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A question

If I link to some user by putting {{subst:U or something like that, does it still show up on their notifications as a mention? Rcsprinter (converse) @ 20:33, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, provided that you sign your post in the same edit. The requirements for a mention notification are that the edit adds a link to a user page, and adds the signature of the user making the edit. There's no problem with the link or the sig coming from a template. Substituting the template makes no difference to the mention notification either. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:59, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Commons images

Hi, it would be nice to get a notification (on Commons) if one of my photos that I uploaded to Commons is added to any article in any wiki. A “page link” feature for images. Thanks, ----Stefan »Στέφανος« ‽ 16:53, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

@Stefan (dewp): See mw:Multimedia/2013-14_Goals#Milestones - the last item under "Q3". :) (See mw:Multimedia/Feature ideas#File notifications for a little bit more). –Quiddity (talk) 06:24, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

You've got mail

Could you please notify editors via their red dot when someone emails them via Special:EmailUser? Cheers. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:44, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

That's a requested feature at bugzilla:54130. –Quiddity (talk) 19:46, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Discussion on unbundling page creator notifications

Does anyone know why the discussion on unbundling page creator notifications has been deleted with no visible resolution? Meclee (talk) 19:03, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I really like receiving page link notifications on an article I created, Social network, because so many editors link to it inappropriately (usually referring to Social networking services). However, it's painful to logon and see a notification that one specific article AND a bunch of other unspecified articles have been linked to Social network with no way for me to determine which of several hundred linked articles have been recently linked to Social network. I'm wondering if the notifications could be changed so that each individual article linked has a separate, specific notification? Thanks to all who have worked on the notification project. For the most part, it's been a positive addition to WP! Meclee (talk) 23:37, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. Interesting idea.
Fwiw, the keyword the team is using for this feature is "bundling", and you can see details about its current implementation at mw:Echo/Feature_requirements#Bundling
I guess we'd need to get some research into how many Pagelink Notifications the most active-recipients are getting, in order to determine what repercussions unbundling them, would have. @DarTar: do you know if this would be easy or time-consuming to do?
I also wonder if there are other Wikipedia:Notifications#Features that we might consider leaving unbundled. –Quiddity (talk) 00:28, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't have much bandwidth to look into this but I also don't think we need to spend a lot of cycles doing data analysis to answer that question. I believe unbundling pagelink notifications would not produce any damage in terms of frequency to anyone but a fairly small group of "special" editors. This is my reasoning:
  • pagelink notifications only target active page creators, not article contributors, so a relatively small proportion of our entire editor base.
  • they may become an issue only when articles are linked too rapidly from other pages
  • the pace of link accumulation for existing pages is too slow to be of any concern
  • the only real concern is for breaking news articles where links may be accumulating rapidly for articles created from scratch.
  • it's plausible to assume that we don't have many active page creators who routinely create these types of pages that get massively linked in a very short amount of time.
  • the only other exception is bulk page creators (currently the #1 recipient of pagelink notifications is a user from svwiki who mostly does just that, and this user is an outlier). These users should be aware of what happens as a result of bulk page creation, given the nature of their activity, so they will probably mute pagelink notifications anyway.
If this line of reasoning holds, I think we can go ahead and change the defaults for pagelink without seeking further evidence. I'd be obviously happy to be proved wrong on the above assumptions :) DarTar (talk) 01:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks DarTar. Good thoughts.
The reason I'm hesitant, are comments #0 and #6 at bugzilla:44787. (#0 = linked translations. #6 = editors who help out with WP:AfC and are not personally interested in the article-topics, of which they might have created anywhere from dozens up to low-hundreds). Perhaps that ought to be fixed/resolved somehow, first? Your thoughts or alternative suggestions would be welcome. :) –Quiddity (talk) 19:45, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
This old discussion was WP:Archived like any other discussion on this page that hasn't seen any new comments for 30 days. It was archived in this bot edit. You can find this (and all other old discussions) through the archive box at the top right corner of the page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I've submitted your feature request as bugzilla:59005. HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 20:08, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Quiddity. Meclee (talk) 18:30, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Disable Thanks on certain pages?

Is this possible? I ask because I am 'thanked' for my edits on the main page on a more-then-daily basis. It would be helpfull if I could, for instance, put a __NOTHANKS__ on the page. — Edokter (talk) — 11:10, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

And what if other users want to get the notification for that page? How can the system find out who added the magic word? :) --Elitre (talk) 19:10, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
The __NOTHANKS__ would cause the Thanks button to be removed for everyone. Editing the main page is a thankless job anyway... — Edokter (talk) — 20:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't believe thankless jobs exist, here. --Elitre (talk) 11:50, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
I'll work on my nothanks script later today. This should be doable from a userscript. Technical 13 (talk) 12:39, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Question about replies on your own talk page

Lets say someone leaves a message on your talk page and you reply back to them on your own user page. Does the other user get a notification? Techman224Talk 03:51, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

@Techman224: Not by default. They will only get a notification if your reply includes a link to their user page - just as here I am using the {{reply to}} template to link to your user page. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:37, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

"Thank" for starting a page

The first (creating) entry in a page's history doesn't have a "thank" link. Can that be arranged? I'd like to be able to thank people for starting an article, essay, etc. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:30, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

It has one. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:05, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
@Anthonyhcole: As far as I can tell, it displays one for me. Could you give a link to such a page which doesn't have one? benzband (talk) 23:19, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
Doh!. Sorry. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:05, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
You're right that the first revision page doesn't have a "thank" link, for which see bugzilla:56155. –Quiddity (talk) 21:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Question mark

On it.wp, the question mark in the flyout, when clicked, redirects to mw:Help:Notifications. I want to find out where I can change this to mw:Help:Notifications/it. The reason is simple, there are probably more Italian speakers than non-Italian speakers clicking on that specific link, and, especially if they are newbies, they certainly have not set Italian as their language in the Preferences on that site. So the correct page would be a click away from them, and other users have suggested that this should change. Thanks for your help, --Elitre (talk) 19:10, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

@Elitre: I think bugzilla:14950 (Global preferences) is what will need to be fixed, to cover this. That will help in hundreds of areas, beyond this single UI problem. Hopefully soon! –Quiddity (talk) 23:08, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Misdescribed notifications

I have had three notifications, each described as 'MarnetteD left a message on your talk page in "Your revert of The Rescue".' however, the three edits that were linked ([1], [2], [3]) were all to a section named User talk:Redrose64#Is mass rollback possible?, which is the one following. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Hmm, and archiving isn't to blame :/
There's a small possibility that bugzilla:54603 is to blame, though I can't see any erroneous H2/H3's hiding further up your page, and that probably would've triggered this bug before now...
I note that the initial edit was made by editing the "Your revert of The Rescue" section, rather than clicking "New section", so that might explain the first mislabeled Notification (ie the software just pulled the title from section=103), but not the subsequent 2 Notifications, unless bundling interferes somehow? Did you get them all at once, or one at a time? I don't really want to file a bug with insufficient detail, so please followup later if there are further problems or if it clears up? –Quiddity (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
The notifications arrived separately, and the first time I assumed that MarnetteD had commented on User talk:Redrose64#Your revert of The Rescue but the edit summary indicates that he created a new section by editing the bottom section, not by using the "new section" tab. I read that message and responded; and when the second notification arrived, also naming "Your revert of The Rescue", I again assumed that MarnetteD had commented on that topic - but no. I tested to see if the two sections were being treated as one by the MediaWiki software, this test being to click "[edit]" at the top of User talk:Redrose64#Your revert of The Rescue and see what was loaded into the edit window - but it was just the one section. I assumed a temporary glitch, clicked [edit] for User talk:Redrose64#Is mass rollback possible? replied and went to bed. On starting the browser this morning and logging in to Wikipedia, I was surprised to find that when I opened my notifications that not only was the second one still being shown incorrectly, but that a third (added overnight) was also shown incorrectly. That's when I decided to raise this thread. --Redrose64 (talk) 01:29, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
I am not sure that I can bring anything helpful since my understanding of wikiprogramming is slim. When I add messages I almost always go to the bottom of the page and type ==Subject== and then start my message. I think there might have been an edit conflict with Redrose64's last message in the "Your revert of The Rescue" but I am not sure about that as I was typing in a hurry before heading out the door. If I remember anything else I will update this post. MarnetteD | Talk 03:44, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Inexplicable notification

Something has misfired in the notification function. I got a notification that says "Mark Miller mentioned you on the Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Freedom from Want (painting)/1 talk page in "Freedom from Want (painting)", but there is no hint of any such mention there. --Orlady (talk) 15:54, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

This edit accidentally transcluded CaroleHenson's user page, where your name is mentioned down in the "DYK" section. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:17, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
Wow. Many people must have received that same notification. Thanks for explaining! --Orlady (talk) 17:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Rewriting this page

I promised to do this the best part of six months ago and never got around to it - apologies! But here's a start...

