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Articles proposed for deletion

Would it be easy to automatically ping recent contributors to an article if it is proposed for deletion? It could be triggered by the addition of an AfD tag to the page. Zerotalk 13:21, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

@Zero0000: An article being proposed for deletion is not AfD. Compare WP:PROD with WP:AFD. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:21, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
Ok, but would be be easy to automatically ping recent contributors to an article if it is proposed for deletion or listed at AfD? Zerotalk 23:43, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I get a new new notification > I click the link > Echo still informs me about that item.

If this is wanted, could it be made optional? --Subfader (talk) 16:27, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Broken link to user page still notified me

This edit notified me. I didn't think that it could have done, because the link to my user page is broken - it parses as User:User:Redrose64. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:01, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

As it seems Hafspajen fixed it promptly. Maybe Echo notified you right after he fixed his mistake? -- Chamith (talk) 18:19, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
@ChamithN: Amendments to postings do not re-notify, the need to get it exactly right at the first attempt is long-standing known behaviour. Besides, the link that appears in my notifications is this one. To make this post, I tidied it up with the {{diff}} template; but it resolves to exactly the same edit. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:38, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Missing notification

An editor reported here that this edit did not produce the expected notification. Why would that be? The edit appears to be formatted correctly and signed. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:05, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Although careful examination of the diff shows that the net change is that you removed one colon and added two lines, the first added line shows in the diff as modification to an existing line, so the notifications software probably didn't consider either to be new. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:25, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
I've just found one here that I never got. If the notifications system is that picky, yet we've come to rely on it, what to do? Victoria (tk) 22:16, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Feature request

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T112142

I recently ran across an page which needed simultaneous editing and WP:OVERSIGHT. I emailed the Oversight team but if they do the edit as requested, it will leave the editor puzzled. The editor doesn't have email so there is no private way for the oversight team to communicate with the editor.

Consider adding a type of notification where suitably-privileged editors (probably OVERSIGHT-editors on :en, but possibly Stewards or Administrators on smaller Wikis, and editors with arbitrary privileges on experimental, private, and non-WMF wikis) could send a private message using the notification system. In the use case above (oversighters sending messages to editors on :en ) you would want all messages to be logged to a non-public or only-partially-public log (e.g. public log would have the name of the oversighter and a timestamp of the private message, along with maybe a public rationale). For other Wikis with other use cases, logging may not be necessary or even desirable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 02:52, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Filed as phab:T112142. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

New appearance

I don't like the new split appearance of the notification - is there a way I can restore the old, unified version? Nikkimaria (talk) 19:21, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

More information can be found at mw:Talk:Echo (Notifications) and phab:T108190. My first reaction was dislike, probably purely because it was a change; I'm currently undecided. I'm unsure if the change can be toggled off (i.e. in the preferences), I'm under the impression at the moment after a quick look into it, that it cannot be.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 20:35, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
The real problem with this change is how experienced editors can attract the attention of problematic new editors or IPs. What does an IP see when a new message is put on their talk? With the orange bar, we could act on the assumption that an editor knew there was a message. With the red alert, that assumption was reasonably valid. The blue box means the assumption is bogus—a new editor would have to be psychic to know someone was leaving them messages—stuff which might lead to them being blocked if they ignore. The solution is for the new system to be a user preference that is off by default so new users see something prominent. If the devs really love the new system, they might consider defaulting the new preference to on for people with an edit count of 1000 or more. Johnuniq (talk) 23:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
AFAIK IPs still get the OBOD. They certainly did when I last tested it, four weeks ago. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Bring back the 'ORANGE' bar

Please, bring back the orange bar 'or' atleast change back to the 'facebook' style notifications. This latest change is crappy. GoodDay (talk) 04:08, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

@GoodDay: Do you mean the old m:OBOD (orange bar of doom) that was replaced a few years ago, or, the orange indicator that we've had since then? The orange indicator is still there when we get messages on our usertalkpage, and should look almost identical to how it has for the last few years. (I just tested/confirmed in vector and monobook, and with javascript turned off). It should look like File:Echo Notifications new message indicator.png. If it doesn't... Do you have the checkbox for "Show talk page message indicator in my toolbar" ticked, at the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo? If yes, then what browser/OS are you using?
Re: the "split" change in general - more notification-types have been requested (see partial listing), and cross-wiki notifications are starting to be developed. This will increase the desire for a clearer indication than "just a red number" of what types of notification await us. Splitting the flyout is the first possible solution that they're trying. Please (please!) give detailed suggestions for possible solutions that will work for all editors, in all our myriad roles, in the main thread at mediawiki.org. Thanks, and HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:32, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
I missed the 'old bar', indeed. But, I did become used to the Facebookish red-squares. But now those have been altered aswell. The community should be given a pre-view of these changes & allowed to accept or reject them, before they're implimented. GoodDay (talk) 19:37, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
The old bar (well, the old old bar) can still be a part of your life, thanks to Writ Keeper. What with that and a script to get rid of the new-look (well, not so new anymore) Vector, my Wikipedia looks like 2010 never went away... Yunshui 雲水 19:47, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Which of these work for IPs?

The lead says "Notifications ... provides notifications to users of a number of events related to their account." Do I take that to mean none of these features work for unregistered contributors, who lack accounts? This could be made clearer, as I attempted to ping IPs for months before learning it doesn't work. Can IPs ping registered users? Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 10:37, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Adrian J. Hunter, Perhaps you could log out, post a ping on your talkpage, log back in, check to see if you got a message notification (toolbar at the top of the page, not talk page message) from your IP then you'll have an answer I would love to know about. I would love to do so myself and provide you with an answer but I am working off an unreliable phone browser. Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 11:11, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
@Adrian J. Hunter: Yes, this edit notified me. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:13, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Ping abuse -- I would like a solution for this

I am lately being ping-abused by a couple editors, even after letting them know they don't need to ping me as I watch the discussion pages in question. I don't want to go through reporting them, because I don't want to make that much of a deal about it. But I would love to be able to block pings/mentions from specific people. I realize I can block all pings/mentions, and I'm doing that right now, but that is making me miss pings from those who aren't abusing it.

Also, I have a separate question. What is the purpose of the page link notifications? I have it turned on, and these notifications are interesting, but I wonder what use I could make of that information. Is this just for stroking my ego?  :) Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:53, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Coloring suggestion for notifications

Another thing. If I'm getting anything other than a revert, I don't want to see 'red'. Red means ERROR. I'd rather see green (or something else) for the non-error notifications. If I happen to have a combination of unread revert and non-revert notifications, you could do a split red/green coloring. Just a suggestion. I hate seeing red when I haven't done something wrong. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:59, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Update of Page is needed

Hi, a couple of things should probably be updated since the latest update to the Notifications system:

  • Difference between "Messages" and "Alerts" should be made clear
  • Picture should be updated, or become part of a "gallery" of the various systems that have been used
  • Perhaps an update should also occur on the FAQ page in tandem?

Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 05:08, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Hey, can I just check: Echo was first, then OBOD, and now our dual-system? Or was it OBOD, Echo, Dual-System? I've started to edit/update a sandbox page which is a copy of the WP:Notifications page. The "updated" sandbox page is User:Drcrazy102/sandbox/Update_to_WP:Notifications and I would love if a couple of interested editors could just keep an eye on it to make sure I don't make a mess of it, or introduce 'untruths'. Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 23:32, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Why didn't it work?

Hello Quiddity or whomever may answer my question here. I am wondering this: why didn't I receive a notification from the user who made that edit. Thank you. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:24, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Because no signature was added. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:54, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. But I was thinking a new ~~~~ was added perhaps as the old signature was deleted. Does that not work? I see the timestamp changes from 13:59 to 14:11 in the diff. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 22:26, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
It's not a new signature, but an existing one that was altered. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:41, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. Would a double signature have worked? And (possibly Quiddity) is this bug being tracked in Phabricator? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:30, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
It's very simple. Add a new signature in the same edit that you add the user link. Changing a signature is not adding one. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:39, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
I see that point. That's why I asked if adding a double signature would work. I'll test it. Redrose64, did this notify you? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:25, 17 October 2015 (UTC) Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:25, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
No. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:48, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for asking User:Biosthmors. (Did you get this one?) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:02, 18 October 2015 (UTC) Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:05, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for trying User:Anthonyhcole, but no, it didn't work. :-/ Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 23:09, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

