This is an archive of past discussions about Help:Notifications. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I can't seem to see my cross-wiki notifications unless I have unread notifications on that wiki. So I wind up keeping unread notifications around to avoid losing the ability to refer to the notifications I have already read. I'd honestly rather turn off the distinction between read and unread notifications. Could you add a "Other wikis with read notifications" link or some such? HLHJ (talk) 01:08, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Re-reading this report, is seems less than clear. Example: I get lots of en-wiki notifications, but rarely anything from the nl-wiki. Someone notifies me from nl, and I read it but have no time to respond. A day later I go to my notifications list and cannot find any way to access that read nl-wiki notification. If I get a second nl-wiki notification, I can go to that, select "all" or "unread", and see my first nl-wiki notification, but I'd better remember to leave at least one of the messages flagged as unread if I don't want to lose access again. HLHJ (talk) 18:26, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
If you know the wiki then you can go there and click the notifications icon to see read notifications originating from that wiki. If you are unsure of the wiki then the bottom of user contributions at en-wiki has an "accounts" link which gives links to other wikis where you have an account. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:16, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I can do that. It's just a bit of a nuisance, especially for several wikis; I'd rather keep some unread notifications around. The menu is titled "Recent activity[:] Pages with unread notifications]], so it's not misleading, but I wish I could toggle it, or turn off marking messages as "read". I found this idiosyncrasy surprising, but it's more a feature request than a bug report. Thank you for the advice. HLHJ (talk) 02:03, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
HLHJ, if I understand correctly, you would like to have Special:Notifications to gather all cross-wiki notifications, no matter the wiki you are on, instead of visiting every wiki you're active on? If so that's a feature request, for a smart improvement. However, while no work is scheduled concerning Notifications, maybe you should push those changes as a Community Wishlist item. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:04, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Trizek (WMF), I don't know anything about the internal workings of notifications, so that may quite possibly be what I want. I'm not sure what makes me "active" on a wiki (having unread notifications there?). A display that would allow read and unread notifications from all wikis to be amalgamated into one list rather than only being visible broken out by wikis-I-have-unread-notification-on would also work. Because I am active on a fair number of wikis, and keep unread notifications around, my "Recent Activity" list stretches well off the bottom of the screen. As I often deal with new notifications at the top of the page without scrolling down and clicking on and checking through eight or nine wikis, I've managed to miss seeing cross-wiki notifications for months, which is careless and unkind of me when someone is awaiting a reply. It's far too easy to do (also, checking right now, I can't see my English Wikitionary notifications at all; clicking on the menu item does nothing). I suspect I would be more active across wikis if this were easier. I'd be happy to help nominate a Wishlist item; please let me know of any other information you want. HLHJ (talk) 03:40, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
HLHJ, the description you have done is I think enough. I've tried to recap it in a Phabricator ticket, to track that request for improvement. Please edit it if needed.
Concerning the Community Wishlist, when the survey will start, you will just have to explain your problem there and link it to the Phabricator task. The community will vote on their favorite ideas, I hope you will have it selected!
Section Alerts says, that a notification is generated: Edit reverts: When one of your edits is reverted, or "rolled back", by another user, but this isn't clear. Is the notification the result of clicking the "undo" (or "roll back") link? Is it a consequence of the prepopulated undo text which links the user's contributions and Talk page? If a user reverts a previous edit manually without clicking an undo link but imitates a typical Undo edit summary withe the Contributions and talk user links, is an alert generated? If a user clicks the undo link, but removes all wikilinks in the edit summary, is an alert generated? Mathglot (talk) 00:48, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
I think it is just edits from using undo or rollback (undo and rollback tags). Manual reverts wouldn't trigger a notification. The edit summary doesn't have an impact. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:47, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
Notification in edit summary
My reading of WP:Notifications#Alerts and the page it links to (mw:Mentions in edit summary) is that if User:A edits an article and includes "[[User:B]]" in the edit summary, then User:B will receive a notification, assuming they haven't disabled it in their preferences. The documentation states that a talk page notification needs to be signed, but no such requirement is mentioned for an edit summary. I experimented with diff which shows an unsigned edit to an article with a mention of a user in the edit summary. From the discussion here, that notification was not received. What's going on? Is there something in the documentation that I missed or is the documentation lacking a key point? Johnuniq (talk) 00:48, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Uanfala for your edit at User:Uanfala/sandbox. The edit summary included a link to my user page and I received a notification despite there being no signature. As expected from the documentation, the notification reads "Uanfala mentioned you in an edit summary on User:Uanfala/sandbox ... 1: pinging User:Johnuniq". So notifications by edit summary work although the faint possibility that something disables them when editing an article remains. Johnuniq (talk) 02:40, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
Brilliant, of course. My test described above was exactly that: an undo. This edit at Morigi successfully notified me so notification by edit summary definitely works with the known exceptions that notifications can be disabled in your preferences, and specified accounts can be listed under "Muted users" in preferences to suppress notifications, and notifications do not work for an undo or rollback. I was hunting around earlier and found mention of a page which lists Sinebot as not generating notifications, but I can't see it now. Johnuniq (talk) 03:09, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
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)
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)
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.