The notifications page as currently written is essentially an announcement of a new tool, but I think we're past that stage and into "business as usual". I've redrafted the page to focus more on current use rather than requests for feedback, and there's a draft here - any thoughts? Are people happy to switch to the new version? Andrew Gray (talk) 18:34, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Anyone? @Whatamidoing (WMF):, @Quiddity:, @Fabrice Florin (WMF):... Andrew Gray (talk) 19:48, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks all - I'll make these tweaks & pull across tomorrow. Andrew Gray (talk) 00:53, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
@Technical 13:: I've added one bugzilla link but not sure of the best link for the other bugs - any ideas? Andrew Gray (talk) 16:10, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Andrew, maybe the best way to go about it is to add section hatnote: "For all open Notifications related bugs, see the list on bugzilla."? Technical 13 (talk) 16:45, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Looks good. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:04, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Font size

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T62239

I note that the font size used for the subheading in Notifications is microscopic (as evident on screenshot. To my shock, I doscover that all font-sizes are set in px, with the subheaders (.mw-echo-timestamp and .mw-echo-notification-footer) being set to 9px. With accessibility in mind, this is just way too small. I'm not going to explain why using px is not a good practice to begin with, but can you please bump the font size of the above classes to 11px (and make sure nothing else uses anything lower then 11px)? — Edokter (talk) — 11:53, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Submitted as bugzilla:60239. –Quiddity (talk) 21:13, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Nine pixels? I believe that converts to 5 points, given the pixel density on my current screen, which would be considered unfriendly if it were printed on paper. With other options, it could be much, much smaller. 11px would be fine for most desktop systems, but I'm in the "don't use pixels at all" camp. (This is the "have someone over age 45 proofread your design" issue.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Colouring the notification badge

I'm not too sure whether this is planned or not, but having got a thank you for an edit, I felt it seemed wrong to have the notification badge turn red. I do not associate the colour red with being thanked, rather, the colour green (which just so happens to the colour of the smiling icon of the thanking). I do not know whether this is possible or within the coding, but I would much prefer it if the notification badge turns green when I get a thank you, and did a similar thing for other types of notifications. So to sum up this idea:

  • The notification badge would have a specific colour when all the notifications received are of the same type;
  • It would turn red if there are two or more different types of notification. —Gyaro–Maguus— 14:19, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I really like this idea, and if memory serves me right (which it rarely does nowadays), there has already been discussion and a Bugzilla ticket about this. I'm thinking about this, and depending on what classes and code is actually on the page hidden in the fly-out, it may be possible to write a userscript to accomplish this task for those that want it (I can imagine many users may not want it or may not care). Lt me dig into it when I have some time not working on my gazillion other projects on my to-do list. Technical 13 (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Page link being limited to created articles only

Is there any chance of this function being expanded to allow any article or redirect of my choosing? There are many disambiguation pages and misspellings that I would like to receive notifications for. For example, I have the initial edit on the article Critically Endangered, which I would imagine could be useful for a biology editor to receive linked from notifications, yet I'm the only person on the site who benefits from it. —Xezbeth (talk) 11:04, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Xezbeth. As I wrote in reply to Elitre at mw:Thread:Talk:Echo (Notifications)/Is it possible to use Echo to be personally notified about.../reply (4), this gets into the complicated territory of the overlap/boundaries between Echo and Watchlists and Flow.
There are no new features being added to Echo by WMF staff at the moment (bugfixes only), but possibly a volunteer dev might weigh in with suggestions or lightweight-code options? HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 21:32, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Confusion about (user)page review notifications

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T59517

I would appreciate any input to the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Editor review#Non-Requested Review ?. Maybe the notification for (user)page reviews could be updated. benzband (talk) 23:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

That's a page patrolling-type action. Do we have a good page that could be linked? WP:Review goes elsewhere and has no useful links. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:47, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
Re: There is WP:NPPLOG I guess, but it isn't very informative. Maybe a new page (or a new section on an existing page) should be created? benzband (talk) 22:19, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm thinking that being able to redirect WP:A user patrolled the page you created (or whatever the language of the notification is) would be handy for search purposes. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes I think that's a good idea too. benzband (talk) 19:56, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF) and Benzband: I agree that improving the explanation at (or adding a "nutshell" box at the top of) WP:NPPLOG would be ideal, to prevent page-proliferation. Then link to that page when a patrol-Notification is sent.
Do we even want a Notification to be sent for page-patrol though? How much do page-patrol and page-curation overlap for non-mainspace newpages? I probably need to read and experiment more, with both... –Quiddity (talk) 21:49, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF) and Quiddity: I don't know if we want a Notification for page-patrol, but if so then yes let's add a link to NPPLOG (via the redirect Whatamidoing proposed?) and add an explanation there. benzband (talk) 15:51, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
I would say no, users definitely do not need a notification when their user and user talk pages are reviewed. If there was something prohibited on those pages then they would be notified via a warning template or CSD notification; if "all is well" then no flag whatsoever is necessary. VQuakr (talk) 06:34, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
Oh, I just stumbled upon this bug that I apparently submitted in November, bugzilla:57517. It's been a busy year... >.< I've linked this thread, there. –Quiddity (talk) 22:09, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
It was confusing for me to see a notification message that seemed to say "You have been reviewed!" and then nothing else. I don't know how your tools work but it seems to me that the way they ought to work is a choice between two different notification messages reading something like the following:
where the "(A) Notice" links to a short fixed essay that basically says "This is what happened and everything is okay with your page." and I think the "(B) Notice" link is pretty self explanatory. Just my 2 cents. F6697 FORMERLY 66.97.209.215 TALK 19:02, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
How it does work (from a user's, not developer's, perspective) is that any patrol, whether "issues found" or "problem found" clears the "page unreviewed flag". Any significant problems are communicated through top-of-page templates, which lists the article in the appropriate category (ie Category:Candidates for speedy deletion). Author notification of critical problems such as pending deletion is handled semi-automatically through the page curation tool or twinkle, and notification of non-critical issues such as categorization errors is done via the separate action (when necessary which is rarely) on the page creator's talk page.
Meanwhile, this unnecessary "your page was reviewed" notification problem is causing predictable and completely unnecessary friction. When is it going to be fixed? VQuakr (talk) 05:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Global notifications

What about some option to enable global notifications from every wiki? Is it possible? Dominikmatus (talk) 01:52, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Global notifications are on the to-do list, but not prioritised at the moment. I was initially under the impression that work on it was delayed until mw:SUL work was further along (because currently userid numbers vary from wiki to wiki), but I'm not sure if that's accurate, or if that work has been finished yet. I'll see what I can find out. –Quiddity (talk) 20:33, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
QuiddityBug number? --Gryllida (talk) 15:15, 31 January 2014 (UTC))
@Gryllida: No core bug for it, just a few threads at the top of mw:Talk:Echo that link to mw:Requests for comment/Global notifications (which is currently on pause). (Semi-related bugs include: bugzilla:51540, bugzilla:51541, bugzilla:46310). HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 20:08, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Edit Summary

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51446

If i mention and link to a user in an edit summary will it trigger a notification. If it doesn't it would be handy if it could.Blethering Scot 21:06, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Bug report: not working in template space?

I believe that the template notification system doesn't work in template space. At least one other editor told me my pings to them were unseen, and recently I noticed that my name was mentioned at Template:Did you know nominations/Émile Coulaudon and I as not notified. Perhaps this is because the tool was not intended to work in non-talk spaces - alas, there are a number of places in the project where non-talk spaces are used for talk (some templates, more on Wikipedia: spaces...). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 13:58, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

By "the template doesn't work in template space", do you mean that notifications don't work in template space? I think that you're right; this edit didn't send me a notification, although this edit in Template talk: space did. I don't think that it affects all non-talk namespaces, since this edit notified me. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:15, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, you are correct, I meant the notification system. Gah. I guess it should be simple to fix; somebody probably just checked off the template namespace for this plug in to work. I think this plugin should be enabled in all namespaces; even in main article space (if it isn't enabled there). There are always uses we cannot think of right now (for main space, when a notable Wikipedian gets his username linked from, for example; file namespace for attributions, etc.). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 14:33, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
The patch for bugzilla:55491 will cover this (patch title "Remove namespace restriction for mention notifications"). –Quiddity (talk) 19:06, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Obnoxious bug: "I already know"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T59684

Something happens, I get an e-mail and a notification. I see the e-mail first, and view the relevant page. Notification doesn't deactivate automatically. Please, even if it is a logic problem like this, look into it; it's a noisy behaviour. --Gryllida (talk) 15:07, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Tracked as bugzilla:57684. :) –Quiddity (talk) 00:35, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh, perfect. Thank you. --Gryllida (talk) 10:36, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Broken Notifications Wednesday Feb 5

Hi. If you are one of the 62 editors who experienced the Notifications bug today, but haven't found any of the relevant threads discussing it, please see the various ways to fix it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics#Accidental ping. Thanks, and sorry for the distraction and inconvenience. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:14, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Talk page notification bug - not visible in mobile view

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T63044

While looking at a page in mobile view just now I received a notification. However, after tapping the indicator and being taken to the notifications page, no new notification was visible there. Switching to desktop view revealed that I should have seen a notification of posts being made on my talk page. — Scott • talk 11:37, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Scott Martin: I tried to replicate, but it all seemed to work properly for me. What browser/OS/device were you seeing this bug in, and can you reproduce it once more?
(I opened https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notifications and then left a testmessage at my own talkpage, using a different account. Then I refreshed the mobile view talkpage, clicked on the red indicator badge, and saw the message correctly at the top of Special:Notifications (still in mobile view) "Quiddity II left a message on your talk page in "test".")
Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 21:43, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi Quiddity - it was IE 9 Mobile on Windows Phone 7.8. If you'd be so kind to drop me a test ping on my talk page, I can let you know whether it happens again or not. Thanks for looking into it. — Scott • talk 21:55, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
Oh! I see what it is. The notifications are being shown oldest-first! — Scott • talk 12:11, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
@Quiddity: That's bad, by the way. — Scott • talk 22:12, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Scott: Thanks for clarifying! I think I understand the general idea of the problem, but I don't think I can accurately describe it. Could you possibly file a new Echo bug for that? (I tried to test it via [4] and [5] but couldn't replicate any errors.) Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 02:21, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
There's a similar T46296, but I've filed T63044 specifically for this. — Scott • talk 18:11, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Notification for feedback?

