any sub-pages that may have been created? Nick Moyes (talk) 02:10, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Each user has one (and exactly one) user talk page that is used for communication with that user. This simplifies the issue of where people should post in order to gain your attention. If you wish to use a different page, I suggest that you add that other page to your watchlist. You can also encourage the other person (presumably Clovermoss) to always use {{replyto|Nick Moyes}} when replying on any page other than User talk:Nick Moyes, just as you use {{replyto|Clovermoss}} yourself. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:59, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, Redrose64. Out of necessity, I do encourage the new user to do just that. But, as every user page and every sub-page created has an associated talk page tab which allows that talk page to be created and presumably used (!), it seems highly logical for any changes to any sub page or talk page to be communicated to that user by an on-wiki alert, and not purely to rely on a watchlist.

I've since been informed by Fuhghettaboutit that there was an RfC on this topic back in 2017, which received majority support from @Gestrid, Od Mishehu, Dennis Brown, Doug Weller, and Johnuniq:. I discovered that the original developer assigned to the ensuing Phabricator task ceased all editing soon afterwards. Their name has now been removed, and hopefully a replacement will be assigned in due course. This seems a sensible development.

In case it takes another 10 years to be enabled, I still wonder why Wikipedia:Notifications does not explicitly state that notifications only result from changes to the top level userpage and talk page, especially when this guideline clearly shows (as we all know) that creating subpages is fine. I'd welcome it if you could point me to the policy that states Each user has one (and exactly one) user talk page that is used for communication with that user. Whilst it might be so, it most certainly isn't clear, and there are times, as with adoption discussions, when it's not helpful to have just one such page. And so I respectfully suggest this Notifications page could be usefully amended to clarify the true current picture of when a user will, and will not, receive a notification of edits made to any of their user pages or their associated talk pages. Nick Moyes (talk) 11:17, 1 March 2019 (UTC)  

@Nick Moyes: Well, there's WP:UP#Terminology and page locations and the two sections following. In these, we have "You will be notified when someone else edits your user talk page" and nothing about messages on subpages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:20, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Redrose64 I'm glad you take my point. Absence of information isn't information; it's a lack of clarity. So I repeat my request that this Notifications page makes it clear by explicitly advising users that they will not receive a notification if another editor edits any of their subpages or their related talk pages. (By way of another example, I had no idea another editor had made this edit and others to my user sub-pages.) Now that I have come to understand that I won't receive alerts if any of my sub-pages or their associated talk pages are edited, I can at least do something about trying to change that, and encourage progress with the Phabricator ticket. In meantime it's a simple suggestion to make that we give clarity here on this guidance page so that every other editor who comes to read this page is aware of the alert limitations. Seems a good idea to me. Shall I add it myself, or would those editors who mostly maintain this page prefer to come to a consensus on whether or not it would be helpful? I firmly believe it would be. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:52, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree. Benjamin (talk) 14:19, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Suppressing notifications for links to a particular page?

I created a helpful redirect from Districts of Russia, which was then appearing as a redlink in a lot of infoboxes, to List of districts in Russia, last year. Since then, it has been converted to a nice article, and this is linked to every time someone creates an article on a Russian District - several times most days, as an editor is doing a huge project on these. I get notified every time it is linked to, and I really don't want to know: I'd much prefer that the "You have notifications" symbol really meant that there was something probably interesting. Is there any way to suppress these particular notifications: to inform "the system" that this is one file I created that I really don't need to be told when it's linked to?

I have a similar problem with a small publisher for which I created a stub article a while back: it gets cited in many references, and is often linked in those refs, and again I don't really want to know!

Most of the time the notification system is clever and helpful, telling me useful stuff. Is there any way I can tell it not to tell me about linkings to just one or two of my created files? PamD 14:09, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

@PamD: There's an option to turn off that. Navigate to Preferences → Notifications then look for "Page link" and disable the web notification associated with it. – Ammarpad (talk) 17:23, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

@PamD: No, there's no way to turn off notifications for just one or two of your creations, only to turn it on/off for all of them. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:10, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 26 May 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved, including subpages. Wikipedia:Notifications/Thanks is waiting for unprotection, and a move to Help:Thanks should be discussed further. (closed by non-admin page mover) Danski454 (talk) 21:17, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Notifications → Help:Notifications – Per Wikipedia:Help namespace, [Help pages] contain information intended to help use Wikipedia or its software. Some of these pages are intended for readers of the encyclopedia; others are intended for editors, whether beginning or advanced. It's pretty clear that this page is designed to help users understand mediawiki software. If I could think of any reasons that this move would not make sense, I'd give more of a rationale. It just seems like pretty WP:COMMONSENSE to me. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 18:51, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

• Support - clearly a software feature being discussed and not Project content related to managing the encyclopedia proper. I'd also propose to move Wikipedia:Notifications/Thanks→Help:Thanks. There are other subpages of WP:Notifications that may need some alternate destinations (some are proposals/discussion). -- Netoholic @ 19:46, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

• Support - I have gone to this page a number of times, and it would make most sense to be in the help space. Rollidan (talk) 15:50, 31 May 2019 (UTC)
• Support – Exactly what the help namespace was designed for. 142.160.89.97 (talk) 06:25, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Pings not working as of 1 June 2019

I checked it with {{U}} here, and using [[User]] here, neither of them seem to have given a ping to User:Winged Blades of Godric.