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)
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.
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.G16:06, 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)
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).
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
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)
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)
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)
In that example, the diff interpreted it as removal of one line and addition of another line. It's a dumb interpretation when you only add to an existing line but it means the issue is in the diff engine and not the notification system. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:11, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
I've just had a notification in glaring red at the top of the screen but search as I might, I can't find anything at all recent. I've marked all as read and it's now saying I have one read notification, so all the previous ones have disappeared and the seemingly new one I couldn't find is now read. Ineptitude on my part or a glitch? Either way, I suspect it could perhaps be improved. --Vometia (talk) 15:23, 5 May 2020 (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? PamD14:09, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
It looks like this feature has been implemented now. I'm glad I can finally be free of seeing links to pages I only technically "created" (almost always due to a pagemove or redirect) so I can focus on the notifications that actually matter. —Soap—16:04, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
I want to delete the notification about the attempted logins into my Wiki account, because it was myself doing it, but I don't know how. Petrandreev13 (talk) 18:51, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Mute button for notifications
I have a suggestion: add a MUTE button for notifications in Wikipedia. I think it would solve a lot of problems and make Wikipedia a healthier, more productive place.
If a user gets a notification in the notification menu saying "User X pinged you" or "User X left a message on your talk page" or "User X mentioned you" or any such message, you should be able to press a MUTE button for User X. You could do it right there in the first annoying notification you receive. That way if User X is really annoying you, you can simply mute them and they can't annoy you any more. If User X is muted, you won't see any notifications from User X at all. Problem solved!
Another idea would be to mute pings from all users instead of just muting the annoying ones. That way, if you're being harassed by many users (or you're simply popular!), and you're super busy or doing something super important and you just need to concentrate, and you're worried you will find it hard to ignore all the pinging, you can just mute everyone, finish your work, and UNMUTE everyone again later. I think we all know how hard it is to ignore notifications in a notification bar when there is a notification or alert that you haven't responded to. An example of this phenomenon can be found at the home page for the movie The Social Dilemma. The movie is about how people today have gotten stuck on responding to notifications and spend their life responding to alerts and notifications that really don't mean anything, or aren't important, and yet we just can't stop responding to them. If you want to experience this yourself, go to the home page for the movie and see if you can keep yourself from clicking that annoying alert at the top of the page. It's near impossible! We've all become so addicted to responding to annoying alerts, we just can't help ourselves. It's very sad, really.
There is, however, a drawback to muting specific annoying individuals. User X might not simply be messaging you directly, rather, he might be mentioning you by linking to your talk page. In such cases, User X might be talking behind your back, making personal attacks or otherwise just saying things about you that you don't like, and you might actually want to know about the ping so you can eventually deal with the problem. I don't think this is a material drawback for the mute button, though. In most cases, if User X were truly malicious and wanted to malign you, he could simply mention you in the text without actually linking to your talk page, and you wouldn't get pinged at all, so being able to actively monitor these maligners wouldn't really be possible anyway. Then again, if User X is maligning you and at the same time unwittingly pinging you by linking to your user page, for example if he were both malicious and ignorant of Wikipedia's intricate notification protocols, then maybe you might still want to know about it.