It might be interesting to have that .. especially since "Article feedback – My watched pages" doesn't seem to be working. -- 签名 sig at 17:48, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Re: AfT, see bugzilla:54197 and this thread (plus 3 more posts in the thread). HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 18:15, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, it does. Too bad. I guess it will soon be gone.
"Feedback" seems to work better than talk pages.
.. OTH, not sure why some don't just edit articles. -- 签名 sig at 21:40, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
I added it at Bugzilla:61089 -- 签名 sig at 13:03, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Notification badge colour selection

Hello. The default colour of the notification badge is grey, which looks a bit dull. How about using green 0 as the default colour (as opposed to red, when there are notifications)? It may look better. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 13:40, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Less aggressive default settings

I think that the default settings for notifications should be less aggressive. (I tend to only include things in main space; notification of mentions is a bit weird since if they want they will look at a discussion anyway: I would only notify them when they create a new discussion.) --Gryllida (talk) 10:36, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

In other words: include a setting for me to be notified of new items I create, but not of every edit to them. --Gryllida (talk) 10:37, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

I would guess that you're talking about Flow in particular here? Those issues are being worked on as bugzilla:60913, bugzilla:60817, bugzilla:57447, and others.
Regarding "[...] if they want they will look at a discussion anyway [...]" - the complexity is, that everyone has different working and tool-usage habits. Some people never use their watchlists, instead relying on memory and interest to check back on articles and discussions. Some people find the watchlist interface overwhelming (either too complexly technical, or too high-velocity, or etc). Hence mentions are in current talkpages are so popular, at least amongst some editors.
HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 02:28, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Notifications after you've unwatched an article

I posted a while back about something somewhat similar but here's a new wrinkle. I've been constantly getting notifications that "Indietronica was linked from X". Seemed to be the same issue as last time. As was explained to me then, once a page I had on my watchlist was added to some template or category, I would receive a notification whenever the pages containing that template were purged or edited. Annoying but I can live with it. However, this time when it was happening, I removed the page from my watchlist. That removal was more than a month ago and I've gotten two dozen notifications since then (the last earlier today).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:05, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I think bugzilla:44787 ("Allow excluding pages from the link notifications") covers this.
Background: The "page-linked" Notifications are not based on watchlisting. They're purely stemming from who the "Original author" of the page is, IE. whoever made the first edit.
I agree they can be annoying - I've started (or split) a number of disambiguation pages, so I get page-linked notifications regularly for those - On the other hand, there've been a few requests for "be able to add pages to the page-linked system" (eg #Page link being limited to created articles only above). The feature is interesting, but definitely needs more complexity, but also needs to avoid being turned into Maslow's Hammer!
HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 02:58, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Groups of Education Program extension

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T57338

Notifications doesn't seem to be using Czech names of groups of EP extension. Those messages for EP have been translated via translatewiki.net and are (already for some time) at 100 % done.

I have received a notification Nyní patříte do této skupiny: eponline. (You are now assigned into group: eponline.) while the right form should be something like Nyní patříte do této skupiny: Online dobrovolníci kurzu. (You are now assigned into group: Online volunteers.).

Tracking down Notifation message which is causing this I have found: MediaWiki:Notification-user-rights-add. So, in short, my request is this: can you change parameter $1 for that message so it recognizes full (translated) names of EP groups too? I assume it currently does so for other groups like autoconfirmed and admin users. If it doesn't make it, if possible, write full names for all groups. Thanks in advance --13:17, 7 February 2014 (UTC), Utar (talk)

@Utar: I just asked one of the magical devs, and he pointed towards bugzilla:55338 which has a patch just waiting for a code-review. So it should (hopefully) be fixed soon. Thanks. :) –Quiddity (talk) 04:19, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Extra notifications?

It seems like a notification icon in one Web-browser window doesn't notice when I read it in another window. So, if I open 2 windows, read the notification in one, and then close that window, I will see an apparently unread notification in the other window. This is very confusing… I'd appreciate if it could be filed as a bug somehow. Thanks! :) Goldenshimmer (talk) 17:57, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

I think that's covered by bugzilla:59879. HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 03:19, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
A-ha, cool, thanks! :) Goldenshimmer (talk) 09:51, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Ignore List

I think it would be nice if there was an "Ignore editors" list. Essentially, all editors on this list delimited by linefeeds would be ignored and would not notify me when those editors do the various things that generally ping me on Echo. This would help editors who are under an IBAN and are supposed to not interact with others from being baited, ect.--v/r - TP 07:46, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

This was suggested and discussed in bugzilla:47946. The outcome of that was a per-wiki-blacklist (MediaWiki:Echo-blacklist), and per-user-whitelist to override it. Anything more complex was treated with hesitancy.
I suspect your request here would have the same problem, as you're asking for even more-complex of a blacklist. [the other request was essentially just covering the Mention- and Talkpagemessage- Notifications]. I'm not sure though - it might be worth discussing more here, and hashing out exactly how beneficial it would be (ie. number of editors effected by IBAN and frequency of Notification problems for them, and other unrelated/unique use-cases for a per-user-blacklist). HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 09:39, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, there is that, and there is also the reality that just about every other mainstream user-to-user notification system on the internet has some way for a user to say they don't want to receive contact from another user.--v/r - TP 22:41, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
That's a good point, but I suspect Wikipedia should have a different approach. There was an incident a few weeks ago where two users were getting on each other's nerves, and one of them "thanked" the other several times for trivia (the target had previously asked to be left alone). At ANI, a few Pollyannas chimed in to say how could anyone object to being thanked, and the target should get over it (and the offender demanded to see the policy that limited thanking). Eventually the offending user was told to stop goading, and they ended up being indeffed shortly thereafter due to an inability to let it go. If it were possible for the target to block notifications and thanks from the offending user, some onlookers would have claimed that the target should just adjust their settings and ignore it. By contrast, I think that papering-over a problem is not desirable, and if an editor is misusing notifications, or just being over-enthusiastic, they should be asked to stop, and refusals should be regarded as a failure to observe the collaborative nature of the project. Johnuniq (talk) 23:09, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Confirmation?

If I click on the "Thank" link in the heading of a diff, the system asks me if I want to thank that editor, so I can confirm or not. That's fine. But if I'm looking at diffs on my mobile phone and accidentally hit the huge green "Thank" button which is in the bottom right corner very near to my phone's "back" button, there's no such safeguard. That's a problem. Please ensure that mobile users are protected from accidental thanking. PamD 08:09, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I've also left a message on the rather inactive Help talk:Mobile access. PamD 08:30, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Mention always called "talk pages"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T56433

Whenever I get a notification of a mention, it always says that I got mentioned on the talk page, even when it wasn't. For example, this edit gave me a notification reading

Ansh666 mentioned you on the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents talk page in "Suggestion to close thread..."

I've learned to ignore "talk page" in the message, since most of my notifications are messages on my own talk page, and the exceptions are often attempts to get me to look at someone else's talk page. However, it's taken me a while to get to this point, and for the longest time I would be surprised that my name had been mentioned at WT:AN any time someone was actually mentioning me at WP:AN. Nyttend (talk) 22:35, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

  • Good, good. I agreed with you that they are technically not "talk" pages. Saying "WP:AN and WP:ANI aren't talk pages any more than Wikipedia:Notifications is, because all three of them have separate talk pages of their own." is like saying "Userboxes in User: space aren't templates because they aren't in Template: space" It's not about the namespace that the page is in, it's about what happens on the pages. In the case of userboxes, they use template syntax, and therefor are templates regardless of where they are. Likewise, WP:AN and WP:ANI are pages for talk about things that happen on wiki that administrators may or may not be required to act upon (with the suggestion that they do, but we all know how that goes). So, I ask you, should the notifications for those discussion boards say "Foo mentioned you on the Administrators' noticeboard discussion page" instead? — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 23:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
  • No, because a "discussion page" is a talk page. Noticeboards all have their own talk pages: the only Administrators' noticeboard talk page is Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard, and calling the board itself a talk page or a discussion page is both inaccurate and confusing because it claims that it's in the wrong namespace. Technical stuff needs to be technically accurate. Nyttend (talk) 23:23, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
  • That's just it (and I can already tell that neither of us is going to agree here), all of these so called "noticeboards" aren't really notice boards (where notices are posted about things that are going to happen, no discussion takes place), they are discussion boards (where discussions on topics are had and consensuses are built). The "Village pumps" are almost completely accurate as they are officially designated as "forums" which is synonym for "discussion board". I'll just agree to disagree with you about this point and leave it for someone else to decide. Happy editing! — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 23:35, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
When this edit was notified to me, it showed as 'Technical 13 mentioned you on the Village pump (technical) talk page in "Why doesn't it leave redire...".' But the post was to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), not to Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical). --Redrose64 (talk) 23:41, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed this before but sure enough, yes, all my non-talk page notifications say "talk page". I do understand what you're saying Technical; many project pages have discussion occurring on them so one might argue calling them a "talk page" is not outrageous, but nevertheless, I would never call any non-talk page a talk page and I think many users likewise would not and would find this confusing. The distinction is just too glaring and instilled in us because all these project pages have their own talk pages. Anyway, even if the error was more trivial than I think it is, I do think this should be fixed where we're talking about a sitewide system that any error seen in gets compounded hundreds or thousands of times daily (and continuing for the foreseeable future). I somehow can't imagine it being that difficult a fix given that we've managed to completely solve this issue in the template space with all sorts of namespace detect/parser/magic word schemes.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:01, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Tracked at bugzilla:54433 ("Messages about talk pages are not completely adapted to non-talk namespaces"). I've just nudged it for feedback. –Quiddity (talk) 00:08, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Why do I have no notifications but a "you have messages" banner?

An odd thing to see

What it says on the tin. I've not looked at notifications, or clicked the "red number" at the top of my screen tonight; in fact, in another window, I still have a red box with "1" in it. I've been on my talk page twice, and the banner hasn't gone away. Risker (talk) 03:11, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

@Risker: Matanya also reported this problem, in IRC. I've submitted it as bugzilla:61809.
Re: the yellow text should aim to a diff, that's bugzilla:56475.
HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 23:00, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Bad namespace

I have just got Matěj Suchánek vás zmínil v diskusi uživatele Editační filtr u „Filtr 38“. (mentioned you on talk page of user Editační filtr) notification for cs:Wikipedie:Editační filtr. Looking at MediaWiki:Notification-mention/cs this may be just caused by translation. Question is, are there different translate messages used for different namespaces or just (this?) one. --15:40, 11 February 2014 (UTC), Utar (talk)

The dev I asked, suggested that this is either a translation problem, or something that will be fixed once bugzilla:54433 is fixed (currently being looked at). I'm not sure if that's enough info, but it's all I've got! –Quiddity (talk) 07:49, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

New bug report

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52829

On Commons I just got the following notification: "[Username] thanked you for your edit on [No page]." I have redacted the Username as I doubt it's important (it was a regular user's username) but the [No page] is what Commons told me; the notification did not link to any page. Perhaps it got deleted? If so, the link should still take me to the deleted page, and the name should be saved. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:22, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. That one's filed as bugzilla:50829. I'll nudge the relevant people. –Quiddity (talk) 05:45, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Phrasing of mention notifications

The current prasing of mention notifications is "[User] mentioned you on the [pagename] talk page in [section]". This is fine for article talk pages, but sounds weird for user talk pages. We wouldn't usually refer to my talk page as "the Hhhippo talk page". I think it would be better to say "the talk page of [pagename]".

Additional confusion might occur if [pagename] is a common word, so it might be better to add some wikilinks: "the talk page of Doom" looks better than "the talk page of Doom".