@Anthonyhcole: See T68078 When mentioning other users, indicate mention notifications in the "your edit was saved" message (created Jun 3 2014, Open, Public, Assigned To: None) This is currently very high up in the "Technical Wishlist of the german WP community". There is hope that someone at either WMDE or WMF will start to care about this :-) --Atlasowa (talk) 17:02, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Atlasowa. The person in charge of this problem just doesn't seem to get it. He put it at "low" priority. what a joke. And he thinks it's a privacy issue to tell other users someone has disallowed all notifications. That WMF technical, they're a bunch of funny guys! --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:34, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
Anthonyhcole, i think privacy issues are very serious issues. I'm sure as a medical editor you'll agree. The problem with the mention/ping feature is that you don't know if you actually sent a ping, which is a major fail for a communication feature! And the person that should have received your ping doesn't know either. There was a really unbelievably bad bug in 2013/2014 with pings/mentions: If you were a female editor, you couldn't send pings. Only "standard" male editors could send mentions/pings, both to male and female editors. And nobody even knew! (talk about gender gap! T55132) Because you are left in the dark about whether you sent the ping or not. Because there is no "sent confirmation". That should be easy to fix, and it should have been fixed a long time ago. Let's not go down the feature creep rabbit hole, with "read confirmations" etc. with all the privacy implications and increased complexity that leads to a next round of bugs. --Atlasowa (talk) 08:55, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
Wow. I hadn't heard of the gender gap bug before. That's amazing. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:23, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
Reading over that bug, it wasn't in any way "only 'standard' male editors". It was that only the "canonical" version of the namespace name would be recognized when looking at the links, even "User_talk" rather than "User talk" would be affected. In the case specifically reported in the bug, that canonical version actually corresponded to the "unspecified" gender option, not the "male" option. Anomie⚔ 13:37, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
See de:Wikipedia:Fragen_zur_Wikipedia/Archiv/2013/Woche_49#Echo_und_die_Benutzerin. Female users /"Benutzerin" were advised to change their signature to the male user/"Benutzer" because otherwise the technology would ignore their pings/mentions. Regarding "standard"/"canonical": to-may-toes / to-mah-toes, call it as you like.
If you look higher up this page, someone wrote that " I attempted to ping IPs for months before learning it doesn't work." (#Which of these work for IPs?) And he is very far from the only one, I see those IP mention attempts since 2 years. Bloody bad UI design. --Atlasowa (talk) 14:19, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
  • I may be repeating the above, but I came here to ask why the notifications system can't be changed so that we can add notifications to existing posts without having to re-sign. This really is a major nuisance, and I see people wrestling with it all the time.

    If we forget to ping, we have to post again rather than pop the name in. If we make a typo, we have to post again rather than fix the typo. When notifications fail, we're not told. It means the system can't be trusted to deliver. Quiddity, can you say who we should approach with this request? Sarah (talk) 21:58, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

For confirmation: As Atlasowa says, privacy of user-preferences is important. It would also be more complicated (and thus more things to test, and more things to fix edge-cases for) to automatically check this preference for all 'mentioned' editors in every edit that triggers the mention system. However, as Petr says at phab:T68078, we could mostly cover this by a popup that reads "4 editors were mentioned", (rather than implying that they have actually been notified). Hopefully that will help with the majority of problems discussed in this section.
For reliability: Echo is just analyzing the diff, to determine mentions. It has to avoid false-positives, like sections or posts being archived/unarchived/refactored/shuffled/reverted/etc. Hence, it has a strict set of requirements for how it works (mw:Manual:Echo#Mentions). AFAIK the possible solutions — such as adding more automated warnings, if the diff I'm about save contains a username, but it is not going to trigger a mention-notification — would be complicated to implement (time-consuming and involving large quantities of code, plus a tiny slow-down to page-saves), and would still be somewhat fragile. (Long-term: Using a structured discussion system (with separated posts, and distinct action types) would/will make it more reliable. But never exactly 100%, as detailed above and below...)
(sidenote/ramble) It comes down to human nature/diversity. Everyone has a different inclination or preference for communication vectors. Some people use throwaway accounts for email registration, or they just don't regularly check the email-account they chose to use (hence the recent phab:T56130), or they have over-aggressive email spamfilters. There will also always be people who want to opt-out of any new communication system, or who will leave it turned on but hide it with CSS, or will just ignore it. The only way to almost-guarantee that an active editor sees a message is to leave it on their usertalkpage at their homewiki. So it goes. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:49, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
icon
A popup "4 editors were mentioned" is fine by me. Maybe add the notification icon (only 1 bubble though!). This would be a vast improvement to the current situation. --Atlasowa (talk) 13:46, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
as the originator of Phab:T68078, i'd like to relate to the "privacy" concern mentioned earlier in this discussion: IMO, this is a red-herring. if i disable "Enable email from other users" (or leave my email address empty) in "Preferences", other users will know it: there will be no "Email this user" in the tools menu in my user page. will i seriously be able to claim then that "my privacy was breached", because someone can find something i chose in "preferences"? bullocks. choosing not to receive emails is perfectly fine. insisting that nobody can know i chose not to receive emails is worse than silly (someone can put a lot of effort composing an elaborate message, without realizing it can't be sent). same thing with notifications: you can choose not to receive notification, but claiming that exposing your choice to others breaches your privacy, is just ridiculous. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:29, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Notification icon colours

The new pale icons are not very contrasty

Is there a way to customise which colour we would like our notifications to be? I see above User:Stevietheman doesn't want red unless he's been reverted. The icons have now been changed to pale pink and pale blue, which are not conspicuous enough for me (and I don't need to use high-contrast themes) - have these been approved by the accessibility folks as I'd be surprised if they met the required contrast ratios?

The simplest (from a user experience point of view) way to resolve these issues is to allow users to choose which colours they want to see for notifications and messages. Thryduulf (talk) 02:35, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

And in Monobook they are too white. Could somebody post here CSS rules to get old style back (at least for Monobook)? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 09:41, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
The new CSS rules for the pale colours are 
#pt-notifications-alert .mw-echo-notifications-badge.mw-echo-unseen-notifications { 
  background-color: #DEA4A2;
}
#pt-notifications-message .mw-echo-notifications-badge.mw-echo-unseen-notifications { 
  background-color: #B7CFFB;
}
where #DEA4A2 is   and #B7CFFB is  . Retaining hue and lightness, but using 100% saturation gives #FF8581   and #B3CEFF  . Retaining hue and saturation, but using 50% lightness gives #BC4743   and #0D5EF2  . --Redrose64 (talk) 10:25, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Do we just need to add these lines to our personal monobook.css? Thryduulf (talk) 14:33, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Yes, you have to include it in to your Special:Mypage/common.css. But those classes are for Vector, not Monobook, right Redrose? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:50, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Terminology note: #pt-notifications-message .mw-echo-notifications-badge.mw-echo-unseen-notifications is a selector, pt-notifications-message is an id, mw-echo-notifications-badge and mw-echo-unseen-notifications are classes. background-color: #DEA4A2; is a declaration, background-color is a property, #DEA4A2 is a value. A rule comprises selector(s) and declaration(s), the latter being enclosed in single braces.
The CSS rules that I gave are for the default colours in MonoBook only. Vector has the same rules but with different default values for the background-color property - for example the red one is #D11813  . Therefore, you should be able to paste both of those rules into Special:MyPage/common.css, amend the colours, and save. A utility you might find useful is Colorizer: once it starts, find the RGB(A) section, in that the "Hex" row, and on the right-hand side of that is the value #a96836. Overtype that with e.g. #DEA4A2 - notice how other values on the page change and the sliders move to new positions. Use your mouse to drag the sliders around - notice how the hex value and also the sample extreme left both change as you do this. When you find one you like, copy the hex value into your common.css in place of the existing hex value. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:20, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
My bad :) Picked too close colours, so that I didn't see some real change. Everything is fine now, thanks. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 22:29, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Userspace update of WP:NOTIFS completed

Hi all, just wanted to see if I had overlooked anything important in the updated content at User:Drcrazy102/sandbox/Update to WP:Notifications, if I had made any mistakes, or if it is ready to be copied over and merged into the article space? Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 08:03, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Drcrazy102 I've made a few small tweaks, and updated the old flyout/popup screenshot. I've also removed the slightly confusing mentions of the OBOD - the m:OBOD is generally understood to refer to the full-page-width massive orange bar. That looks great, and I think it's ready to be merged into the current page. Thanks again! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:28, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Fair enough, probably wasn't quite MOS-acceptable either, but thanks for the tweaks Quiddity (WMF). I'll check the changes now, wait another day and then copy it over. Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 09:18, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Article for deletion notification

Hi, got this notification on my article Commander One. I added a few additional resources. Could you please check and let me know if I need to adjust it in some other way. I really want to improve the article in the way it allows it to be published here.