Fortunately, there is a rather straightforward workaround for this little drawback. Muted pings could be recoverable later with a SHOW MUTED notifications option. With this option, you could unhide the muted pings and deal with them appropriately when you have time. So, if you're worried User X might be making personal attacks or just talking behind your back, but you have too many important things to be doing at the moment and don't want to be annoyed by User X's pinging while you're trying to concentrate, and yet you're worried you might miss out on the fact that User X was talking behind your back, you can just mute User X, finish the important things you are doing, and then at your leisure you can select the SHOW MUTED notifications option, view all the previously hidden notifications, check whether you were indeed being maligned by User X or any other muted users, and if you were, then you can take appropriate action.
Of course, it would probably be a lot easier to mute User X once and for all and not worry about whether he might possibly be maligning you behind your back, and simply allow other community members to defend you. But most people have a hard time doing that.
@Coastside: Some of this is already available. If you visit, say, User:John of Reading, and look at the tools menu on the left hand side, you'll see "Mute this user", which leads to some options that would stop me interacting with you. And in the "Notifications" tab of your preferences, at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo, there are lots of options to limit the kinds of notifications you receive. I don't know if muted notifications are queued anywhere, though, so your "show muted notifications" idea might need extra development work. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
@John of Reading: This is really great to know. I didn't realize there already was a mute button. I think pages about "Wikiquette", behavioral issues, Dispute resolution, and so forth should all include a prominent link to a page that clearly says something like, "Remember, you can always hit the mute button!". It would go a long way to eliminating unnecessary escalations. What's strange is that one sees a lot of "Now, stop pinging me!" messages in various threads, yet no one mentions that you can simply mute someone. What's even stranger is that the people who suffer from and complain the most about being over-pinged by annoying users are likely those who have been on Wikipedia the longest or are the most active, and you'd think they would know about this feature. Weird.Coastside (talk) 14:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
It's a comparatively new feature; whilst user mention notifications went live in April 2013 (and we still get people who don't appreciate the first paragraph of WP:PINGFIX), the "Muted users" feature was added later, around July 2017. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:13, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
help finding a policy in the Manual of Style
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
Please consider giving the Help:Notifications page a disambiguation hatnote similar to one below.
"wp:mention" redirects here. For Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages#Items appearing within other articles, see wp:DABMENTION. For Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid, see wp:mention of wiki in articles.
or
"wp:mention" redirects here. For guidelines on disambiguating subjects mentioned on Wikipedia but lacking their own articles, see wp:DABMENTION. For the guideline for Wikipedia self-references to avoid, see wp:mention of wiki in articles.
{{on hold}} - More information required I'm not seeing a connection between the word "notifications" or "notification" and the concept of "disambiguation." Can you clarify why a hatnote like this would be helpful enough to warrant using?
Speaking of "notifications" if you were logged in, I could use the "notification" system to leave you an alert. But since I {{ping}}'ing an IP address doesn't give the notification, I didn't bother. I mean, the @-sign will show up if I do, but that's not all that useful without the "notification" aspect.
In light of the comments above, I'm ambivalent on this. I don't want to say "no" outright, but I don't want to say "of course, let me do that for you" without more discussion. While I recommend allowing at least a day for other comments, if another editor wants to make this change, I won't revert it. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:10, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Even if i don't get my hatnote, thank you for acknowledging and considering my request, and being polite about it. i've seen requests and suggestions (my own and others') ignored, and i've seen them rejected in rather hurtful ways.
i was looking for WP:DABMENTION, but i thought the shortcut was WP:MENTION. That i found someplace i'd previously seen the link i wanted was more by luck than skill with a search box. The search box suggested wp:mention of wiki in articles, and i just figured, "why not?" (although i'm not sure if "wp:partial title matches" supports or opposes the idea).
i don't know what pinging looks like for logged in users, but i got a line of bold text highlighted in yellow at the top of Wikipedia telling me i had a new message and linking to my talk page. User:Seagull123 probably had to go out of the way to send me that notification, though, so thanks for that. (i don't think i've tried pinging more than once or twice before, and pretty sure i did it wrong, but i imagine you get used to it so it's easy to do... if you're pinging a registered user.)