I'm undecided about inclusion of namespaces: surely "the talk page of WikiProject Physics" is better than "the talk page of WikiPedia:WikiProject Physics". On the other hand, in cases where the same pagename exists in several namespaces (main, category, user...), it might be more clear if the namespace is mentioned. — HHHIPPO 09:56, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

I think all the messages need to be checked and overhauled - both the wording, and which elements get linked (in flyout/Specialpage/email), which have become inconsistent over time and experiments. I've been meaning to research and list them all somewhere, but haven't had time. Hopefully soon. –Quiddity (talk) 05:50, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Customization

Are there any plans to make this feature more customizable? As an admin working in files, I do a lot of deletions where a bot, usually AnomieBOT closes the discussion at WP:FFD or WP:PUF for me after the file is deleted. Sometimes there are 4-5 files, but other times there are 20+ files that get closed. Every time the bot closes the discussion I get a notification. There are times, like just a bit ago, where I had over 20 notifications from 2 pages just because of closures. It would sure be swell if I could turn of that specific bot, or all bots in general. Cheers, TLSuda (talk) 02:11, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

@TLSuda: There was discussion about expanding the existing blacklist, to include "per-user configurability", at bugzilla:47946, but it seems to have been rejected as probably too resource-intensive. (See docs at mw:Extension:Echo#Notification_blacklist/whitelist)
Oh!, It seems there's already a request at MediaWiki_talk:Echo-blacklist#AnomieBOT. I'll ping that thread, and the bot-owner. –Quiddity (talk) 06:11, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Preference template

I have added an 'echo' option to {{User notification preference}}. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:37, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

What to do with a lot of notifications?

When I logged in earlier today I was informed I had 31 notifications. My first reaction was that this was some kind of bug but then I realized the notifications were the result of many of my edits having been reverted by one single editor. I was in a hurry at the time and did not check carefully and missed the fact that buried in the same pile of notifications were:

  • A notification that someone mentioned me in discussion
  • A Revert of one of my edits by a different editor

I don't think (not sure) that I was informed of this by the system.

Has anyone encountered this type of situation before? What should I have done? Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 02:20, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Not make the stupid edits I reverted? (This is not the forum to discuss why the edits were stupid.) For what it's worth, I once logged in to find I had a couple of real notifications dumped within 80 reverts by "the Michigan Kid" (under three IPs). I thought the bug which occasionally lost notifications if there were too many has been fixed. However, I agree with Ottawahitech (talk · contribs) that there needs to be a better way of handling multiple "pages" of notifications. Suggestions that have previously been made include:
  1. Have reverts and mentions have different colors, fonts, numbers of asterisks—anything which maintains a visual distinction between types of edits.
  2. Have an option to force the display of all unread notifications (allowing the user to scan all of them.)
  3. Have options allowing the user to selectively mark notifications as read, or to hide notifications, so that scrolling through the unread notifications (possible in the previous version) can be possible over multiple sessions.
— Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:26, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Archive 5#Problems for some of the problems I've had previously, but I think they've been (partially) solved. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:34, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
@Ottawahitech: No, it's a banner day for me if I have three notifications. 31 would trigger a panic attack. If it's a busy day, it's a busy day. I'm not sure if there's a way to group notifications by the type of notification (reverts vs mentions vs thanks vs talk page posts), or by which user triggers the notification. Either would be a good idea for those doing brisk business. PROTIP: If you refresh your watchlist every five minutes the number will never get that high. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:39, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
@Chris troutman: I don't think that's fair to either Ottawahitech (talk · contribs) or myself. We both are reverted a number of times
  1. I, because I was one of the 2 or 3 editors reverting the banned editor known as the "Michigan Kid", and he frequently reinstated his edits when he started up with a new IP
  2. Ottawhitech, because, well, he has an odd (in the sense of being different from almost all Wikipedians) view of categories, and has had many of his categories and some of his articles deleted; when deleted, references to them often should be reverted.
And neither of us is on 24/7. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:08, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
  • I've never had this issue (nor would I much care), but I've had a similar issue back in the day informing me that multiple first revisions had been reviewed. Perhaps in the cases of reviews and reverts, if there are more than three back to back by the same user, the system could put it all on one line with wording such as "Example reverted ## of your edits. See details."? — {{U|Technical 13}} (t • e • c) 14:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

"Reverted" versus "Undone"

I'm concerned that I'm receiving messages telling me that an edit was reverted when in fact it was undone. There are significant procedural differences between these two actions, and cases where "undo" is acceptable but "revert" is not. I recognize that, technically, there is little that differentiates these two processes. However, is there any chance that the messages can actually say what button was actually used (i.e. "undone" or "reverted") rather than just defaulting to "reverted"? Since reversion is considered a fairly aggressive editing action compared to "undo", it unnecessarily escalates situations. Risker (talk) 14:45, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I think this is more a social problem than a technical problem. You are saying that we should make a distinction between rollback and undo, because when you read 'Revert' you think about rollback. But per WP:REVERT and Help:Reverting, both rollback and undo actions are reversions and thus this is an incorrect distinction. So what can we do to fix the social problem, before we start changing the software ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:02, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
Anyone interested in this subject might like to see the recent discussions (some in archives) at WT:EW, where a remarkable variety of definitions for "reverting" have been documented, ranging literally from "any change, no matter how small to the text of an article" to only actions that restore the exact previous version of the page, and everything in between. However, the one thing that everyone agrees upon is that the buttons you press to achieve the reversion don't matter: undo, rollback, and manual change are all equal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:59, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Not effective enough

I recently attended an edit-a-thon which brought some brand new users to Wikipedia. Something I noticed more than once is that these users paid no attention to "echo" and I had to point it out to them as I was hovering over their shoulders for editing tasks.

I typically contact a fair number of IPs and new users with talk page messages to explain what's going on. In the case of these new users at the edit-a-thon, the notifications were only for welcomes on their talk pages. If, however, they were unwittingly causing harm or breaking some consensus about content they would have never become aware until they were blocked. Those notifications are the only way the community can reach out to the individual user who's not paying attention to their e-mail inbox.

I would ask that the OBOD be brought back as a default for new accounts and for IPs so they quickly understand how to communicate with the community. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:12, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, bring it back and make it opt-out, not opt-in. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:22, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
The OBOD is still the default for IPs, because Echo is only available to logged-in users.
However, I wonder what other methods we could use to draw attention to "a new-registered-editor's first Notification(s)"?
Perhaps using a bright "tipsy" popout dialog (eg sample images) which points to the red-badge the first (few) time(s) a user gets one? Then that area of the screen will be more firmly in their awareness... –Quiddity (talk) 21:16, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
Even the OBOD wasn't very effective in gaining user attention, according to 2012 analysis:
OBOD in Welcome templates A-B testing, Wikimania 2012 talk
Is there any research and A/B testing on the effectiviness of the red-number-notification?
Looking at the notifications dashboard, i see (on Jan 25, 2014 i.e.)
Not sure what this means. This seems hard to compare with the OBOD. --Atlasowa (talk) 20:51, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T66504

Moved to Bugzilla. — Scott • talk 14:03, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Notifications are great!

Hi, I don't know if this is the right place to leave this message, but I just wanted to say that notifications are really great! Couldn't live without them now, especially the Ping feature. So: You're awesome, guys! --Gnom (talk) 21:26, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Admin notifications

Just wondering, is it possible to get notifications for selected usergroups? Was thinking notifications if a page you deleted gets recreated, a page you protected gets unprotected, or a user you blocked is unblocked (or possibly even a user you blocked requests unblock, if this is technically possible), would be awesome. No idea how this works technically so no idea if it's possible or even desirable, but just thought I'd share my ideas on the topic. Notifications are fantastic, I just thought I'd mention! :) Daniel (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

@Daniel: There was a related suggested at Wikipedia_talk:Notifications/Archive_5#A notification feature; maybe? - These are both potential features for WP:Flow, which aims to improve all the various types of standard "workflows", that are currently wired together via templates/categories/bots, at each wiki. (Flow is starting off by just improving the "user-to-user discussion" workflow, but will grow from there.) Big dreams, long-term, eventualism uber alles :) HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Secondary "super" watchlist for limited number of entries

It would be incredible for me if echo would allow me to add a small number of pages to it as a super watchlist. I have many thousands of pages on my watchlist but I can easily pick under ten pages that I would especially want to be informed about changes to in a more direct manner that would not allow me to miss them. Notifications would make a great facility for this, were it feasible. Say every user gets three pages they can add to their "Select Notifications Watchlist®℠". Possible? Any interest? Impossible, FO?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:17, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

@Fuhghettaboutit: There were some related suggestions at Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Archive 5#Merge watchlist into Notifications, including my comment that "I'd love to have two watchlists (that I could designate/organize however I pleased. I'd go with "high-velocity discussion boards" on one, and everything else on the other. But each editor would surely go with an individual setup) [...]".
I guess that's another item for the mw:Watchlist wishlist, at least for now. –Quiddity (talk) 23:27, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
@Quiddity: Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for. I'd prefer to have it function through notifications as it's more active – we wouldn't have to check anything; it would just pop up informing us – but a second watchlist I could have for "high velocity" items would be fine too. Chalk me up as a support vote if you ever hear about anything further on that and thanks for responding. (I suppose the long time in any response here probably indicates I did not pick the best forum to raise this.)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:57, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Linking and signing

I have a question about this sentence: "Note that the post containing a link to a userpage must be signed; if the edit does not add a new signature to the page, no notification will be sent."