Thanks!DashaG11 (talk) 09:52, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Well if you think the article should be kept, then remove the "Proposed deletion/dated" template from the top. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:30, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Can I do that? DashaG11 (talk) 14:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

@DashaG11: Yes, with this form of deletion request, any editor can object by removing the notice. See Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:48, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

"Page link" notifications / alerts

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T121780

Hello everyone! Happy new year! Actually I'm here to fix my problem with notifications. Actually, I'm not receiving any "Page link" notifications, alerts, or anything for last two weeks. My settings are all good, I don't know what the problem is. --Captain Assassin! «T ♦ C ♦ G» 10:44, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

@Captain Assassin!: It is currently broken and slated to be fixed January 14. See WP:VPT#Article link notifications. — JJMC89 (T·C) 11:37, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
Very well then. Thanks for the help. --Captain Assassin! «T ♦ C ♦ G» 11:52, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Double notification received

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T128504

This revert notified me twice: it increased the counter from 0 to 2, put two entries in the drop-down, and two in Special:Notifications. Both of the latter two pairs were timed "26 minutes ago". --Redrose64 (talk) 20:56, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Filed as phab:T128504, thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Notification error

Hi everyone,

I dropped by to mention a notification error. Earlier this morning I checked Wikipedia on my mobile phone. It said I have message on my talk page, roughly four hours ago - it's 8:28 right now where I am. There is no new message there. When I checked the notifications on my computer, I didn't come up in the dropdown messages tab, but when I go to the notifications page specifically it again says I have a new message. If you see my talk page history, the last message is by Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk · contribs), February 23, 2016 at 21:09. The message in question was supposedly by Kiyoshiendo (talk · contribs), but there's nothing in their edits that would explain the error. Kiyoshiendo's last message at my talk page was from November 2, 2015. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 07:28, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I unwatched your talk page. Did Wikipedia do something strange because of that? --Kiyoshiendo (talk) 07:37, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Did you do so around that time? Perhaps that could explain the error. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 08:04, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
@Soetermans: Hi. It sounds like there are probably 2 different bugs, here. Please confirm if I understand correctly (or clarify).
1. You received a notification about Kiyoshiendo editing your talkpage today, but he has not done so today. However he did unwatch your page [possibly today at that time, awaiting confirmation above].
2. You can see a notification in your special:notifications log, that does not also appear in the messages dropdown. e.g. http://i.imgur.com/u1bvMeY.png
The first one might be related to ongoing work around making null edits not trigger notifications (phab:T123843), but I haven't heard of the second bug before. I'll file a task once you confirm that I've understood correctly. Thanks, both! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes I did unwatch Soetermans' talk page at that time --Kiyoshiendo (talk) 22:25, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, that's right. Happy to help out. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 10:38, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
I've filed this as phab:T128148. Thanks again for the bug-report. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:17, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
@Soetermans: Hi. One of the developers has looked at the database, and has a hypothesis regarding the false-notification (it's probably the null-edit problem). However, we're still trying to understand the second bug.
Please could you read this description of what he thinks happened, and either confirm the scenario, or if that scenario doesn't seem accurate then take a screenshot showing both the special:notifications page and the flyout (like mine above) where the flyout is scrolled to show the approximate time that should contain the notification but does not? If you've already received more than 24 new notifications subsequently, then that won't be possible, and no worries. (Note: You could either upload it onwiki, or in phabricator, or just email it to me (nwilson@wikimedia.org) - I can edit the screenshot to redact non-public information, if desired.). They write:

From a closer reading of User:Soetermans's report, I think the following happened:

  • "It said I have message on my talk page": I think they saw the yellow-bar and clicked on it.
  • Clicking the yellow-bar navigates to their user talk page. They visually inspect this page and see no message they haven't already seen before. The yellow-bar has gone away, and they have no unread notifications because visiting one's user talk page marks one's edit-user-talk notifications as read.
  • For some reason, they check their notifications using the special:notifications page instead of the flyout.
  • They see the notification there and are confused.

So my theory is that they never looked at the flyout.

Much thanks! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:28, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
Hi @Quiddity (WMF):,
I saw the notification on my phone, so it wasn't the yellow bar or the flyout, but the bell with a red 1. It said it was a message by Kiyoshiendo. Going to my talk page, that's when I noticed there wasn't a new message and looking at my talk page's history I could see the notification was an error. I'll email you a screenshot of my phone right away. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 19:06, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Echo - selected open bugs and feature requests

Bugzilla list
quick links: Open Bugs and requests (all bugs)


Selected bugs, mentioned in current talkpages and current archive (4).
  1. bugzilla:52319 (ctrl/middle-click in flyout)
  2. bugzilla:48882 and bugzilla:50082 (Notifications received due to mentions in accidentally transcluded pages)
  3. bugzilla:53176 (Not getting notified for reverts if Preview or Show Changes is used)
  4. bugzilla:50829 (Echo notifications show [No page] instead of pagename if the page was deleted)
  5. #Problems (3) above. ("My notification count only goes down to 1, even after I look at all the revert notifications. This may only occur when I have more than one page of notifications." ... "'Only when' is probably correct. When there are less than 8 hits (red number), it resets to 0.")
  6. (Mobile editors are seeing, but can't use, the Thank links.) See archived thread.
  7. bugzilla:52510 (Echo and FlaggedRevs) - rejected Revisions part is patched. The approved Revisions code is abandoned in gerrit as it doesn't account for some important cases. Use the FlaggedRevs icon:  ?
  8. bugzilla:54391 (Diff link in bundled message should show all diffs instead of just the last one)
  9. bugzilla:56739 (multiple signatures in a single save break Mention Notifications)
  10. bugzilla:56475 (The "You have new messages" link should go to a diff and/or subsection) Currently just a plain link to Usertalk. It Should link to either:
    • the first of unread messages
    • "changes since last viewed" (per old OBOD)
  11. bugzilla:56974 users without javascript are not getting a yellow banner, unless they turn on the "Display a floating alert when I have new talk page messages" gadget, which itself appears to be aesthetically broken (close icon overlapping with text. screenshot)
    Link to original discussion. That gadget doesn't work for me with JS disabled. Special:Gadgets says it uses JavaScript. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:17, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  12. bugzilla:57152 (talkpage messages without a 4tilde signature, do not generate correct section links or summary) screenshot of the problem
Selected Feature requests
  1. bugzilla:52690 (Notification when user becomes auto-confirmed)
  2. bugzilla:49446 (Linking a username in an Edit-Summary should trigger a notification)
  3. bugzilla:43840 (Echo should support user subscriptions to feeds (for newsletters and publications such as The Wikipedia Signpost))
  4. bugzilla:53564 (IP addresses should link to Special:Contributions instead of userpage)
  5. bugzilla:44787 (Allow excluding pages from the Page Linked notifications)
  6. bugzilla:46692 (Dismissing/removing notifications - a way to remove items from the list) [1]
  7. (A new Notification that someone has emailed you using Special:EmailUser) [2] (A lot of people don't register with their primary email account, or don't check it frequently. Some have userpage notes warning against using email if the matter is urgent. It's more common than you might guess! Even specifically mentioned at mw:Flow Portal/Use cases#User talk namespace)
  8. (Use Different Icons for Talkpage messages and Mentions. (See list of current icons at mw:Echo/Feature requirements#Notification Categories). To give a better visual clue on the flyout (and archive) on what just happened. - Use an @ sign icon for Mentions?)
  9. (disable Page Linked notifications for Reverts. Eg. When someone rollsback a page-blanking vandal.) [3]
  10. At Special:Notifications, change the max-width (currently 600px) to something larger. 60em is suggested.
  11. A better solution for accidental reverts, that get self-reverted within moments. (/Archive_5#Revert_notification and #Revert reverts below.)
  12. bugzilla:56476 Granular icons, see Wikipedia_talk:Notifications/Archive_5#Granularity.


Other items

Inconsistencies between the links given in the Flyout and Special:Notifications and Email
  • Generally, many users are asking for consistency between what is linked in Flyout/Special/Email, and they prefer the additional links given in Special.
  • Additionally, the flyout is confusing, because the entire background is clickable, but there is no mousepointer-change or status-bar-hint for the destination. TMg explained it well here.
  • Related to bugzilla:47665 ( Echo notifications should have a larger clickable surface area) which has pertinent comments.
  • Update the Flyout/Special/Email documentation at mw:Echo/Feature requirements.
  • Also, there were a few complaints about the small size of the "View changes/View edit" and "[xx] [time] ago" text. Consider increasing it.


MediaWiki talk:Echo-blacklist
possibly someone should enact these 2 requests? or comment?
and more people should watchlist it.


What happens if someone turns off their Mention Notifications?


AfC bug


I'll nag Fabrice and the devs during the next few weeks, to look at this, and make bug tickets for things that don't already have one, and address the ones that do, and strike the ones that are fixed, and etc.