Not sure if this is the right place, but yesterday and today, I have received over a hundred alerts about failed attempts to log in. At the beginning, when a dozen or so were showing, it concerned me, and I changed my password, but it seemed like this led to even more alerts. (Or maybe it didn't matter.) See screenshot here. Any idea what is going on, and what to do to address it? Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me)15:24, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
A few times my username gets miscapitalised. Is it possible for me to create a doppelganger account for this and get any pings sent to it to come to my main account? AIRcorn(talk)04:05, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
I think it's less an issue of miscapitalization but of copying the wrong capitalization from your signature? In that case the easier thing to do is to make the capitalization of your signature same as the actual username. As Redrose64 said, you cannot forward notification to another account, so the alt account would not really do what you want here. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:34, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
You could also use text-transform:uppercase in your signature: Aircorn(talk). It copy-pastes as Aircorn and says Aircon in the wikitext but doesn't help if users manually type AIRcorn. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:55, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
Even when there is no change of capitalisation between the true username and that displayed in the signature, some people will still get it wrong. I blame manual typing, rather than copy&paste: a number of times I've seen edits in my watchlist containing @RedRose64: which didn't notify me (of course) - I have never capitalised the second R; in fact I used two small R when I first registered, not realising that the first would be automatically capitalised. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:18, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
Comment: There are a surprising number of editors (I don't mean you) whose displayed username differs considerably from their actual username. It can be quite the pain in the arse to trawl the actual wikicode in the editor to find out their actual user names. It would really help if policy dictated that what you see is what you get. Yes, Wikipedia would be a slightly less fun place, but it would make it much easier when you want to summarize a discussion for example, and want to courtesy-ping all major contributors. CapnZapp (talk) 10:55, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
find out if your attempt to ping somebody succeeded or failed?
I am not asking you here for the answer.
I am suggesting this Help page should ask and answer this rather basic question on the page itself (not here on Talk).
Even if the answer is "there's no way to know if you formatted your ping attempt correctly" with the explanation "privacy prevents you from being able to check whether a notification was sent; you can only view your own notifications".
(This latter part is just my best guess, not objective truth. But. How about I don't need to piece together the puzzle, and instead have the Help page tell us all what really gives? :)
Thank you. However, I was thinking about instances where you try to reach a "correct" user, but fail to create the proper wiki coding. For instance, allow me to fail to reach you Redrose64 in my next edit. CapnZapp (talk) 12:12, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
Here I am discussing with User:Redrose64 but will intentionally fail to sign my post. Cheers CapnZapp
Unless I'm mistaken there is no way to get a heads-up about this. More to the point: the help page does not discuss it either way. Cheers from a properly signing CapnZapp (talk) 12:15, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
@Redrose64:, actually you were mentioned in the summary: mouse over the punct at the end of the sentence, or see here. It's a bit of a stealth ping that I use on occasion when I forget to notify someone previously in the body of the page, or I need to repair an incorrect notification, and follow up with an unobtrusive ping in the edit summary without encumbering the rendered page history forever with the name of an editor who might not want it having such prominence there. Sharp eyes to even notice this, though! Mathglot (talk) 18:12, 8 November 2021 (UTC) updated to fix a word; by Mathglot (talk) 20:00, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
If the system of notifications is still being improved, please consider this suggestion: recently an editor, acting in good faith and unbeknownst to me, prematurely moved a draft from my user space to article space.[5] It would have been useful if a notification had been sent to me and I think it would be prudent in all cases where a user moves a user subpage from another's user space if the user hosting the subpage was notified. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 05:40, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
@John Cline: I've filed phab:T296955 to contain this idea and link to related requests. The Notifications extension is not currently being actively worked on by a specific team at the Foundation, but adding a new notification-type can hypothetically be done by any volunteer-developer (AFAIK). Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:58, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
It helps greatly, that you've given of your time to answer, and endorse this as potentially worthwhile. Best regards and be well.--John Cline (talk) 21:29, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
Semi protected edit request
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Notifications for links to pages you didn't create
Is there a way to receive a notification when someone links to a page you didn't create? There are a couple I didn't create but contributed significantly on and it would be nice to be notified. DiscantX00:15, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
Seconding that. It would be really good if there were a way to set your preferences on a page-by-page basis. I've created a large number of disambiguation pages and I find it annoying to get notified each time someone is foolish enough to link to one or another of them. – Uanfala (talk)00:35, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
I am a casual editor on WM (and often focus on other things heavily for extended periods). So I know about ping, but would need a place to look to refresh about exact syntax of use (like in a refference manual). I looked in the article and into FAQ (not reading through, but skimming and with page search of browser), and failed to find an example of ping usage.