I'm just checking that I've understood this, because I think I've been doing it wrong. Does it mean that if I write: "I hope Susan will comment here," and save, but forget to link to Susan, I can't go back and link to her name? Instead I have to re-sign the post, or post a ping underneath with a second signature. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:15, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, one needs to resign or ping with a second signature. That's how I understand it User:SlimVirgin. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:30, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Re-signing your post isn't enough if the re-sign merely overwrites the original signature. A signature needed to be added in the same post that the link is added; so yes, you can post a ping underneath with a second signature. Alternatively, you can revert your post and re-add it with the link in place that had been omitted first time, see this edit and the ones immediately before and after. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:36, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Okay, thanks, that's good to know. I had no idea about this until I saw someone mention it on a talk page. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:44, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
  • The way I do it is go back and fix the link to their userpage and delete my signature and the timestamp, then when I re-sign, it counts it as an add because the timestamp changes. I'm fairly sure this works, but don't remember exactly if I've tested it... if it's really important I sometimes leave them a talkback as well. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:54, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I had a misadventure with this during the past day. I did not remember to notify the user I was replying to on a talk page until I had signed my post and walked away. I attempted a ping after the fact and even put ping user (I hope) in my edit summary. Even though a kind editor noticing my transaction stopped by my page to explain how it must be done (with a link to directions), I could not make sense of the directions. I made a second attempt by inserting the user name with a different format. Also failed. I must have been up way past my bedtime, because I thought I had done at least one correctly. But, I was missing the second signature in a new and different post. Next time, I shall simply revert myself and begin again as Redrose64 demonstrated. Fylbecatulous talk 18:19, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Transcluded page notification

Yes, I know there's an orange box at the top of the page explaining this. But I've just had this for the first time and it is annoying. Plan to resolve this issue, please. — Scott • talk 17:24, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Unsolicited review?

I couldn't find any solid information about this anywhere, save for another confused Wikipedian here, so here it goes: I've been around on Wikipedia for a while and while I may not have thousands upon thousands of contributions, I like to think that my reputation is decent. I was kind of insulted, then, when I received a notification that User:Fralambert, someone who is prominent mainly on the French wiki, had reviewed my English-language article. Where would he have seen the notification flagging my article for review, and why was it flagged in the first place if I am not a novice? These questions ought to be answered somewhere in the documentation, along with a clearer summary of what reviewing is about. - Sweet Nightmares 14:32, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

@SweetNightmares: Besides Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Archive 6#Confusion about (user)page review notifications, I think that this is the issue described at Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Archive 5#Incorrect notification text; it may have come up before. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:40, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
@SweetNightmares: (edit conflict) You created Rivière aux Cerises. Because it is a new page and you don't have the autopatrolled user right, that new page (like every other) is addressed by the "New Pages Patrol." This is done to prevent attack pages and other problematic edits and can be done by regular editors, typically the first editors to visit a new article. You should not feel insulted, as there's a very high bar to be given autopatrolled. (I have thousands of edits and I don't qualify, either.) Fralambert was simply acknowledging that there was nothing wrong with the article you created. As for why they looked at that article, it might be because it was a French-language name. Wikipedia is open to a very wide range of editors and you never know who might find an article. You will also run into the "Recent Changes Patrol" and the "Random Page" patrollers on occasion. I'm sorry this wasn't clear to you. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:45, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

I think I may have found the culprit. The review occurred on Wikidata as seen here, so maybe it's not entirely appropriate that it says "Cherry River (Quebec) was reviewed by Fralambert" on the notification. - Sweet Nightmares 15:48, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Yup, bugzilla:57517. :(
In happy news, I've started lists of all Echo messages (mw:Echo (Notifications)/Message audit) and all bugs related to Echo messages (mw:Echo (Notifications)/Bug triage), so, that's step 1 for clearing up many of these problems... :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:58, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
@Quiddity: Thanks for the reply. So it's because of the changes made on Wikidata, or because of autopatrol? If it's the former, then the notification should say "Article was reviewed by User on Wikidata." Just a suggestion! - Sweet Nightmares 02:55, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
@SweetNightmares: I believe this was indeed caused by the "patrol" that Fralambert did, as Chris explained it (and that will be fixed by the creation of a new Notification-type, for 'patrols').
I've now clicked the "mark this page as patrolled" link on the talkpage (Talk:Cherry River (Quebec)), so you can compare that with the previous Notification.
I'm confused as to why neither of those patrols are showing up in the logs though... [6] and [7] are empty ?!?
HTH you, and hopefully a more technical person can explain to me what's happening.. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Fixing broken ping doesn't help

In this edit, I was pinged from a DYK page by User:GabrielF.

That ping wasn't correctly done, so GabrielF promptly fixed it in this edit. But it ever showed up in my notification list.

GabrielF eventually notified me the old-fashioned way (via a message on my talk). But shouldn't the ping have worked? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:50, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

That's working correctly. Unless the ping and the sig happen in the same edit, nothing happens. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:35, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
Jackmcbarn, it may be working by design, but is it the appropriate design?
It seems logical to me that a broken ping shoukd be fixable. But the design seems to be that it has to be followed by a whole new post. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:39, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
The design is: this whole approach is broken and that's why we are building Flow. And since there are limits on resources, WMF decided that it shouldn't spent developer time on both flow and making this mentioning in talk posts super reliable. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:49, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Hmmm. At best, flow is a very long way from the point where it would be accepted as a replacement for existing talk pages. At worst, I fear that it may be a well-intentioned dead end.
I understand that devs work within the constraints of the WMF's decisions (such as its enthusiasm for throwing cash at the chapters with little to show for it, rather than on developing MediaWiki), so this gripe is not aimed at you. But I don't like the logic of not doing even minor tweaks while we await the arrival of something big but far away. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:59, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
Hear, hear. Well said.  — Scott • talk 09:47, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
@BHG: It's not an easy problem—what if I were to ping you in this comment, then notice a typo and fix it? Should you be notified twice? FYI I am one of those who believe Flow is biting off far too much—what is needed is auto-sign and auto-indent; what we're promised is a mystical process unrelated to wiki style. Johnuniq (talk) 10:35, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

I didn't get a notification for this mention. Is it because OwenBlacker's sig doesn't contain any direct links, only indirect links through an interlanguage link: [[:en:User:OwenBlacker|OwenBlacker]] [[:en:User talk:OwenBlacker|Talk]]? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:04, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

That is likely one of the reasons. I had the same problem on English Wiktionary a few days ago: wikt:Special:Diff/27865604/27868040.
The other reason would be bugzilla:54639.
Helder 20:32, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
I didn't realise that was a problem; I only have it like that to make it easier to copy/paste between wikis. I'll change my sig to link directly, if it's causing problems :o) — OwenBlacker (Talk) 20:53, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Two kinds of notifications

In the last few days, I've experienced notifications coming in two separate pages. When someone thanks me, I get a "1" replacing the "0" as normal, but when I click the "1", I get a dropdown that only talks about times when people mention me in a comment. At the top is a little Messages (0) • Alerts (0) (that's how it looks now, with no notifications), and I have to click the Alerts to see what's happening. When did this change, and why? It's almost impossible to read the tiny "Alerts" text, and it took me a good while to discover that I wasn't being re-pinged just because someone mentioned me in a talk page several days before. This definitely doesn't seem as helpful for new users, since they have to click two times, not one, to learn what's going on. Even for someone experienced like me, it's confusing, and I personally don't find it a positive change, since I'd like to have everything together. Is there a way I can undo this? I've looked over my preferences, but there's no relevant preference, and I've checked Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ, only to find that it displays the original unified list rather than the split-in-two list. Nyttend (talk) 22:37, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Is this the same as Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 130#Notifications, or perhaps Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 130#dead-end message? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:54, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
Yes, it's the same. I don't remember signing up to test Flow (why would I want to test the garbage? I want talk pages, a kind of wiki page, not Facebook messaging), so I have no idea how to un-sign up. I've gone to the notifications section of my preferences and disabled the Flow option (the one with the tooltip "notify me when actions related to me occur in Flow"), but the two-page split continues. I don't mind having the Messages column, as long as it's not the default; Fram's not done anything in it in nine days, so at worst I expect I'll be checking it much less often. Nyttend (talk) 23:26, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
@Nyttend: As of ~1 hour ago, the flyout will always default to Alerts section (unless you get new Flow notifications, and have the preference enabled). The "Messages" section is only seen by users who have interacted with Flow in the past (sadly, including the people who were pinged in certain abuse tests). The final change is that the flyout now contains the last 25 un/read standard Echo Notifications that you received (instead of 8).
Re: the tiny 8px text, that's bugzilla:69873 (a monobook specific bug :< ), but is already patched, and the patch should be here either Thursday or the Thursday after. Sorry for the distraction, and thanks for the bugreports. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Tangentially, you (and anyone else reading this) might be interested in (WP:VPI#Can we have a color scheme for the notifications count, please, and, if not, perhaps some other color than red?) this ongoing discussion. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

As of this ping, it's back to the format that I'm used to. Thanks! As I noted, I'm fine with having the two columns, as long as the alerts is default. Nyttend (talk) 23:45, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Bug with Template:Motorcycling invite

Hello Notifications,

You are invited to join WikiProject Motorcycling. We work together to improve motorcycling related articles. We focus on things like the most popular motorcycling articles, recognizing and improving new articles, historically important motorcycles, and more. Please share your ideas, suggestions, and questions at WikiProject Motorcycling.

For even more ways you could contribute, click [show] to see the To do list for Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorcycling:
Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

WikiProject Motorcycling

To show your membership, you may care to include one of the following templates on your user page
{{User WP Motorcycling}}
This user is a member of
WikiProject Motorcycling.
{{User WikiProject Motorcycling}}
This user is a participant in WikiProject Motorcycling.
Adding {{Article alerts columns|Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorcycling/Article alerts}} to your user page will display current motorcycling discussions and proposals. Or add Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorcycling/Article alerts to your watchlist.