It's not complete, but I think it covers most of the important or multiple-requested items. Add or tweak items as needed, but try to keep it concise. I'm off into the last of sun now! and lunch... –Quiddity (talk) 23:11, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

So does this mean, that, in Bugzilla's Wikipedia article, should we include the Wikimedia Foundation or MediaWiki in the examples of popular organizations who use Bugzilla? Clearly it's used here on Wikipedia as you can see. Philmonte101 (talk) 04:32, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
@Philmonte101: No, because we don't. MediaWiki and all WikiMedia projects have used phab: for something like thirteen months now; the last Bugzilla tickets were filed on 21 November 2014. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:49, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Notifications given

There's a page, Special:Notifications, for notifications I receive; is there one that lists notifications I've given? Peter James (talk) 22:54, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

No, but it would be very useful, if only to demonstrate to people that the notification that they thought that they had sent had actually failed. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:00, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
@Peter James and Redrose64: Note: There's ongoing investigation into ways to improve this at phab:T135717 and subtasks - possibly via an addition to the "edit saved" bubble message, which could include the usernames who were successfully mentioned in a save - the main discussion so far has been in phab:T135719, thoughts welcome. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Retriggered notification for mention

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T137755

This edit notified me as a mention, this is correct behaviour. This edit also notified me, but should not have done, since no new link to my user page was added, and no new signature was added either. The paragraph containing the link to my user page was altered in other ways, replacing "it" with "[[:sr:Медијавики:Common.css|it]] and other related pages". --Redrose64 (talk) 18:49, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, will investigate. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:51, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Notifications now backwards

I previously got an "alert" (bell symbol) when someone thanked/reverted/mentioned me, and a "notice" (comment symbol, along with the talk-page flag) when someone posted to my talk page. For the past couple of days, those have been reversed - alert+talk-page flag for talk page messages, and notice for thank/revert/mention. (a) Is this a bug, or was this change made deliberately? (b) If the latter, why? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:41, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Notification issue. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:14, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Update needed

Hello all. With the recent changes to the notification system the info on the project page is out of date and, in some cases, inaccurate. If any of you who know all the ins and outs of the changes could update the page when you have a chance it would be much appreciated. MarnetteD|Talk 16:07, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, MarnetteD. Currently, Trizek is working on some updates to the primary documentation at mw:Help:Notifications. One of us will reply here, once that is ready to be replicated across to this page. Probably a few more days.
Alternatively, it's worth considering changing most (but not all) of the project page here, into a soft-redirect to the primary documentation location. Plus retaining underneath that, the Enwiki-specific information, such as "Course talk:" and "Blacklist and whitelist" details. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Overwhelmed by notifications that do not go away

I have been away, inactive, for a while. A bit of Wiki-burnout. Today I see I have 99+ new notifications. So I looked at them. I still see 99+ and I see no way of reducing that number to zero. On the basis that I am probably not an imbecile, and might even be considered to be relatively experienced, I wonder if some kind soul would let me know what is going on, and how not to see the 99+ notifications that I do not wish to see, many of which are historical, ie I have seen them already!

It's a joy to feel suddenly popular, but this is popularity I do not require.

Since I am not frequenting WP much at present, please drop me a note physically on my talk page so it emails me to let me know you have been very kind and replied. I think letting it ping me would be useless under these 99+ circumstances Fiddle Faddle 15:22, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Note: I've replied here. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
And I am much relieved and grateful for the solution. My talk page archives automatically, so, if you need the solution yourself, do wander through the archives. Fiddle Faddle 09:18, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
  1. The above is archived at User_talk:Timtrent/Archive_31#Notifications, or see the shorter version at How to: Clear all notifications at a single wiki.
  2. Next week (Thursday) there will be a new "cog icon" on Special:Notifications, which will include a link to "mark all notifications [on this wiki] as read".
HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:42, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Inconsistency - one fail, one success, little difference

This edit failed to notify me, but this edit did notify me, although there is no difference in the way that the user link and signatures are constructed. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:08, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

I've expanded the scope of phab:T137755 to cover all recent anomalies with mention notifications. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:37, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Images

Honest question: what is the new notification icon supposed to be? It looks like the front of a subway. TimothyJosephWood 21:04, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

@Timothyjosephwood: A file tray. — JJMC89 (T·C) 21:32, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Alert vs. notice separation

Is there a reason why the alerts and notices/messages indicators are separated? I suppose one could figure that the alerts are more pressing but I'm a fairly active user and the purpose of separating the two indicators still isn't readily apparent to me. A single tray of notifications (customizable via preferences) would be easier to parse methinks I am no longer watching this page—ping if you'd like a response czar 23:26, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

@Czar: The sorting was reorganized a while ago using the criteria of "urgency" - bucketed into Alerts and Notices - because editors want a clearer insight into whether they need to distract themselves from their current task. I.e. Notification types that we are more likely to want to see immediately, are in the Alerts section now. The background and research is at phab:T123018 and m:Research:Notifications user survey, plus links therein. The clearest overview is mw:Help:Notifications/Notifications types.
The new tray icon isn't perfect for making this intuitive, but no better alternatives could be found (phab:T135114).
Customizing the sorting per-user isn't easy at a code or database level, and would likely make the system slower, and would require more ongoing resources (both hardware and human-time). (You might be interested in more general thoughts about preferences, in an essay I wrote a while back, mw:Just make it a user preference. :)
HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
Hm. The buckets appear to precede both the linked user survey and phab ticket. I'm not suggesting that things change on my accord, but I wanted to register—as someone who uses and appreciates notifications—that it would be much easier to manage as a single drop-down. As for my peanut gallery comments on user preferences, we can already set which notifs to receive from Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo, so all I meant was that instead of guessing what users find actionable/non-actionable, remind users to set their preferences if they don't like the defaults. But again as an active user, even I struggle to wrangle notifs without understanding why some persist and others don't without looking at the manual (such as now). Hard to get a sense that it's based on priority, or to think that editors actually prioritize red but not blue alerts. I would think that most people either clear their notifs right away or don't, and that wouldn't require a second drop-down. Not necessarily looking for action, just wanted to register my feedback czar 00:11, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Correct wording in Notifications

On my Notifications page, for Unread Messages, it states "There are no notifications matching this criteria." This should be "criterion". In other places, "query" is used - perhaps a better, simpler term?Kenwyn74 (talk) 22:19, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it should be "criterion", being the singular of "criteria", which is plural. But I've had difficulty persuading others in the past. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:44, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
The qqq message says it refers to "filters" plural, so, I'll instead suggest the line be changed to "[...] these criteria." - phab:T143072. Thanks :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:27, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

E-mail alert

Usually when I receive an e-mail alert, it's bare. This morning I received one, and there's the beginning of a sentence included (like with notifications). What is that fragment from, and can I see more of it (it's not clickable)?--Bbb23 (talk) 13:35, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

@Bbb23: This was implemented in phab:T121831. It intentionally just includes part of the subject line, to potentially give the recipient a hint as to what the email is about. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Heh, because you can't click on it, it comes off more as a tease than anything else, especially, as in this case, when I never received the e-mail that was supposedly sent. Thanks for replying.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:32, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
@Bbb23: Re: not receiving email - that might be related to phab:T66795 (tech details in phab:T134886#2291395) if the sender has a @yahoo.* or @mail.ru email account set in their preferences. I'm nudging some people about that bug, now. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:54, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
I use gmail. Sometimes, when gmail receives an e-mail from yahoo, it throws it into my spam folder because of a "security" dispute between the two providers, but I've never seen it not arrive at all. As for mail.ru, that's not a host I normally receive e-mail from.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:04, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Push notifications for Chrome and other browsers

Are push notifications for Chrome and other browsers something that is being planned or worked on? This would be a very useful feature.--Joel Amos (talk) 08:01, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

One of the problems here is that sending push notifications requires quite a bit of software integration (connecting with multiple push parties, batching and lots of async behavior). Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a large and well maintained open source project that can be reused by WMF, so adding this would require quite a bit of development work by WMF engineers. It has been on a 'nice to have' list for a long time, but as far as I'm aware, there is no timeline. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:26, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Mistaken notification of reverted edit?

I received a notification today that my edit to Garhwali language was reverted by this one. This seems to be an error, as the later edit did not restore the external link I removed, instead it removed two further ones among other changes. Not had this happen before, has there been a change?: Noyster (talk), 22:19, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

@Noyster: I expect that what happened is that Mild Bill Hiccup (talk · contribs) first went to the page history (notice that there are two columns of radiobuttons between the column of "prev" links and the column of dates); I imagine that Mild Bill Hiccup used those radiobuttons to select two non-consecutive edits, then clicked Compare selected revisions, then used the "undo" link at upper right. This doesn't just undo a whole sequence of edits, it also causes a reversion notification to be sent to all non-IP users who made edits in that sequence. This is not new behaviour, but AFAIK has been normal ever since reverts were added to the notifications system. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:58, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
@Redrose64: @Noyster: Thank you (@Redrose64), for that helpful explanation! --Mike Schwartz (talk) 18:04, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

An idea:

How hard [or easy?] would it be, for the script subroutine (or, piece of code) that

"causes a reversion notification to be sent [...]"

to be modified to check (to find out) whether or not the "undo" was an undo of "more than one" edit -- ? --
If it is not too difficult, then maybe the reversion notification that gets sent out to all of the "reverted" editors involved, could be modified, in that case, to include a sentence explaining that

"The edit[s] you made (that just got reverted) may have comprised only part of the sequence of (several) changes that got reverted [in one fell swoop]."

to each recipient.
Maybe the explanation could include another sentence, saying [something like]

"If the sequence of changes that just got reverted included any edits that were already reverting each other, then the confusion, "if any", can be cleared up by looking at the diff listing."