For a new user (or such as me) either a section of a referrence to help article on ping template could be welcome, if it doesn't exist yet; if it exists it might need to be made more "findable". If I encounter this info now, I'll add, if not, help of others would be welcome. --Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 11:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
To find the info I needed I had to trace through a request for deletion of ping template discussion in archives, and through Help:Fixing failed pings, which was not very direct path. It seems {{ping}} template is a shortcut for {{reply to}} template, and this link to it's documentation includes syntax. I propose this (or better) link to be included in the article. --Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 13:02, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
@Marjan Tomki SI: That's normal for Wikipedia template documentation - we are an encyclopedia for everybody, not just computer programmers. So we use everyday language, not geekspeak. Indeed, if you create a documentation page for a template that doesn't already have one, it's pre-filled from Template:Documentation/preload which explicitly includes the heading "Usage". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:15, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Thanks for comment, but the problem was that I followed a sizable link sequence from search for ping (which defaulted to search in WP articles, with more than one chunk of 500 interesting, but not relevant at that moment, hits) to Help:Notifications.
I modified search to look into WP help only, and got 3 hits, of which one was "Help:Notifications (redirect from Ping)" here, where I found (and still find) noUsage section.
That's why I tried to search for alternative terms, of which one was syntax (which came from my early linguistics training around Latin, not programmese, a couple of decades before first of programming languages - and even more before several formal language(s) of mathematics, and even more before the idea about general and interdisciplinary theory of languages - entered my language set).
It might be usefull to add a Usage section to Help:Notifications, with at least link to Template:Reply to, where I did find usefull (for the problem of the time) Usage section.
I might be bold, but I chose not to act boldly when I am aware I am not competent yet about consequences and conventions, so I first propose here on this talk page
The template is named {{reply to}} and unfortunately {{ping}} is a redirect to it. I say "unfortunately" because one thing that the template doesn't do is to perform a ping. The term "ping" became a buzzword some time ago, used by people who either misunderstood its real meaning, or didn't know that it had one. What the {{reply to}} template does is to create a link to a Wikipedian's user page, preceded by an at-sign and followed by a colon, all wrapped in a <span class="template-ping">...</span>. That's all - and don't be misled by that span element, it does nothing; so all that there really is a fancied-up link.
For a "mention"-type notification to be sent to a user, either of two things must be done:
you make a post in which three things must all occur in the same edit: (i) one or more new lines of text are added to the page, any one of which must (ii) contain a link to the user page of the person to be notified, and (iii) end in your own signature as generated by signing with four tildes. I've done that with this edit, and here is the link that will trigger the notification.
you place a link to the user page of the person to be notified in an edit summary
The common factor is the link to the intended recipient's user page. No templates are necessary in either case, although they are often used for the first. Indeed, the {{reply to}} template was created after the notifications feature went live in 2013. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:26, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64:Thanks for nice and concise info about template.
@ping: this word, and connected contexts where it is used, are a lot broader; and ping (and synonims) have different meanings in each, and area of that is heavily interdisciplinary (let's leave that aside for now). Internet ping you assumed relevant in this case was named after naval sonar ping (as I suppose you knew), which was etymologicalyonomatopoetic.
But here IMO pager ping meaning was used (also onomatopoetic, now mostly but not completly,replaced by SMS on portable - inlcuding pre-"smart" - phones). It's primary function was to just attract attention to something. If I were calling attention to a piece of discussion to several (including not yet involved) people, not only the person I was possibly replying to only, linguistic asociation to replying to everyone would be wrong, because you can't reply to somebody that hadn't already communicated with you. Even when one has, you might initiate a new discussion, possibly on new topic, and that is really not a reply also. That's probably why ping buzzword is used so often, and in those meanings, IMO, correctly.
The problem I am addressing here is of possibly modifying contents of Help in such a way that info on {{reply to}} (usage - how to do it, not only when it is applicaple or how it works) can be found easily and intuitively for next novice searchers.
Now I also found all relevant info in WP:MENTION; which redirects to correct part of this help article, but seems less than useful (for a novice; IMO adding examples of use would help, or link to Template:Reply to/doc#Usage where expamples exist; and for reasons of search problems mentioned above with word Usage somewhere nearby). In my cse, I had to make several unsuccesfull tries first (e.g. {{ping|talk:User}} and {{ping|[[talk:User]]}} didn't work for reasons that became obvious after testing, but were not after reading relevant section of help initially).