It appears every time I use {{Motorcycling invite}}, and unconected user gets pinged. See User_talk:Dennis_Bratland#Weird. I assume they'll get pinged again here. I don't know if this happens when other people use the template. Anyone know to do? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:51, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

Marked resolved, as I see at your talkpage that the transcluded culprit was deduced, thanks to Redrose64. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Colour

I want to agree that the red colour of the notifications is very hostile! I think that's a well-establised reality, why red is used here for redlinks, traffic lights are red to indicate 'stop', and reviews of papers in universities and schools are given in red. I wish I could either change it my preferences, or that it would be blue or green. This would also be more consistent with the general colour scheme of WP. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:23, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

PS @Quiddity (WMF) I've added a template to show you're patrolling this page. I'm trying to do this on the pages which WMF actively monitor, as I feel it makes it clearer to me and other users, and also distinguishes fly in-fly out WMF staff who've come to help with a particular problem from the staff member responsible for monitoring the page. If this is incorrect, please change it, and also feel free to alter the template. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:23, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
@LT910001: There is already a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 15#Can we have a color scheme for the notifications count, please, and, if not, perhaps some other color than red? concerning the colour of the count icon. Per WP:MULTI, it should be discussed there. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:54, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to developers and others who have made Notifications possible and keep it running smoothly

I have found myself on a work-related wikibreak the last few weeks. During my break the notifications feature has in one case made it possible for me to notice an AfD I'd contributed to had been put up for DRV and then relisted and in another case allowed me to see suggestions made by other editors with which I could assist. I'll confess that even when I'm on wikibreak I still check my watchlist most days, but because of this feature, I noticed important conversations which wouldn't otherwise be brought to my attention. My sincere appreciation to those who labor long for the benefit of users like myself. BusterD (talk) 00:49, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

@BusterD: I'll pass that along to the devs. Thanks. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:31, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Bug: reporting a revert when it has been undone

I had a notification that someone reverted my edits but then they undid the revert.[30] Can this undoing of a revert be set to delete my notification? Is this already a bug tracked in Bugzilla? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:36, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Biosthmors It's not currently possible, because Notifications get sent out via email as well as the site interface, and there's no way to retract an email. However there is a slight chance in the future, as bugzilla:69636 is requesting a "30 second undo window for Thanks" (so that we can dispense with the Confirmation-dialog), and once that is available in the Echo backend, it might be possible to apply the same thing to Reverts? (I'm not sure about that though. Have not confirmed with a developer). HTH, and sorry for the late reply. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 03:22, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Interference between protection and revert

I do not see it reported anywhere, so that it might be useful. I have just semiprotected an article (Catherine Deveny), apparently not at the best version, and then another user reverted to one of the previous versions. I did not have any edits to the article except for the protection but I still got an echo notification that my edit (which was the protection) was reverted. Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:47, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: I think this is related to Twinkle, which was used in the revert. I've asked at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle#Restore this version - possible glitch after doing some testing. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 03:12, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for looking into it.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:00, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Typos

Is there a magic button to click that produces the notification template? If not, could someone create one? I'm forever mistyping – {[U|Username}}, and variations on that theme. It's not only annoying; if we save the typo the ping doesn't work even if we go back to fix it. A button in the ref toolbar would be wonderful. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:52, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

That's probably easier to add to the CharInsert menus (the "Insert: – — ° ′ ″ ..." items under the edit window), and I've asked at MediaWiki_talk:Edittools#Individual_customization.3F. But if not, it is possible to add a button to the RefToolbar, but we'll have to find a javascript wrangler to do so. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:29, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
@Quiddity (WMF): Fwiw.... User:s can add there own toolbar of useful/repetitive "inserts" using the CharInsert gadget via one's common.js file. Once in place, there is no need to type anything - just highlight the target text and select the desired tags/templates from your customized menu of stuff.

For example; if you add the following to your common.js file....

/* CharInsert specific */
window.charinsertDontMove = false;
window.editToolsRecall = true;
window.charinsertCustom = { User: ' |  =  {\{+}}  [\[+|]]  —  Æ  æ  Œ  œ  <code><nowiki>+</nowiki></code>  {\{ping|+}}' };
if(window.updateEditTools) window.updateEditTools();
... A new menu labeled "User" (highlighted for clarity above) containing your custom inserts will appear in the selectable menu of CharInsert (EditTools).

Note: as the core .js gadget currently stands (without a blank 'User' menu option), the cookie remembering the last time you used that menu gets "lost" upon the next edit session. Regardless, to resolve this we added the empty 'User:' menu label for all editors by default over on Wikisource in spite of the questions surely to come and, slowly but surely, people started asking "why is the User: section empty" --> "How can I customize the User: section" and viola; folks have been adding their own custom tools (User:) with little effort ever since.

Hope that made sense -- George Orwell III (talk) 03:32, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

@George Orwell III: Perfect, thank you!
@SlimVirgin: Would adding the links to the CharInsert menus, be sufficient? If so, copy this code to your common.js:
// Add custom Character Inserter entries, to the end of the first 2 groupings
window.charinsertCustom = { 
	"Insert": ' Mention: {\{u|+}}  {\{ping|+}}', 
	"Wiki markup": ' Mention: {\{u|+}}  {\{ping|+}}' 
};
and that will append the {{u}} and {{ping}} code to the indicated menus. (You can delete the 3rd or 4th line, if desired).
Note1: The "+" in those items, is where your cursor will appear after the text is inserted, or if you already have text highlighted when you click them then that text will be properly surrounded by the templates.
Note2: You can also remove or change the word "Mention:" - anything that is followed by a colon seems to get turned into a heading - Use_underscores_for_multi_word_headings: like so.
Note3: use a dot ( . ) for any spacing needed in such things as inline css class or id assignments. For example. -- the space needed between the words span and class in <span.class="plainlinks">+</span>
Note4: to include a single literal \ use four backslashes ( \\\\ ) (will appear as double-\ on menu display.) E.g. <math>\\\\scriptstyle{+}</math>.
Or, if you have that whole gadget disabled, we can figure out how to add a custom RefToolbar button... :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
George and Quiddity, thank you so much for this! I will try it out very soon and report back. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:50, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Just a note: The manner by which the gadget loads has been slightly changed, meaning the last line (if(window.updateEditTools) window.updateEditTools();) should no longer be needed. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:47, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, I've removed it for clarity/simplicity. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:08, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I added Note3 above so they aren't listed all over the place but signing here for "neatness" sake. -- George Orwell III (talk) 00:19, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Copy-cat addition of Note 4 (similar reasoning to above.) AuFCL (talk) 03:06, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

George Orwell III and Quiddity (WMF), I've just added this, and it works really well. Thank you! It will save a lot of fiddling around. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:47, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Notifications for pages I don't watch

I repeatedly get notifications for when a page is linked to that is no longer on my watchlist. How can I alter which pages it notifies me about? Rcsprinter123 (jive) @ 11:56, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

@Rcsprinter123: It's not controlled by watchlist; it's by which pages you created, and it's all-or-nothing (the setting is Preferences → Notifications → Notify me about these events → Page link). More specific selection of which pages can trigger a notification is, I believe, covered by bugzilla:44787. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:45, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: OK, and thanks for the quick reply. Rcsprinter123 (jive) @ 12:48, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Blocked users pinging

As part of management of disruptive users, administrators sometimes block users using the interface described at mw:Help:Blocking users. Normally, the blocked user is allowed to edit their talk page for discussion and requesting unblocking, but otherwise cannot interfere with editors elsewhere on the encyclopedia. The notification mechanism provides a "loophole" such that a blocked user can ping users who otherwise may wish to disengage with them. Is there, or can there be, a mechanism to disable the sending of notifications by a blocked user? NE Ent 10:36, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Removal of talk page access?--Ymblanter (talk) 17:04, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I think that's the easiest/clearest option, if someone is actually abusing the feature.
If the blocked-user was prevented from pinging anyone, it would interfere with the now-normal communication mechanism, eg if they were trying to reply to someone who was having a discussion with them on their talkpage. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
That's not the way it works. You post a message on someone's talkpage, you watchlist it. And sure, removing talk page access "solves" the problem but it interferes with the ability of other editors with better rapport with the blocked user engaging in a positive manner. NE Ent 21:41, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
Sadly, that's not always the way it works, because not everyone follows the same best-practices (or even agrees on what universal best-practices are). E.g. all the people who have "Ping me if you reply" in their signatures, or the people who have long instructions at the top of their own usertalkpages explaining where they'd prefer that someone place any replies. (I won't single out any other examples, but my own volunteer account talkpage has had a description about my own habits, for many years). I know a few long-term highly-active-editors who don't use a watchlist at all, and rely upon their (incredible) memories to check their ongoing discussions/projects/tasks. Humans are notoriously inconsistent! (both collectively, and individually). So it goes. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
  • NE, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe what you are asking for is another checkbox in the Special:Block interface that allows an admin to disable the blocked user's ability to use mentions while blocked. This shouldn't be overly complicated to complete from a technical standpoint if there is community support for such a feature. Do you have specific use cases to back-up a claim of a need for such a feature? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 18:39, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Incivility_and_attacking_messages_from_User:Prisonermonkeys NE Ent 21:41, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • That use case makes an interesting argument for per user blacklists (mentioned in bugzilla:47946 and maybe bugzilla:50628) and since bugzilla:47946 is closed as RESO-FIX, maybe Special:MyPage/Echo-blacklist will work. However, I don't see abuse of the feature in this case as no-one has officially asked this user not to ping them and the user haven't been going crazy just pinging people in order to annoy them (even if the recipient was annoyed as a result). The user seems to be using it appropriately as a way to gain another editor's attention in order to reply or make a comment to that user. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 00:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Notification didn't work for {{u}}

Someone recently used {{u}} with my user name and I didn't get any notification.[31] --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:58, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Bob K31416 : Hmm, I can't see anything problematic in there. Filed as phab:T78424. Thanks for the report.
(I'll send a test ping here, too. Did you get this one?) -- Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
Quiddity (WMF), Your use of {{u|Bob K31416}} worked. I got the notification. So I rechecked my notifications list and the notification I thought I didn't receive was actually there. A possible way I went wrong was that there was another pending notification on my list, i.e. the number in the little red background square was "2". I'm not sure how this number works, but if it goes to "0" with a gray background when someone just views the list without going to all the new diffs, here's what might have happened. I might have checked the other notification first, and then when I got back to the list, the number was "0" so I thought I didn't have any more notifications to look at. -Bob K31416 (talk) 01:09, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
FWIW, I have seen this as well recently. Been pinged, no notification, only noticed because I was watching the associated talk page. Resolute 01:18, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
Me too, just now with this. Is the colon after the template throwing it off? --NeilN talk to me 16:34, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
NeilN you didn't get your ping because of Phabricator:T76961 because -revi doesn't have a link directly to their user page in their signature. Revi, you might want to read the newly added collapsed warnings on WP:SIGLINK. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:12, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
@Bob K31416: The act of clicking the red counter resets it to zero and grey regardless of what you then do. It's always done that AFAIK. More subtly, you may have noticed that if it says e.g. "2" on red, when you click on it, the top two entries in the drop-down have a white background, the others are grey. If you exit and go back in, the top two have also become grey - as far as the notifications system is concerned, you've acted on them all. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:18, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Redrose64, I didn't notice the changing white and grey backgrounds in the notifications list before. I'll look for that next time. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:58, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Update: I received 2 new notices, as indicated by the red counter, and went to my list. I saw the white background for the two messages, but it was very subtle and I wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't mentioned it to me. Seems like this needs to be improved. --Bob K31416 (talk) 04:57, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
I and others have complained for a while that we need to bring back the "Orange Bar of "Doom". I've seen many editors not notice Echo and fail to respond to conversations. But like everything else WMF implements, it's here to stay whether you like it or not. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:04, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
The OBOD isn't related to Mention Notifications, it only ever triggered for new edits on our own usertalkpage. There's a gadget ("Display a floating alert when I have new talk page messages") for anyone that wants the old design back. Are you proposing that the OBOD/Orange New message indicator should appear for more Notification types? --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
I've filed the background contrast issue as phab:T78594. Thanks. --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
Good writeup of phab:T78594. --Bob K31416 (talk) 03:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
Umm, I read the link, but I do not wish to add userpage link. So I will just avoid pinging until the bug is fixed. — Revi 12:19, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
FYI, I too have been pinged without receiving a notification. Coincidently I have received a message on my talk page since my previous visit as well. However there only was a red 1, instead of the 2 it should have been. I have been well aware of the background difference and I had only one new notification. In my case the pinging user is blocked from editing. Might that have affected it? Another user that was pinged in that same conversation has stated not to have received the notification either. Tvx1 (talk) 18:03, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
@Tvx1: it would help us if you told us the location of the post that failed to notify you. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:51, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
It is here. Your ping worked fine by the way. Tvx1 (talk) 21:06, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Assuming that you refer to this post, I believe that when section headings are added at the same time, the notification fails. I don't know why that should be so. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:27, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
That's the post I'm referring to. But the user used another ping in a subsequent post and that one didn't work either. Tvx1 (talk) 22:42, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
The user pinged me again tonight and again I didn't receive any notification. Tvx1 (talk) 23:45, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
As before, a section heading was added in the same post. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:11, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect revert notification