If such a "proactive" feature could be implemented, without an undue amount of coding / implementation effort, then it would probably go a long way -- (right?) -- toward the goal of preempting the need for the kind of question from User:Noyster that you (User:Redrose64) so promptly answered.
Just an idea (/slash, "question") :-) ! --Mike Schwartz (talk) 18:04, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
@Mike Schwartz:A message of this sort would certainly help, as it is misleading to be told straight out "your edit got reverted" when that was not the effect of the later edit. I'd try to make the wording as concise as possible though: something like "Your edit to <page> may have been reverted by a later edit - please check recent page history": Noyster (talk), 18:34, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
I tried to reproduce this issue yesterday and couldn't. I'll ask if it might have been fixed recently, and also test again, today. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
@Redrose64, Noyster, and Mike Schwartz: Hi, per above, I've tried again, and still cannot reproduce this. I've filed phab:T146326 to get help from the developers, to determine whether the behaviour has changed (on purpose or accidentally).
If the behaviour has changed, do you think it should be re-introduced (with the alternate message as suggested above), or is/was this notification behaviour generally not helpful at all and should be removed/left out? Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
On further thought I'd go for the option to remove the new behaviour (if it is new). There are many scenarios but this sort of sequence occurs quite a lot:
  1. Edit by Vandal A
  2. Edit by Vandal B
  3. I revert Vandal B, not spotting what Vandal A did. Vandal B gets an alert
  4. Vandal B reverts me to reinstate his own vandalism. I get an alert
  5. Another editor steps in, checks more thoroughly than I did and reverts right back to the condition before edit (1). It seems as if with the present behaviour, vandals A and B, and I, all get alerts (so I have had 2 alerts for my 1 edit).
For most of us any page we edit probably goes on to our watchlist, at least for a time; and of course any revert can be done "by hand" without using a rollback or undo button, so not triggering an alert at all. Let's keep it simple and say notification only for a direct revert of an immediately preceding edit: Noyster (talk), 22:47, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Mark all as read automatically

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T146294

I think this was perhaps a casualty of the overhaul, put previously, if I clicked on the notification icon in the toolbar to see any new notices, once I clicked out of it, it would have marked what I just saw as read. Some users may not like this feature, but I certainly did, over needing to click the icon, do what I choose, and then click "Mark all as read" when I'm done. If possible, I'd like to see the "auto" mark return, even if just as an option users can check in their preferences. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 18:46, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

@Favre1fan93: There were also editors who disliked that feature, as it caused them to miss exactly which notifications were new, especially when they had many new notifications. The feature was changed to make it harder for editors to accidentally miss notifications, because that scenario is worse than needing to click "mark all as read".
Re: adding a new preference, that would be the ideal from our editor perspective; but it would for everything, and every additional preference complicates a large number of aspects... I wrote an essay (with volunteer hat) at mw:Just make it a user preference about this, listing some of the difficulties, and some of the benefits (aka the reasons why we always ask). I hope the top half helps explain why this particular request is more complicated than it might seem - especially as it basically entails a request for a per-notification-type preference, i.e. another new checkbox next to every item in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. It's a difficult and subjective balance, matching complexity/power with simplicity. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
@Quiddity (WMF): I don't see how another check box for every item would be need; rather just one to make all notifications "auto mark" or "not auto mark". And seeing how it was a feature that was changed, (versus making a "new" feature become an option), I think that would give it a bit more weight in a discussion to have the option back. Just my thoughts. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 03:24, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
@Favre1fan93: Ah sorry, I was extrapolating too far (and/or guessing what other editors would want). Something that does it for all notifications might be possible, perhaps via userscript, I'll ask. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
@Quiddity (WMF): Thanks. Much appreciated. I might not follow the Phabricator progress, so if you'd kindly ping me here, or on my talk, either way with the result, that would also be appreciated. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 03:32, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

No line wrap

Long lines don't wrap for me at Special:Notifications. I have to scroll right to see the end. The longest line determines how far to scroll to see the right-most part of the interface. For me it's 205 characters (a thanks for [4]): 

Undid revision 737067374 by [[Special:Contributions/216.66.124.190|216.66.124.190]] ([[User talk:216.66.124.190|talk]]). Confuses instead of clarifies, negative integers are often included in whole numbers"

Tested on Windows Vista in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, all with same result. Also the same in other skins and at other Wikimedia wikis. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:44, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Yup, I noticed/filed that yesterday as phab:T146223. Thanks though! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: This should be fixed now. Thanks again. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, it wraps perfectly now. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:06, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Notifications for user page changes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T3876

Can we add a notification for user page edits? --NeilN talk to me 18:43, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

That feature request is tracked at phab:T3876 (note it starts off with ancient discussion about the original enotif system (the "email me when a page on my watchlist changes" preference). I've noted the fresh request, and agree it would be great. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. --NeilN talk to me 19:30, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Replies

Why don't I automatically get a notification when someone replies to me on a talk page? Benjamin (talk) 16:54, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

@Benjaminikuta: Please give an example of a reply or thread where you weren't notified, but believe that you should have been. Also, please state if you received a notification for this post. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:17, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
I only get a notification when someone mentions my username, but they don't always do that. Benjamin (talk) 21:18, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
There you are then, Benjaminikuta: a link to your user page (either directly, as I did here, or via a template, as I did in my previous reply) is essential for a notification to be created. Otherwise, how is the notification system going to know who to notify? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:53, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't know, is it a technical problem? It seems like it'd be easy to implement something like reddit's comment system. Benjamin (talk) 23:55, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Triggering events

This seems incomplete. For example, I just got a notice that "You just made your ten thousandth edit; thank you so very much!" Andrew D. (talk) 12:34, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

A) Congrats! 10+ years, and 10k edits, are worthy of deep appreciation. :)
B) These are mw:Help:Notifications/Notifications_types#Milestone notifications, implemented via phab:T124003. They just link to the diff of the edit which triggered the notification. They are intended to be very lightweight encouragement/appreciation, in particular for Newcomers, and perhaps m:exopedians. We don't want to encourage the negative aspects of editcountitis, but do want to encourage the personality-types who will appreciate this kind of milestone. With all that in mind, what aspects of the feature do you think could be changed or enhanced in some way? Thanks! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
C)I agree its incomplete, I was trying to trigger summary emails over longer time scales Krb19 (talk) 11:57, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Failure to fetch

I am seeing this message both when I click the dropdown icon or when I visit Special:Notifications

Failed to fetch notifications.

I don't see this listed under known bugs. Does anyone know what could cause it? Ranze (talk) 15:59, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

@Ranze: This is a side-effect of a problem with the servers - the technical people are working on it. It is being discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#server 503 errors/possible Twinkle issues. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:17, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

They might have fixed it by now, I just got a notification of your reply. 16:28, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Twinkle reverts

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T153570

Twinkle reverts don't trigger a notification: this revert didn't notify me even though two of my edits were reverted. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:49, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

I wonder if Twinkle is editing the earlier version, then saving. I believe that would not generate an "undo" notification. Johnuniq (talk) 23:07, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
No, Twinkle does use the undo facility of mediawiki, but the API undo notification was recently broken. There is also phab:T153570 that comes into play in this instance. Cenarium (talk) 19:44, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
So even TW's "restore this revision" is effectively a mass undo and not a regular revision restore? And does a regular revision restore trigger a notification? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:28, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
No, I hadn't noticed this edit was a revision restore. Yes, TW restores specify undo/undoafter so are considered as a mass undo by mediawiki. And manual revision restores don't trigger a notification, I've made a bug about that too. Cenarium (talk) 21:19, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Another example: this edit by Cyberpower678 (talk · contribs) "reverted" these six edits, but did not notify me - even though one of the "reverted" edits was mine. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:09, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 January 2017

Please change this:

  • ...links in the edit summary do not create notifications.

To this:

  • ...links in the edit summary do not create notifications.[1]

References

  1. ^ Feature request made in 2011 is being tracked at http://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T32750

Also, if there is a workaround... somehow when a revert happens an echo notification *IS* sent as I understand it... please document the workaround immediately after the sentence above. (So for instance: ...links in the edit summary do not create notifications. As a workaround, instead of linking to [ [User:FooBar] ] in your edit summary, you can glorf momph {(invokeTemplate \ superpower_edit_summary_echo_notify \ FooBar \ User \ now)} which has the same effect. Or whatever the actual workaround might be. Thanks 47.222.203.135 (talk) 00:00, 15 January 2017 (UTC) 47.222.203.135 (talk) 00:00, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

 Done But don't know of any workaround. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 02:46, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

mention successful + failure notifications

I've added these options here as well as at Help:P. Problem is, there main mediawiki page documenting this has a "Marked as historical" sign on it, so I don't know where the proper documentation for this relatively new feature is at. This page is linked for the other options at Wikipedia:Notifications#Triggering events. The Signpost did cover it some months ago and I found the phab link for it. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 02:40, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

The main doc page is mw:Help:Notifications/Notifications types (and mw:Help:Notifications), I've added a pointer within the banner.
We discussed the mis-match a while ago (at Wikipedia_talk:Notifications/Archive_7#Update_needed and at User_talk:Quiddity_(WMF)#Ping_changes), and it's still somewhere on my to-do list, to turn this page into a soft-redirect to the mediawiki.org page, plus retaining any unique-to-Enwiki details below that. It's finding time to determine what (if any) elements are unique-to-Enwiki that keeps making me postpone. (It's the kind of task that leads to dozens more side-tasks...). Help is welcome, otherwise I'll get to it when I have fewer time-critical tasks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 03:38, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Pings from blocked editors