That section also wasn't found easily. When this help article was shown in search (see above), I also had to read Help:Notifications article through focused to find relevant section WP:MENTION; when only skimming it I missed mentions of ping and reply to templates completly, and while doing focused reading this article of course I had to dismiss from focus of my mind what I did when I encountered "minor" problem of how to correctly use ping/reply to. Also, for a regular editor {{template}} symbols and their meaning are obvious, for a novice are not (and link to explanation of that might be usefull).
Does already exist something like referrence manual for such things? Or something on that in FAQ? And either in a way that search would find and show exact topic in article (not whole help article only like here, but Mention section in particular)? If this is not the place to discuss that, where to address it? Some project about help? --Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 06:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
signature-ping bug
if all the links in your signature are lowercase (e.g. [[user:theleekycauldron|theleekycauldron]] ([[user talk:theleekycauldron|talk]] • [[special:contributions/theleekycauldron|contribs]]) (she/[[singular they|they]])), the ping won't work, which is kinda annoying because i'd rather the links in the source of my signature all be lowercase. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 21:07, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
Notification methods
According to the introduction/lede a user can be mentioned to their user page by making an edit with a link to their user page in 7 ways. It doesn't explain how their effects differ depending on which is used. Mcljlm (talk) 23:48, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
@Mcljlm: They all have the same effect and they all work by making a link to the user page. Six of them just use a template to make the link. Many other templates can be used but those are some of the most common. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:58, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
Three of them display differently. By same effect I mean they make the same notification. The other three are redirects with shorter names. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:32, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
Notifications are not generated by templates. They are generated by making a new, signed, post that contains a link (a normal wikilink and not an external link) to somebody else's user page, for example this link User:Mcljlm will trigger a notification to you. How that link is made is irrelevant, and we have had templates that make user links for years before the notifications feature was introduced. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:36, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
@Throast: They're not notified. The second paragraph (beginning Notifications are displayed to the right of the username ...) shows that the notifications are shown for logged-in users. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:53, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
Redrose64, I see. Still, I think a link to the "Peach bar of doom" in the "see also" section along with a short note or a sentence under Help:Notifications#Messages on your talk page, which already addresses the "orange bar of doom" for registered users, wouldn't hurt. Intuitively, I assume this is the first page users would come to to get more info on this, and currently, the issue is basically completely unaddressed. I've been registered for almost 10 years and had to ask at the Teahouse because I couldn't find any useful information. Throast{{ping}} me! (talk | contribs) 00:40, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Templates triggering notification
Recently in an AN/I thread that didn't directly link the subject of discussion, I dropped a {{userlinks}} template in as a courtesy for anyone who wanted a one-click to that users' pages/specials/logs. The originator of the thread thought I was trying to ping that user and it got me wondering so I dug a little into this a bit. There's a ton of templates out there that link to users, so Is the template list on this page exhaustive? In other words, this help article posits using [[User:Example]], {{u|Example}}, {{User|Example}}, {{user link|Example}}, {{ping|Example}}, {{Yo|Example}}, or {{reply to|Example}} as templates that deliver notifications to the linked users, are these the only templates? If not, is there an exhaustive list somewhere? GabberFlasted (talk) 18:31, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
This is a common misconception. There are no templates that generate notifications. Notifications are triggered by a new post that includes a link to somebody else's user page and your signature, and all three must occur in the same edit. The link to somebody else's user page might be template-generated, and the {{userlinks}} template does precisely that, as evidenced by this: {{userlinks|GabberFlasted}} yields GabberFlasted(talk·contribs·deleted contribs·logs·filter log·block user·block log) which will trigger a notification because it makes a link to your page, it's in a new post, and I signed it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:10, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Ahh so it is. Thank you very much for your time and thank you for clearing this up. That's very good to know moving forward. GabberFlasted (talk) 11:07, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Delete specific notifications from notification log
Hello,
I have a problem where I am unable to delete certain notifications from my notification list, even after checking them. The specific notification was just someone being unnecessarily rude, but it’s become an eyesore every time I check my Wikipedia notifications. Is it possible to delete this (specifically on mobile)? Thank you.
NOTE: Please forgive me if this is outlined somewhere already and I missed it, I am relatively new to Wikipedia and still learning the ins and outs of it.