Today, I saw a notification on the Turkish Wikipedia saying "Your edit on Hârizmî has been reverted by Mavrikant." including a link to this diff. As it turns out, Mavrikant had reverted the article back to an earlier revision, before I edited it (see here), so they actually undid multiple revisions. However, the section of the article that I edited here was left unchanged. I'm not sure if this is something you're interested in, but I might as well report it just to be sure, right? Kind regards, Mathonius (talk) 22:57, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Question about signature change

I've recently changed my signature from SlimVirgin to Sarah (SV). I'd like to make it easier for people to ping me by setting up User:Sarah (SV). Does anyone know whether I will be pinged if User:Sarah (SV) is a redirect to User:SlimVirgin? Or do I need to set up User:Sarah (SV) as a separate account, with my email address in the preferences? Sarah (SV) (talk) 18:12, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

A redirect won't work; your sig has to link to a userpage of an existing account. Have you thought about WP:RENAME? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 18:51, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, Edokter. Yes, I have thought about renaming, but it feels like a big step, so I want to start by changing the signature. Sarah (SV) (talk) 20:02, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Since Sarah (SV) is not registered, any page created at User:Sarah (SV) would be deletable under WP:CSD#U2, even if it's a redirect. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:07, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Page links

May be useful to add to the notice "page is linked" link to diff (as it is in other notifications) which the link has been added? Without reference to the place / edit / action where the article was linked (including to understand whom it was made, or where cancel the "linking") this notification carries little information. --Сунприат (talk) 17:48, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

No messages except for a "You have new messages" flag

I don't understand. How come I can have new messages but the little number box says "0"? Risker (talk) 16:18, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Risker: Happens to me when I get a new message, click the number, but don't go to my talk page. The number goes to 0 but the message stays until I visit my talk page. --NeilN talk to me 07:05, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
That actually makes sense: The "0" means you have seen all your notifications, including the one about the new talk page message, while the "You have new messages" means that you didn't see the actual talk page message yet. That can well both be true. — HHHIPPO 21:22, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Timed notifications

Is it possible to create timed notification? I.e. if somebody reviews GA nomination and puts article on holds for 7 days. It would be useful to have timed notification as some kind of reminder for both nominator and reviewer. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 11:35, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Filed as phab:T88781 - thanks for the reminder of this good idea. Do you (or anyone) have further examples of particular use-cases, that would have very different requirements? --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 08:02, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Pings not working

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T78424

Myself and Favre1fan93 have been having issues with pings over the last few days. It started with him pinging me at this discussion, which I never saw. I later pinged him at this discussion, which he never saw. There's a good chance that none of the other three editors I pinged saw it, as none have replied to the thread (TriiipleThreat especially would have chimed in). I also pinged him on my talk page, which he also never saw. I don't know if this issue is exclusive to us, but I figured it was worth bringing up here. Sock (tock talk) 20:00, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

@Sock: Of the various links that you give (some of which are duplicates), one of them is easily explained: this one is unsigned, which is a sure way to make a notification fail. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:56, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
FYI, I got the ping now, seeing as Sock used the {{u}} template, but was not receiving them with the {{ping}} template. So notifications are working, but apparently not with the ping function. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 00:11, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
@Redrose64: The duplicates were because the acknowledgement of not getting the pings were in the same post. And yeah, it appears that Favre is right. Sock (tock talk) 00:32, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
Special:ExpandTemplates shows the following:
  • {{u|Example}} → [[User:Example|Example]]
  • {{ping|Example}} → <span class="template-ping">@[[:User:Example|Example]]:</span>
Note the first colon in ":User:Example". I believe that colon breaks the notification if it is in the link to the user page in the signature. Could something have changed to make it fail for the target link as well? Some testing might clear that up if no one knows. I have missed some pings recently, and I checked the diff and saw that everything appeared to be ok, but there was no notification. Johnuniq (talk) 01:52, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: {{ping}} is a redirect to {{reply to}}, as is {{replyto}}, the third of which I used above (and in many other places with success). Therefore, if {{replyto}} works as intended, which it apparently does, {{ping}} should work identically; and indeed, this edit notified me - it used {{ping}}, and so it was expanded to 
<span class="template-ping">@[[:User:Redrose64|Redrose64]]:</span>
So it's not the presence of the colon. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:42, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, your {{replyto|Johnuniq}} certainly worked to ping me. I'll try to note any pings I see that fail in the future. Johnuniq (talk) 00:06, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

No ping from this. Any reason why? --NeilN talk to me 01:19, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

  • My experience - and the experience of several other administrators - is that pings work only intermittently. One CU started thinking that pings on SPIs never work. Although not true, I use pinging frequently at SPI, and they often don't work. In addition, other users ping me, and I don't always get the notification. Again, it's intermittent. The problem is that for me the system is so unreliable that I may have to give up using it in situations where the ping is important. Unfortunately, I haven't kept a catalog of the incidents, so I have nothing to offer in the way of "evidence". Perhaps I'll start doing that for the future.--Bbb23 (talk) 05:45, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Two pings: [32], [33]. Only the first resulted in a notification. --NeilN talk to me 15:01, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

This one failed. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:21, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

No ping with this. --NeilN talk to me 04:15, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

The devs are looking into this, at phab:T78424. Thanks for continuing to compile missing pings, as you notice them. --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:38, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@Quiddity (WMF): A number of people have been posting on this matter at Template talk:Reply to (some are blaming the template itself, and want it [the template] fixing). There are also threads at WP:VPT, and in its recent archives. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:43, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
Same with me here  - The Herald (here I am) 15:55, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Most/All mention-errors should be fixed now, with code pushed to all wikis ~3 hours ago. Please keep an eye out, and ping me with any newer instances of problems. (And thanks again for all the details so far). --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:24, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Quiddity, I received no notification for this ping. Sam Walton (talk) 13:15, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Feature request

Is it possible for us to configure things in such a way that users are automatically notified when a new issue of the Signpost is released? We're currently investigating ways that we can make reading and getting the Signpost easier and more relevant for our readers, and this seems like a perfect replacement for the archaic subscription system—not that many people want to have their page canvassed weekly, after all. ResMar 15:31, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

(Note: I discussed this briefly with ResMar on IRC, and pointed towards phab:T76199 ("Possible Project for a Newsletter MediaWiki extension") where discussion is ongoing.) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:14, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Revert notifications encourage revert warring

Why are reverted edits included in alert notifications and enabled by default? A sudden notification of a revert by another editor feels like a slap on the face, and only serves to encourage or even increase the speed of edit warring between editors. I have changed my own settings, but please reconsider the default settings. - Mailer Diablo 22:52, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. Question rises whether it's better to inform editors of the reversion or not inform them and let them figure it out for themselves. ResMar 03:48, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I was surprised when I found this out. It's a useful feature, and I would probably enable it, but it seems counterproductive to alert new editors that someone found their work unacceptable for Wikipedia. Sunrise The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 23:14, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
New editors have this preference disabled, per mw:Echo (Notifications)/Feature_requirements#Edit reverted (I just tested/confirmed by creating a new account - the current defaults look like this). But if someone "resets" their preferences, they are presumed to be an established editor, hence the defaults are slightly different, and look like this. See mw:Echo (Notifications)/Feature requirements#Defaults by User Group for the details about that. (Note. That page of documentation is mostly pre-release specifications, and may not match what was, or is currently, deployed. I've updated it a few times in the past, based on changes that were made based on community feedback, but I'm not intimately familiar with it. Learning more about it all, and updating the mountain of pre-existing subpages, is somewhere near the middle in my ever-growing to-do list... ;_; ) HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Ping log

Is there any way to check the pings that I've sent, e.g. is it recorded in a log anywhere? Every now and then I find myself wanting to make sure that I did in fact notify someone. Sunrise The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 23:14, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

@Sunrise: At the top of your contributions there is a "Logs" link, select that. This doesn't show Thanks by default, so at the first dropdown, select "Thanks log" and then click Go. This tells you when and who you thanked, but not what you thanked them for. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:00, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, but I don't think there is any log of pings (notifications). Johnuniq (talk) 07:13, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I'm looking for - so it would include thanks that I've sent but also times when I linked to user pages, used the {{ping}} template, and so forth. Sunrise The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 09:14, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
@Sunrise: There is not a log for "mentions".
The one semi-similar proposed-feature, is phab:T68078 ("When mentioning other users, indicate mention notifications in the "your edit was saved" message"). Would that be sufficient for what you need? Cheers, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
@Quiddity (WMF): Yes, that would be great. Actually, I would rather have that than only having a log that I had to check separately. :-) Sunrise The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 23:31, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Red box

See also: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 135 § Red dot of love wont go

I had one user notify me. The box at the top of the page next to my username is red with a 1 in it. I click on it and go to the place where I was notified. The box should change back to 0 and become gray. It doesn't - still red, still with a 1 in it.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:32, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I received a new notification. I clicked on the red box, and it went away normally this time.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:14, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
The orange bar for receiving the Signpost went away upon visiting my talkpage. The red 1 is still there. --HHill (talk) 10:15, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Clicking on Preferences helped. --HHill (talk) 14:03, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for that solution HHill. Clicking on preferences helped me too. The notification box has been bugging me all day. Amitrochates (talk) 12:08, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Not working on mobile version.