Quick question... can blocked editors ping other editors in their user talk page posts? EJustice has pinged me twice in recent times by including {{u|EdChem}}-style notifications on his user talk page, and I have not received the notifications. I have no problem with his pinging me, and have his user talk watchlisted so non-delivery of notifications isn't really a problem, but I wonder if this is just part of the random sometimes-pings-don't-get-delivered bug or whether there is a technical limitation on blocked editors? His edits are signed so the notifications should have worked, according to my understanding of the system. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 01:02, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

I only looked at one example (most recent), and he didn't do it properly. His first edit omitted the second closing bracket for your username; that was the one he signed, but of course it didn't work. He added the second bracket right after but didn't resign, so it didn't work. Blocked editors can ping other users. Considering how many users I block, I should know.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:26, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
Related question: Can blocked editors receive pings? — Gestrid (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
Never heard of the opposite, so I think yes. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:39, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Invitation to test and discuss the Echo notifications blacklist

Hello,

To answer a request from the 2016 Community Wishlist for more user control of notifications, the Anti-harassment tools team is exploring changes that allow for adding a per-user blacklist to Echo notifications. This feature allows for more fine tuned control over notifications and could curb harassing notifications. We invite you to test the new feature on beta and then discuss it with us. For the Anti-harassment tools team SPoore (WMF) (talk) , Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 23:53, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

RFC: Add notification when an editor creates a subpage of your user page

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T166924

I propose that editors should receive a notification when another editor or a bot creates a subpage of either their user page or their user talk page. After running across this issue myself, I believe this proposal is beneficial for several reasons, including assisting editors detect possible vandalism or misplaced pages in their user space. Steel1943 (talk) 20:36, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

(In my particular case, I had requested that a set of pages be created as subpages in my user space, but since I didn't receive any notifications of their creation independent of their actual creation, I didn't know about them until today through researching old matters, though the pages were created over a month ago.) Steel1943 (talk) 20:36, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
  • This would be a programming enhancement needed for Echo, not something I'm seeing as being specific to the English Wikipedia. Suggest moving this to meta:Wishlists. — xaosflux Talk 21:05, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Strongest possible support I don't want or need a vandal creating the subpage "User:Gestrid/[USERNAME] sucks" (or something worse) without my knowing about it. While I can find all the subpages created in my userspace (that haven't been deleted) at Special:PrefixIndex, I don't want to have to be constantly looking over my shoulder checking to see if that user I just reported to AIV/SPI/etc. made a subpage in my userspace. — Gestrid (talk) 21:48, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Most subpage creations in userspace by users other than the userspace owner are done by the archive bots. I think this would result in mostly useless notifications. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:40, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't see such notifications as useless since they would let users know the page has been created, especially if the user requested the pages be created in one quick task, and the task ended up being performed by a bot. Notifications would leave a bookmark about the fact they were created if no one directly notified them via a ping (or just straight up telling them on their talk page) that the page(s) had been created. Also, with some extreme exceptions (such as my aforementioned example), I don't see why most users would need a bot to create more than one subpage of their user page or user talk page more often than every other week or so (such as talk page archiving). If need be, an option could be added to the Preferences tab of a user's settings to disregard bot page creations. Steel1943 (talk) 22:52, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
      • I agree with the concerns about signal-to-noise ratio. I would guess most users don't want to be notified about these archivebot page creations (but might want to automagically watchlist the pages? If yes, then file a new feature request for this!). Re: "an option could be added to the Preferences" - see the notes I put together at mw:Just make it a user preference a while ago; new preferences are not simple. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:37, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
  1. I've created phab:T166924 ("Notify user when someone else creates a user-subpage for them") to track this feature request, and interlinked it with the 2 related feature requests.
  2. I don't think this warrants an RfC, which should be reserved for complicated issues - WP:RFC says "If you are able to come to a consensus or have your questions answered through discussion with other editors, then there is no need to start an RfC." - I recommend removing this section from that heavy process.
  3. I've commented on the bot aspect above, and hopefully someone else can update the task description once that is resolved.

HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:37, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

  • @Quiddity (WMF): Thanks for creating that task on Phabricator. I went ahead and removed the RFC tag since I follow and completely agree with your points regarding the process, especially since there is now a bug filed. Steel1943 (talk) 01:55, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - with the exception of bot archives (which woiuld be infrequent for any given user), and a few psuedo-users (such as UBX), I see no reason why a user wouldn't want to know about such an action. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:07, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - The fact that it would notify me when the archive bot creates a page isn't a pain, it's a plus, so I can remember to go watchlist that page. The other pluses are covered above. You could also have a toggle for "ignore bots" for users that don't want that. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:34, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Support including archive notifications per Dennis. Doug Weller talk 17:06, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Support This should apply to all user subpages regardless of whether the creator is a bot. There is no problem with being notified when a bot creates an archive page, and as mentioned by Dennis Brown such a notification would be helpful. Keep it simple—notify on any subpage creation, although batching might be desirable for rare cases where a hundred subpages are created by some semi-automated process. An LTA once created a subpage for me as a minor attack. Johnuniq (talk) 04:11, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Spurious notifications

I have been getting occasional notifications of things that do not appear to have happened. I was recently notified (about 2 hours ago) that a link was made from Surface supplied diving skills to Autonomous diver (both on my watchlist) at this diff. A text search of the page reveals no occurrence of the word autonomous in either visible or source text. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:58, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

It must have been caused by this edit to Template:Diver training. Click "show" at "Diver training, certification and accreditation organisations" to see it in the article. I'm not sure whether the notification is intentional or it's because the article wasn't processed by the job queue at the time. Next time it was edited the software registered a link which was in the saved page after the edit but not "before", whatever before means here. It was the first of five template edits six days before the article edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:16, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
This is becoming something of a problem, I am getting more spurious link messages than real ones. I have not actually counted them, but I would guess somewhere between 10 and 20 since I last posted here. Not one that I checked was real, and I think I checked most of them. They usually seem to refer to an article I recently edited. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 17:36, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: We need specific details/examples in order to help diagnose the problem. (I.e. What does the notification say, including article name(s) and timestamps). Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:58, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
How do I get that information? • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:37, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: The link messages you received should still be visible in the Notifications flyout panel, or perhaps more easily via Special:Notifications.
We just need to know which links you are talking about, and approximately when they were received. With those details, we can then look through the page history (and the transcluded elements' histories) to determine what triggered the notification. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Similar messages on 21st June etc. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 20:33, 6 July 2017 (UTC)–

Thank you for the details! All appear to be the same problem as PrimeHunter diagnosed above - i.e. (1) The link to IDRF was added (or updated) in the navigation-template Template:Diver_training, and then (2) an unrelated change at a different article, caused that article to update its cached version, whereupon it notices the new link added in the navbox (and thus notifies you).
Sadly, this isn't easy to fix. The software is just using a plain list of "what links go outwards from this page" (and it checks for changes in that list); it doesn't have any context for how the link is written in the page; i.e. it cannot tell whether a link is from wikitext directly within the page, or a transcluded page such as a template.
The long-term solution for this is probably phab:T46787 ("Allow excluding pages from the page links notifications"), or something that comes from the 3rd use-case listed there (which covers this particular problem). I'll add a note there about this fresh report of frustration.
Short-term, the only solutions for you, are to either temporarily turn off that page-link notification type in your preferences, or to become accustomed to these erroneous page-link notifications (especially for any links that you know are within navboxes). Hope that helps, sorry it isn't more optimistic. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
OK, Thanks for the explanation. If I understand correctly, there is a real link reported, but it is not directly visible, so not of any use to know about. I will just ignore them as they should be a transient phenomenon. I don't understand how the new links are identified and why this type cannot be filtered out, but that is probably not going to help me anyway, so don't bother to try to explain. I was expecting the notification to relate to something visible in the actual diff, hence my confusion. Might it be possible to compare the reported new link with the linked diff, and flag those which are not in the diff as indirect links? Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 05:43, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
This may not be of any practicable utility, but the problem seems to be that new links added via transclusions is not a useful thing for notifications in general. I assume that it is not practicable to filter them out of the list of "what links go outward from this page", as there must be a large number of such notifications every time a template is modified, and a large number of users will be notified with this useless information. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:03, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
The notification only goes to the page creator and only if they have enabled "Page link" ("Notify me when someone links to a page I created from another page.") at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. It's disabled by default. You get notifications about links to Autonomous diver and the other articles because you created them, not because they are on your watchlist. I agree it's unfortunate that you get many nofications caused by a single edit to a navigation template used in many articles, but the current system was the simplest to implement. It uses existing page link tracking also used by Help:What links here, and also having unfortunate effects for navigation templates there. Things could always be improved with more developer time but there are many other things to work on. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:58, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Understood. It is a quick solution with some undesirable side effects. Maybe better than nothing for some users. Possibly not even that much of a problem when you know what it is - I have not deselected yet - I will see if it is tolerable now that I know what is causing it. You make your choice and click the box. My main objection is that the side effects are not mentioned and come as a surprise. Now that they are known they can be listed where one makes the choice. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:34, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Good suggestion. I've added that, and some details, at phab:T46787#3416546. Thanks, both of you. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Checkuser and admin questions