Dantus21 (talk) 01:45, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
At the moment, the only way to make a given notification disappearing is to get more notifications. These new notifications will "push" the unpleasant one to the "All notifications" menu. Only the last 25 notifications are visible on mobile.
I know it is not the solution you expected, and I'm truly sorry that I can't provide a better solution. Your report of this need is now documented, and it will help us to improve the experience for everyone.
Thank you so much!!!! It’s unfortunate that there’s no option to delete notifications yet, but I greatly appreciate your efforts to have this fixed. As for the rude message itself, thankfully it has been buried as I have started a requested move and rfc with many replies, so I am good for now. I must say again though, thank you so much for your kindness! You embody the spirit of what Wikipedia should be! Dantus21 (talk) 00:21, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Could someone tell me what the Notice badge icon is actually intended to represent?
I'm giving a presentation on Wikipedia shortly, and realise I don't know how to describe its shape. (I can't find anything in the talk archives, and I've always regarded it as an OKI321 dot matrix printer ribbon, or a VHS video tape, but I doubt either is correct.)
Before email, people had actual boxes on their desks for incoming and outgoing paper documents. A stylized image of an inbox, I think. The icon may have progressed from something like to to that as designers moved from skeuomorphism to flat design. Anomie⚔11:46, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
Aah! That does make sense as to its origins. Thank you.
Is there an expectation that admins should have notifications enabled / respond to them? Is there a policy about this? Schwede6609:21, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
@Schwede66 the relevant policy is WP:ADMINACCT. The relevant part reads Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrative actions, especially during community discussions on noticeboards or during Arbitration Committee proceedings. Administrators should justify their actions when requested. Notifications are not mentioned in the policy but email is, While best practices are for administrators to have email enabled, they are not required to enable or reply to email. Various places require editors (not just administrators) to be made aware when they are the subject of a discussion, and it is always taken that a message on their talkpage fulfils this requirement but a ping does not necessarily do so. Accordingly I would say the spirit is that administrators are not required to have notifications enabled. Thryduulf (talk) 19:56, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
There is no rule that admins have to react to pings, but I would still expect any active admin to either have notifications enabled or to watch and follow closely all noticeboards and talk pages where they could reasonable expect pings. There are enough situations where we are not discussing an admin's actions, but would still like their advice (say, we'd like to hear from the admin who unblocked Editor A last year in a later discussion about sanctions for A). At the least, admins who turn off pings should clearly state this on their user page to avoid/explain pings going missing. —Kusma (talk) 21:04, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
ClydeFranklin: I am seeing the same thing as Justyouraveragelechuga (thanks for your reply). How would I find whatever other wiki might have triggered the notification, and how would I interact with it to remove the "1"? Also, I don't recall making another account elsewhere. Was one created automatically? If so, why? Was there perhaps a "create accounts in all these wikis" box I might have checked or left checked?
Also, as best I can see, both my "Your alerts" bell and my "Your notices" in-tray appear to link to the same URL, Special:Notifications. I wonder if that's normal? If so, then what is the difference between both icon-links, and why do we have both? (It's not a ¿Por qué no los dos? in-joke, or is it?) I do note that they don't both have the "1", so apparently their subscripted counter state can differ. Curiouser and curiouser. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 04:43, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
@ReadOnlyAccount: Whilst the ultimate link is to Special:Notifications, clicking the icon (not the link) triggers some Javascript that filters what Special:Notifications returns. The two icons apply fifferent filters, so should return different results. Try both. One (or both) of them may have an entry in the list showing text like "More alerts from 2 other wikis Wikidata and Simple English Wikipedia View 2 alerts". If you click on the "View 2 alerts" it will expand to provide further entries. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:14, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
@Redrose64: I do not see different results between clicking on the in-tray or bell. I also do not see anything like "More alerts from other wikis". I have found a setting "Cross-wiki notifications – Show notifications from other wikis" in Preferences, and disabling that makes the "1" disappear. Re-ticking it brings back the "1". I do use the vector (NOT 2022) layout, which is essentially the reason I made this account. I may have modified some Global Preferences during or shortly after account creation, but I am unable to find anything that looks like it might have triggered this behaviour – which increasingly looks like a CSS bug. Am I in the right place asking for help with that? Should this be reported elsewhere? Justyouraveragelechuga's testimony suggests this is not just me, and that the issue is possibly reproducible in certain conditions, but I don't know the precise steps that would be required for others to reproduce the misbehaviour. I suppose one of the steps might be, you'd have to trigger an unread message from another wiki, but I don't know how to do that. Perhaps one way to try and reproduce might be to make a new account and then do what I did, which so far hasn't been very much. I see Justyouraveragelechuga has 598 edits as of this writing, so that's not a new account, meaning the bug is possibly not simply linked to that. Is there some other common factor? It can't be too common, or else this thread would be overrun by hundreds of users screaming about the same thing. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 09:51, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the information. Can the Special:CentralAuth/ReadOnlyAccount page be found and navigated to in some way that does not rely on users already knowing that URL or being told it and bookmarking it? Is that URL (or each user's version of it) linked and listed somewhere, so people can actually find and reach it on their own? Is it at all discoverable?