Another user pinged me here, which wasn't received by me either.

I wonder if anybody else has seen the issue? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:13, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Testing @DannyS712: --DannyS712 test (talk) 09:24, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: I just pinged myself from my alt account, and it worked fine... --DannyS712 (talk) 09:24, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I got this one. You used the {{ping}} template. How about {{U}}? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:26, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Testing with DannyS712 test --DannyS712 (talk) 09:32, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Kautilya3 that worked as well (and this ping I'm sending you is using {{u}}) --DannyS712 (talk) 09:33, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Great. Working for me. What about you, Winged Blades of Godric? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:38, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Alternatively, WBG could have changed their notifications settings DannyS712 (talk) 09:39, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

DannyS712, nope, there's some weird issues including late deliveries. ∯WBG^converse 12:04, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: The edit "Another user pinged me here" did not generate a ping because the user name and the signature were added in separate edits. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:40, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Plus one to this problem. Sometimes, today for instance, I get a notification light, but when I click the notification it was the previous notification. At first I believed this meant the person who had pinged me had deleted their comment. But I have come across several pings I have not received, so it is probably more of an error. Also, I'd really like a setting that no notification deletes itself ever, even if I see it, or click it, or anything at all. If I got a popup when I tried to delete a notification saying, "Are you sure you want to delete these notifications? We will never delete them unless you insist." I'd not complain about it. I'd have no problem with going back, to look at last years notifications, next year. In fact, I want to look at last years notifications next year! Please de-automate every part of notification deletion, and you might find these missing pings showing up instead! ~ R.T.G 16:06, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

This may be related to phab:T223413. There are also situations where old notifications are triggered by another event to briefly reapper. Anyway, there are several issues with echo, so it will take time for things to get fixed.– Ammarpad (talk) 16:20, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

"View changes" link doesn't mark as read

The "View changes" link in a notification item, of which only one example is shown in our example image (File:Notifications-Flyout-Screenshot-08-10-2013-Cropped.png), lacks the markasread query parameters that are present when clicking elsewhere in the middle of the notification item.

Is there a good reason for this? I assume that it's meant to allow the user to copy a "clean" diff link not polluted by the markasread parameters, but I wonder whether it's worth doing some JavaScript magic workaround to avoid the inconsistency.

Was this design choice already discussed somewhere? I've looked through the archives of this talk page but haven't really checked the corresponding places on m: or mw:. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 22:05, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia pop-up

It used to be that when an IP_address contributor edits an article / Talk page, a pop-up would occasionally (perhaps the first time Wikipedia saw that browser session or that IP_address?) appear saying:

Welcome to Wikipedia
Anyone can edit, and every improvement helps.
Thank you for helping the world discover more!

and to get rid of it the user would need to Go Back with their browser and navigate to the Edit form again. Very recently (in the last week, perhaps?) this pop-up obstructs the user every time they arrive at the edit form; navigating Back and Forward does not clear it. Plug-in developers and users alike have loathed pop-ups for over twenty years now so it's very surprising Wikipedia makes use of such an obnoxious mechanism for such a fruitless purpose. Somehow all my pop-up blockers are unable to protect the edit form page from this nuisance. After searching online how to block this pop-up, this page seemed like the best place to ask. 49.180.76.15 (talk) 10:10, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Note that has nothing to do with this page (it seems to be part of VisualEditor), but I'll answer you anyway.

Try clicking the "Start editing" button at the bottom of the popup to make it go away without having to leave the page. As for it showing up every time, it looks like it uses your browser's LocalStorage interface to record when it was shown, so you might check your browser's error log for LocalStorage errors and/or check whether you've added or upgrade any browser extensions that block local storage. Anomie⚔ 12:57, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Much appreciated. Thanks. I'm not using plugins but maybe it's the latest version of Firefox doing things differently. Good to know. 49.180.43.23 (talk) 01:35, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

DYK bug

Could someone take a look at some concerns at DYK about the notification system? You can find it at Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Bug involving being pinged or pinging other editors when archiving nominations and I think it has to do with this edit. Wug·a·po·des​ 23:01, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Strange ping.

Hi! Any ideas why I got a ping with this edit [1]? I don't mind at all, but it is weird, as it breaks all of the rules on how I know pinging works (they didn't sign the post, and the ping would only be from my own signature).