What the header says. I had a notification on the desktop version but not on mobile. I am using a phone with chrome. So, when I switch between the two, only the desktop one displays that I have a notification. —DangerousJXD (talk) 08:01, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the report @DangerousJXD. This was also flagged and reported by one of the Mobile Web team (phab:T97179) and has since been fixed and will hopefully be deployed soon —Phuedx (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
Do you know when it will actually be fixed, Phuedx (WMF)? —DangerousJXD (talk) 21:58, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
It is not fixed for me. It is a bit ridiculous. Different thing: I got pinged here but I didn't even get a notification at all. This needs to be fixed. —DangerousJXD (talk) 10:33, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
@DangerousJXD: You didn't get a notification because ColinFine (talk · contribs) overwrote the post by Nthep (talk · contribs) - this counts as an amendment, not a new post. Amendments don't send notifications. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:10, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Apparently I did: that certainly wasn't my intention. Something caused me to abandon the edit and start again, but I forget whether it was an Edit Conflict, or my computer crashing, or both. Apologies to Nthep and DangerousJXD. --ColinFine (talk) 16:44, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
I might not have gotten ping on that occasion but I am still having the issue. On desktop version right now I have 3 notifications. But on mobile it is saying I have none (if I was to press on the bell it will display the 3 notifications). It's still the issue in the link above. —DangerousJXD (talk) 22:00, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
It appears as though it is now working fine. —DangerousJXD (talk) 22:01, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Pings not going through

Quiddity (WMF), and anyone else who can help: I've just pinged several people to take part in an AN/I discussion, and two have already said they didn't receive them, so now I have no confidence in the others (but don't want to re-ping in case I bother them).

I've noticed this before when pinging multiple people using {{ping}} or being pinged that way. I restricted it to six or seven names (the instructions say seven). Could it be that the template doesn't handle as many names as the page says, or am I using it incorrectly? Sarah (SV) (talk) 22:44, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: It doesn't matter how many {{ping}} templates there are (although each use has its own maximum of seven names) - what matters is the total number of different users that you linked. In this case, the first, second and fourth {{ping}} each list seven people; and the third, fifth and sixth each list six people, for a total of 39. The limit is 20, see my comment here and the edit immediately after for a way of notifying 21+. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:51, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T99989

For the past few days, whenever I click on the "you have new messages" link, I am sent to User_talk:Nikkimaria#footer, no matter where on the page the new message happens to be. Previously the link went to the actual section containing the new message, which was far preferable. Has this changed for everyone, and if so can we change it back? Nikkimaria (talk) 02:20, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

This bug is tracked at phab:T99989. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 09:11, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Reminders

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T88781

Would it be possible to create something like reminder at notifications? For example, I would like to remind myself, that on May X I need to update Y article or do something else. And users could make such reminders at their preferences.

I kind of tried something similar (for another user) with ifeq, but of course it didn't worked. But I was pretty sure it wouldn't. So the code was something like {{#ifeq:{{CURRENTDAY}}|10|this ping --~~~}}~ --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:53, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

@Edgars2007: Not with notifications, no; but it sounds like a good idea, you could file a feature request in phab:. But using ordinary wiki markup, you can put something on your user page like this: 
*{{#ifexpr:{{#time:U}}>{{#time:U|12:00, 22 May 2015 (UTC)}}|Do it NOW!!!|(don't do it yet)}}
but that relies on you doing a WP:PURGE on that page at least once on each day that you don't actually edit it. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:04, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
Why not with notifications? I think it would be the best place for them (in the current interface). Maybe "Notifications" doesn't sound good, but that is a minor problem. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 06:23, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
By "Not with notifications" I mean "It cannot be done with the notifications system as it is presently set up". I didn't mean "It can never be done with notifications no matter how much the system is altered". --Redrose64 (talk) 13:03, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
This excellent and very useful idea is something that would fit into WP:Flow's plans better than into Echo's. Flow will need to handle timers anyway, to make things like automatic identifiation of expired vs non-expired AFDs possible. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:40, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): actually I don't care where it goes. I just think that Echo is already fully live, Flow isn't. BTW, when Flow could be enabled for all Wikimedia projects? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 15:05, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
I don't know, except "not soon". I've heard that any deployment (at least this year) will be slow and piecemeal—a page here, a set of pages there, maybe decided by local admins, not 100% of all pages on the same day. User:Quiddity (WMF) could tell you more. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:41, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
The task to track "Create a Timer based reminder for workflows" is phab:T88781 (more specific/diverse use-case examples welcome, here or there). Whatamidoing is correct about the deployment schedule for Flow. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Disable red box?

Is there any way to disable the notification count at the top of the screen? I get email notifications, so to also get those is just a distraction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarahTehCat (talk • contribs) 17:33, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo to configure, and untick "web" Also, please sign your posts with four tildes. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 16:16, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T46787

Is there some issue with the job queue and notifications of links made to articles one has created? I created the article Place du Châtelet and recently someone added it to Template:Visitor attractions in Paris with this edit. I am now getting notifications either as the job queue increments or as people edit articles that contain this template, such as this edit. Is that expected behaviour? Is there no way to separate out actions prompted by a template call, as opposed to a direct link added to an article? Carcharoth (talk) 12:25, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

So since the 16 April, I've been notified 16 times that Place du Châtelet has been linked from articles contained in Template:Visitor attractions in Paris. This is mildly annoying. Does anyone know if this has been discussed before - is anyone actually reading this talk page? Carcharoth (talk) 22:42, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
OK, I've now been notified 46 times since 16 April that Place du Châtelet has been linked from articles contained in Template:Visitor attractions in Paris. Given that there are around 180 articles contained in that template, should I expect the notifications to continue indefinitely until all those articles have been edited at least once since the original edit I linked above this one? And is this known and expected behaviour for the notifications system? Carcharoth (talk) 17:02, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
Hi Carcharoth, if you don't want this type of notification, then you can go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo and uncheck "page links". It's an all-or-nothing system: you can't exclude links to one page but not to others.
AFAIK, there is no "official" support for questions about this product right now, because it's not in active development (at least, not from my team). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:35, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
@Carcharoth: Sorry for the massive delay in reply; my bad (spreading myself too thin, leading to dropping of balls).
There's a long-standing feature request for phab:T46787 ("Allow excluding pages from the link notifications"), but no developers had been assigned to create new features for Echo (only to deal with critical bugs). The Collaboration team is starting to devote more time to the Echo bug-backlog, and once more of that has been resolved, hopefully some of the feature-requests will also be worked on - the higher impact features will probably get higher priority, and I'm not sure where this particular feature will land on the list. But I'll add your comments to that task, to keep things somewhat centralized. Sorry again, and thanks for the updates. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Omit specified page from notifications of linking?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T46787

Some time ago I created a page in response to WP:WANTED - for a publisher I'm not the least interested in, just as a public service. Unfortunately for me, they seem to have published the key encyclopedia about German submarines, and the page is still being linked again and again in references (though of course from an Encyclopedia point of view I'm delighted that so many references now have a blue link instead of a red one). I'm getting fed up with seeing that I've got a notification and finding that it's just this one again. Is there any way I can tag that page which I created so that it doesn't trigger a notification when linked to, while I still get notifications for other,more interesting, pages? If not, I hereby suggest it as an enhancement! PamD 16:49, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Yup, this has been requested before, and is tracked at phab:T46787. I'll request that it be nudged a little higher on the priority list (hopefully this Quarter, starting tomorrow, depending on how complicated it is from a technical end). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Requesting "File has been used" notification

In the same what that Wikipedia-notifications has a notification for "[article you created] was linked from [another article]", it would be really useful (for some people) to have a notification on Commons for "a file that you uploaded has been used in a Wikipedia article". Having an image you uploaded actually USED (not just the file-page edited) is one of the most motivating things about Commons, but there's no way to be notified when it happens. Yes, there's tools like GLAMorous that give you a category-based view of usage on the various projects, but nothing that alerts you when something happens. Obviously it would need to be able to be turned-off, especially for people who do LOTS of uploads. But for people like me who do GLAM partnerships - it's really motivating (for me, and for the content-partner) to know who is using what files, where, and when. Wittylama 11:18, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Ping going to wrong person?

This morning I received a notification that "Viriditas mentioned you on the Viriditas talk page in "Spiegelman".

2 hours ago | View changes". The "View changes" link goes to this diff, which does not mention me; Viriditas' only other edit to that section also does not mention me, I'm not mentioned anywhere else on the page, and as far as I can tell the last mention of me on that page was archived in February. Why am I getting notified for this? Nikkimaria (talk) 11:31, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

The edit to which you refer mistakenly transcluded the page User:Curly Turkey, on which you are mentioned. - David Biddulph (talk) 11:57, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Ah, okay, thanks. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:39, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Same problem as Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 137#"Misplaced" notification message. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:40, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Bots/bot operators

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T106805

Don't know if it's technically possible, but came up with an idea. If user pings some bot account, then show the notification for bot operator, because some unexperienced users doesn't know this whole system of bots etc. And I suppose bot operators doesn't frequently log-in their bot accounts (in Wikipedia). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:52, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Redirection of notifications would be nice for doppelganger accounts too; I've got email notifications set up for User:Sam Walton so I don't miss pings that accidentally go there, but just redirecting them to this account would be nice. Sam Walton (talk) 11:04, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes, also such accounts. Bots were just an example. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:26, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
OK, as it seems not be too terrible idea (and I came up with an idea how to technically do that), filed in phab. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:09, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

RSS

It would be nice if there was a notification RSS feed to keep track of it! Pikolas (talk) 02:05, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

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