I will note that automatic account creation elsewhere because I sign up here does not follow the principle of least surpriseeven if that's maybe mentioned in some red-tapey terms and conditions somewhere for legal CYA. This also sounds like a pretty CATCH-22ish quandary: I don't know what triggered the notification, and I cannot click through and see the notification. I could browse to random non-enwp wikis to see if it's maybe visible there, but you're effectively, implicitly saying visiting random wikis might trigger more unsolicited account creation with MORE notifications(!). If that's not usability hell or at least UI Design by Kafka™, then I don't know what is. No offence. I especially don't mean to have a go at helpful you, and I don't know whether or where else this oughta be reported, but I do know that this seems crazy to me. LSD-driven development, anyone?
Like I mentioned above, I do of course realise that the "More alerts from other wikis" thing seems to work for most people, and that the bug only affects a subset of users. But I also know I'm not alone, because I'm not the original reporter – rather, when I came here to report this, I did find Justyouraveragelechuga had just done that. ReadOnlyAccount (talk) 13:46, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
@ReadOnlyAccount: The English Wikipedia is one of the Wikimedia projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation. The projects have separate logs but a unified login system. I was here before that system and it's a great improvement. Before, you had to manually create an account everywhere of interest, e.g. another Wikipedia language, and choose a username and password. Your normal username might already be taken there. Passwords could be different at each project. "Contributions" (may be in a user icon menu at the top right depending on your preferences) goes to a page with links to your Special:CentralAuth page, both near the top on "global accounts" and at the bottom on "accounts". Going to other Wikimedia projects to look for a notification is definitely not how it's intended to work but was merely a suggestion when the intended method apparently fails for you for some reason. Maybe it would work in another browser. At least you only have 6 accounts. Special:CentralAuth/PrimeHunter shows 376. I thankfully never had to go through them to look for something. Special:CentralAuth/ReadOnlyAccount only shows accounts which have already been created so you will not create additional accounts or trigger more notifications by going there. At Special:SiteMatrix you could create around 1000 local accounts by clicking links. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:40, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Oh, so, wait, if I understand correctly, then I can not only safely go to Special:CentralAuth/ReadOnlyAccount but also can safely click on any of the links under "List of local accounts" w/o triggering more notifications? That's... not quite as kafkaesque. Still at best a workaround to buggy behaviour, but not really a CATCH-22 like I thought.
Thanks for explaining how to find my Global account information page. Once you know where to click, Contributions – global accounts is just two degrees of Kevin Bacon.
I still don't know exactly what the common factor is that I have in common with Justyouraveragelechuga and that causes people like us to not see the "More alerts from other wikis" thing (or a difference between the in-tray and the bell). I have also encountered more Notifications bugginess, but reporting that would probably require uploading some screenshots somewhere. Would it be appropriate to upload screenshots to Wikipedia purely for bug reporting? Not saying that I will get around to it, but I might.
I haven't gotten any red bell alerts in about 24 hours, even though I saw someone undoing my edits, and I also believe someone tried to ping me but I did not get an Alert for that either. I checked my preferences and it doesn't look like anything changed there. Could someone ping me to see if I get an Alert? Also, any idea what could be going wrong? BOZ (talk) 15:03, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Thank you --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:18, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Mathglot (talk) 20:04, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
Done Thank you, - FlightTime (open channel) 04:14, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 13:00, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Nick Moyes (talk) 10:51, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
to 
to that as designers moved from skeuomorphism to flat design. Anomie⚔ 11:46, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
mention me on reply) 23:21, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