Answers on a postcard. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:22, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

It was signed. Yoninah saved "The result was: promoted by ~~~~". Maybe a human doesn't think of this as a signature when it's part of a sentence but the software doesn't care. The diff shows that the diff algorithm thinks a section was added with a link to your user page, so you got a ping. The link was from your signature but that doesn't matter. The section wasn't actually added but was a modification of an existing section. The diff algorithm didn't detect this. If you had followed the instruction "REPLACE THIS LINE TO WRITE FIRST COMMENT" in [2] then maybe it wouldn't have happened. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:29, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

?

Hello, Deepak chahar of India is a right ar fast med bowler

There is no doubt about it, he consistently bowls 130-134 or 136 kmph

TAIYEBA KAWSAR SHELLY (talk) 17:39, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

@TAIYEBA KAWSAR SHELLY: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Notifications. Please express your concerns at the talk page for the article concerned. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:29, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

MOST BIZARRE! Wikipedia programming is BROKEN. ThankYous and Notifications are not there for me, help???

MOST BIZARRE. I keep getting e-mails weekly, saying, "Such and such *thanked* you for x.y.z., [Click here to go to that Notification]," or, "Such and Such *mentioned you,* [Click here to go to that Notification]!" A nice big blue button to click from my GMail. Anyhewwww. Then, at my frickin' Notifications Wikipedia webpage at here as of Feb 28, 2020 for the /All\ Tab has shown for several months, the very latest Notification is as Nov 2019!! WTF is going on?! Why is this area of Wikipedia so broken and programmatically broken? Are people working on this? Is it a known bug? Very very frustrating. Thank you. -From Peter, a.k.a. Vid2vid (talk), updated 🖋 on 05:14, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Please do not use overblown section headings and excited text. Just describe the problem. Questions like this should be at WP:VPT however I can tell you that the issue is probably not due to broken software. If you don't want email notifications, you can adjust Special:Preferences. You were thanked at meta [3] on 21 February 2020. At the top of your notifications, if you have scripting enabled in your browser, you can see notifications from other projects at the top. Johnuniq (talk) 05:47, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

My point @Johnuniq: was not that I did not want the notifications -- quite the opposite, I most enthusiastically DO WANT to receive them -- My point was that the email contained a single [Button] link at the bottom that went to a general page, (out of date as far as showing mentions and thank-you's that triggered said email) ; Such emails from WikiMedia could extremely very easily go to exact Mentions, ThankYou's etc at hand. WikiMedia is missing the boat on linking Members to precise pages in question. They could simply key on a unique token built on a UTC time that is to the 0.000 etc millisecond of the edits. Thank you. --From Peter, a.k.a. Vid2vid (his WP talk page), updated 🖋 on 06:47, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I haven't heard of anyone else encountering this problem. Please go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo and make sure that the "web" settings are enabled. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:48, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you @WhatamIdoing: - I over-rode all the preferences from Global (which I prefer) to local exceptions, we shall see. I should *not* have had to do so but, am open to trying this. Thanks. --From Peter, a.k.a. Vid2vid (his WP talk page), updated 🖋 on 06:47, 29 February 2020 (UTC).

Was "Web" disabled at Thanks before? Here is a list of thanks you have received at the English Wikipedia. There are eight in 2020. It's a public list which doesn't show which edit you were thanked for. Only you can see that at Special:Notifications (assuming it works). If "Web" was disabled at the time of a thanks then I don't know whether it shows up in the list after enabling "Web". I have thanked your above edit for testing. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:31, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Enabling a preference will not retroactively display a notification that was filtered out before. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:49, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

If you are using Global Preferences, then you'll want to make sure that "Web" notifications are enabled at Special:GlobalPreferences#mw-prefsection-echo. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Unexpected notification

This edit notified me:

Deryck Chan‬ mentioned you on ‪Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)‬ in "‪Calls for political action in geonotices/watchlist...‬".
Hi. Thanks Deacon Vorbis for opening the discussion and Tony for unloading the geonotice. I do think the combination of the prior discussions (WLN...
Deryck Chan View changes 3d

But I was under the impression that it shouldn't have done, because it was not a new post by extra text appended to an existing line. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:40, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. I believe you are correct that this wouldn't have worked in the past, and that's true according to the phrasing at mw:Manual:Echo#Technical_details (which might be inaccurate or outdated? docs docs docs..). Although I wonder if perhaps the devs have been tweaking the related code to make it less finicky about things like this, in relation to the work on mw:Talk pages project. Pinging User:Whatamidoing (WMF) in case you know. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:14, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Quiddity, I don't think that they've done anything to that code. Redrose64, have you figured out how to reproduce it? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:07, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Is it possible to ping oneself?

@Disoff: --Disoff (talk) 14:23, 13 April 2020 (UTC)