First question: does {{checkuser}} notify the user? Second question: as an administrator, can I see the previous notifications of a user other than myself? Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:15, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Bbb23: {{checkuser}} did notify users. I changed it, so that it no longer does. AFAIK there is no way to see another user's notifications. — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:49, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks!--Bbb23 (talk) 14:39, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
The change was undone per the following discussion on their talk page so it still triggers a mention. Note that checkuser is used in filing as basic SPI report as well, so making one, especially with twinkle, will trigger a mention to the sockmaster. I found out after I filed one and got the notification that I did (this can be enabled in your prefs, whether you've sent a un/successful mention to someone). This is more a notifications bug, and this will affect any template which displays a user page link. Luckily, {{vandal}} seems to have "no ping" added, so no issue there. A possible workaround is, not adding your signature immediately, but I haven't checked how convenient that is for most cases. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 01:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
I've updated this page with a caution about this and the mention options. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 02:32, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
Templates reporting users for quick action ({{user-uaa}}, {{checkuser}}) should always be {{noping}}, because we want to do this without the user knowing. Templates for discussion boards (e.g {{userlinks}}) should not use it, because we want the user to participate in the discussion. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:56, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

FYI, here's the closed and declined phab task. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 01:11, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Hey Bbb23 and JJMC89, can {{noping}} be put back? The checkuser template is used extensively so even merely opening a SPI page causes a mention. I feel that this is a serious problem, mentioning socks every single time unintentionally. So far AFAIK, this is the simplest way and the only visible drawback is some scripts like markedblocked or popups won't work on it--this is really mild, it will work on the following talk page link. Socks and vandals shouldn't be pinged generally and the vandal template has got noping. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 12:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
I'm opposed to putting noping back. It's been pinging for a very long time with no ill effects, and putting it back causes problems that are worse than the "problem" it fixes.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:03, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
Well I feel it's a problem because take a case of a repeat socker who usually isn't even aware of the SPI: these pages detail how they were found and what mechanism went through it...now they know and will try better next time or for that matter, each time they're caught. All they need to does it refer to the page on what they did wrong. That's why I compared it to the case of vandals: we don't need to tell them they're reported at the WP:AIV etc. Just like WP:BEANS. For that matter, what problems are you referring that this fix will cause other than what I mentioned above?
After this I rest my case. I don't feel it's worth pursuing If you yourself (being a veteran admin and checkuser) don't think it's serious enough and by the lack of response here. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 16:00, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
@Bbb23: I feel pretty strongly filing an SPI shouldn't ping anyone. And if it does, we are misleading filing parties when we tell them that "Notification is courteous but isn’t mandatory, and in some cases it may be sub-optimal. Use your best judgement." In some cases it might definitely be sub-optimal. Doug Weller talk 16:51, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
First, ping notifications and express notifications (which is what the instructions refer to) are not the same. Second, the majority of filers expressly notify the users on their Talk pages. I'm not even sure Twinkle allows you not to, or perhaps it's the default and no one bothers unchecking it. Third, most of the suspected socks don't even receive the notifications for whatever reason or don't know what they are or don't care. Fourth, an even greater majority of socks do not act in response to any pings or express notifications they receive anyway. Fifth, many socks are referred to in the body of the SPI in a way that pings them anyway. Finally, do you have any evidence that pinging damages the filing?--Bbb23 (talk) 17:00, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
@Bbb23: No doubt there are some users who choose to (or accidentally) notify suspects, and some users who are notified take no notice anyway. There is, in fact, a checkbox on the relevant Twinkle dialogs. It is unselected by default. I understand {{noping}} causes cosmetic side-effects in the output of some scripts. I see no argument here in support of automatic notification.
The SPI guide implies that if a filer's best judgement is that they choose not to inform the suspect, they may do that. Currently, that is false. Several mechanisms of consequential damage to the project have been outlined here.Burninthruthesky (talk) 12:49, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I've added a request at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-markblocked.js#External links. As far as I understand, this is the main sticking point here. Burninthruthesky (talk) 10:49, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
I just noticed this behaviour change when a suspect turned up to an SPI after I chose not to notify him. Fortunately, I didn't cite the appearance as evidence, but the thought did cross my mind. He accused me of harassment, which is unpleasant at the best of times. I fully agree with the comments above supporting {{noping}}. We cannot possibly quantify the number of WP:BEANS spilled by this change. Sending notifications to SPI suspects is a terrible idea IMO. I'm not sure how consensus works when the behaviour of en.wiki is changed by a global software addition. Has this been discussed more widely elsewhere on-wiki? Burninthruthesky (talk) 04:54, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@Bbb23: Now that the markblocked gadget has been fixed to work with noping, is there any remaining objection to its re-insertion into the Checkuser template? Burninthruthesky (talk) 20:48, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

 Done I have requested the edit. Burninthruthesky (talk) 06:50, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
Bbb23 (talk · contribs) has reverted the edit. – Train2104 (t • c) 00:47, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
I reverted because after you added the noping, my script still had the problem it had before when noping was tried. If there's something at my end I need to do to make it work, I'm willing to try. @JJMC89: Do you understand what's going on?--Bbb23 (talk) 01:04, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
Burninthruthesky's request led to a change at MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js which, I gather from the title, is an optional gadget that could be enabled in Special:Preferences ("Strike out usernames that have been blocked"). Before I noticed that, I found mention of a script from ru.wiki.x.io in User:Bbb23/vector.js. I do not know what that is about, but perhaps it should be removed so it does not interfere with the gadget. Please consider removing the ru.wiki.x.io script and enabling the gadget if not already done. Then restore the noping and report on exactly what happens. Some magic to clear your caches might be necessary? I'm sure someone here or at WP:VPT could quickly fix the problem, but there would need to be a period of experimenting to determine what script is influencing the issue. Johnuniq (talk) 01:29, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
@Bbb23: You are using the ruwiki version (importScriptURI('http://ru.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); in User:Bbb23/vector.js), which has not been updated. If you remove that line and enable the enwiki gadget at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets ("Strike out usernames that have been blocked" under Appearance), it should work. — JJMC89 (T·C) 01:43, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks everyone. I'll do this tomorrow (I'm very tired). I should be able to do it by myself, but if I need help with anything, I'll holler. I'll report back.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:51, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
I'm now using the gadget and have reinserted noping to the template. Thus far, everything works normally for me. I consider this matter now resolved unless there's a problem in the future. For those of you who thought not having noping was the apocalypse, you can now rest easy. --Bbb23 (talk) 14:29, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

This morning I found noping appears not to stop pings. Reported at Template talk:Noping. Burninthruthesky (talk) 12:54, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Burninthruthesky, Bbb23, Vanjagenije, and JJMC89: Unfortunately colours will have to be disabled since both the #ifexist parser function and Lua title objects cause pings. If there aren't any other options the easiest solution would be adding CSS in a user script such as Anomie's linkclassifier. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 08:09, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
It's really important for me to see red links for non-existing user pages. I think that the quality of sockpuppet investigations is more important than the noping function. If there is no possibility to have red links, I recommend reverting this noping edit. Vanjagenije (talk) 17:38, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
@Vanjagenije and Bbb23: I've modified my copy of the markblocked gadget to also fix redlinking with noping. If you'd like to make use of it, please add importScript( 'User:Burninthruthesky/Gadget-markblocked.js' ); //Backlink: [[User:Burninthruthesky/Gadget-markblocked.js]] to your common.js. You can also switch off the "strike out usernames that have been blocked" gadget in your preferences. Burninthruthesky (talk) 15:08, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
OK, I'l try this. Why don't we add it to MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js? Vanjagenije (talk) 18:09, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
Ok, I've requested the edit. Burninthruthesky (talk) 19:35, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
@Vanjagenije: Did you add Burninthruthesky's script? Did you also turn off the gadget? Does everything work now for you?--Bbb23 (talk) 14:33, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
@Bbb23: Yes, it works fine. Vanjagenije (talk) 18:25, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, Vanjagenije, it appears to work fine for me, too. Wonder what's next in this saga. --Bbb23 (talk) 22:09, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  • @Bbb23, Burninthruthesky, Jc86035, and JJMC89: There is another problem with this noping feature. I've noticed that a long time ago, but just couldn't find time to investigate it further. The problem is this: since this "noping" feature was implemented, the Special:WhatLinksHere tool does not work for user pages. Example: We have a page Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/JournalmanManila where JournalmanManila is the master. If you go to his userpage and click "What links here" from the tools panel, the SPI page is not listed. This is quite a problem. Admins often block users as sockpuppets without any tags and with a blocking message "abusing multiple accounts", and then this is the only way for me to find out the investigation page. Vanjagenije (talk) 09:09, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Update and discussion about the new User Mute features

Hello Wikipedians,

The Anti-harassment Tools team invites you to check out new User Mute features under development and to give us feedback. Join our discussion on English Wikipedia or on Meta about uses and potential improvements. For the Anti-harassment tools team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative (talk) 22:15, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Finding notifications on other Wikimedia Foundation projects and non-English Wikipedias

Greetings and felicitations. I occasionally edit other Wikimedia Foundation (W.F.) projects and non-English Wikipedias, and thus get new message notifications. I currently have four notifications from somewhere, but after going through all of the W.F. projects and numerous Wikipedias, I have been unable to find them. Worse, when I visit a non-English Wikipedia for the first time, I trigger a new welcome message on that wiki. Any suggestions on where to look? (It would be great if the new message notification system included the source of the notification.) —DocWatson42 (talk) 06:51, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Do you have scripting enabled in your browser? I forget the details but remember having the kind of trouble you describe, and temporarily enabling scripting allowed me to see what was going on. Johnuniq (talk) 07:34, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
I do have JavaScript enabled, but my computer (and therefore my browser) are, in computer terms, very old—Firefox v.3.6. :-/ (The slightly newer computer is just waiting for me to get around to transferring my data.) —DocWatson42 (talk) 09:46, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
The notification icon and Special:Notifications are supposed to say where the notifications are from and make links. You can try whether http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:Notifications?safemode=1 works. Or try logging in to another browser when convenient. Special:CentralAuth/DocWatson42 shows a lot of recently created accounts with no edits so they are probably just welcome messages. You can try examining the talk pages if you really want to know without notifications working properly. The "Attached on" column is sortable. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:45, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
In the notifications list, where you have "unread" notifications (those with the blue spot at top right), those from this wiki appear individually at the top of the list (in reverse chronological order) and the oldest "unread" notification is followed by summaries of "unread" notifications from other wikis, one summary per wiki. They appear in this position even if they are newer than the newest "unread" notification from this wiki. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:07, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
I found all but one of the notifications (an alert) via E-mail messages in my in-box. As for the new accounts, they were apparently created automatically when I visited the non-English Wikipedias, as I am logged in globally. I just checked my notifications from now back to June and still cannot find that last one. :( —DocWatson42 (talk) 02:51, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
Hi @DocWatson42: A few questions:
When you visit Special:notifications, are you seeing the javascript-interface or non-javascript interface? (See screenshot of both (using different accounts/browsers just for my simplicity)).
If you have the javascript-interface, does it show any other wiki's names in the lefthand box? (like the screenshot shows "Meta-wiki" in the top-half). If so, you should be able to visit those wikis, and thus find the missing item.
If you have the non-javascript-interface, will you have access to your new computer soon, and/or can you feasibly log-in on another modern computer to check the above?
If none of that works, I can ask a developer to spend some time troubleshooting the actual database. My other solutions won't work for browsers that aren't served javascript (Note: even if the browser has javascript enabled, some very old browsers won't be given any, because of security issues, e.g. Internet Explorer 9 and older). Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:15, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
It turns out it was my ancient browser. I logged in on a more recent computer and found the last alert—from Maratha Wikipedia. Thanks to all of you for your help. —DocWatson42 (talk) 02:32, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Apparently failed ping

In the edit special:diff/800490204, I inserted two discontiguous paragraphs, each beginning with a ping and ending with four tildes. My alerts told me that the 2nd one was sent but made no mention of the 1st ping. I fixed the ping but am wondering just what happened. Were both pings sent but only one placed on my alert list? Or was only one ping sent? Or perhaps this is what happens when the user mutes pings? YBG (talk) 21:55, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

If you' received a notification the second time you sent a ping to that user, then presumably they haven't muted their pings. – Uanfala 22:24, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
I'm puzzled too, the ping here apparently worked. – Uanfala 22:25, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
trout Self-trout "If you' received a notification the second time" Of course!
There is a difference between your test and mine - your test only had a ping in one of the discontinuous pieces, not in both. If the code searches back from the signature to the first ping it finds and then stops, it would send me a ping in your test but not send one in my edit. YBG (talk) 22:37, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
Could be that, though I now realise there might be something else: the first ping in your original edit was on a line that ended with a timestamp without your signature, which is what happens if you accidentally add an extra tilde at the end. – Uanfala 22:48, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
@Uanfala: Yup, that's it. Although interestingly, if the five tildes were on the 2nd edit, I think it would have worked. See User talk:YBG § Ping test YBG (talk) 23:10, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Another failed ping

This edit did not ping me; I've scrolled back through my Special:Notifications and it's definitely missing. If I had to guess, it's because the notification software saw a level two heading between the link to my user page and the signature of the editor making the edit. However, this level two heading is inside nowiki tags. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:15, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Almost certainly related to the section header. IIUC, the software just looks at the raw wikitext that is saved, and it doesn't make contextual inferences like "is this text from a subst'd template" or "is this text within nowikis" etc. See mw:Manual:Echo for all the technical limitations. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Notification check on preview possible?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T68078

I recently found the option to get a notification when successful and unsuccessful mentions are sent. While this is of course useful, I feel it'd be better if there was a way to tell before hitting the send button. Would it be possible to parse the text for notifications on previewing and display somewhere whether there will be successful or unsuccessful mentions? ansh666 03:43, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

@Ansh666: It's difficult for timing/performance reasons - see the 3rd paragraph in the current description of the related feature-request, phab:T68078, and some of the comments, for details. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Shrunken notifications

My notifications and alerts have overnight started appearing in about 5pt font, making them nearly illegible. Has always been fine. If I click on "All notifications", that screen still appears as normal, but the shrunken notifications at the top of every page is extremely frustrating. I use the Modern skin. Current version of Chrome, Windows 10.

What brought this on? The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:18, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Appears to be an issue with the Modern skin - I get the same problem using Modern on Firefox, but they look normal using other skins. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:30, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Argh. I wish people making updates to these systems would stop breaking Wikipedia's standard skins. The Drover's Wife (talk) 19:10, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
I have created phab:T184295: "Notifications have small font in Modern skin". PrimeHunter (talk) 20:42, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Am I pinging?

Often I reply to someone on a talk page—and, in particular, on my user talk page— and then realize after saving my reply that I forgot to ping the person. If I go back and insert a {{ping}} at the beginning of my post, is the user getting pinged?

If I do include the ping from the beginning, but my reply is more than a single paragraph, and my signature is at the end, is the ping not being sent because the signature isn't on the same "line" as the ping tag? What is a "line" for this purpose? Largoplazo (talk) 16:00, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

The answer to your first question is no. The second may be slightly more complicated, but generally yes. See Notifications#Triggering events and mw:Manual:Echo#Technical details. --David Biddulph (talk) 16:07, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
@Largoplazo:
You can split it over several lines.
Like this.
But the user page link (or an equivalent template such as {{replyto}}) and the signature must both be on a newly-added line, not on pre-existing lines.
It all has to be done in the same post, you cannot go back and add in the user page link (or template) in a subsequent edit, that simply won't work.
I suggest that you go to Preferences → Notifications, and ensure that "Successful mentions" is enabled. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:06, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
@David Biddulph:, @Redrose64: Thanks! Largoplazo (talk) 22:14, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
@David Biddulph:, @Redrose64: Trying this again after changing my settings: Thanks! Largoplazo (talk) 22:15, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Not receiving any notification

As of late, I have not been receiving any notifications for any thanks/pings/edit reverts [e.g. [5], the few pings here, [6] [7]] i.e. everything except for messages on my talk page. I checked notification settings in preferences and everything seems to be in order there. – FrB.TG (talk) 10:51, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

@FrB.TG: You are probably one of those affected by the bug discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 160#Not receiving pings. Search for "you can work around the issue by making a change to your preferences" in that thread and you may be able to put things right for yourself. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:05, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
@John of Reading: "@FrB.TG You are.." That made chuckle a bit. Anyways thanks for the link. It seems things are working again. – FrB.TG (talk) 13:03, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
@FrB.TG: Joined up thinking, that's me! -- John of Reading (talk) 13:04, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
I am also having this issue, and the Village Pump section referenced above does not seem to exist anymore. KingSupernova (talk) 19:23, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
@KingSupernova: It was archived some time ago. I've fixed the link above. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:17, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
@KingSupernova: The issue in that section was fixed long ago. Your problem is more likely to be a wrong expectation about what should cause notifications, but it's impossible to say when you don't identify the events. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:15, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
PrimeHunter I receive username mentions, but not changes to any page I'm watching, reversions of my edits, or responses to my comments on a talk page. KingSupernova (talk) 05:22, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
@KingSupernova: You should receive notifications as follows: notifications of reverts to your edits if you've selected that option in Preferences - Notifications (but not if the revert was done by manual editing); emails informing of changes to pages on your watchlist if you've selected that option in Preferences - User profile; notifications of responses to your talk page comments only if the person responding remembers to ping you or link to your username in the same edit that they add their signature: Noyster (talk), 10:37, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
Right. Identify the events means to be specific like posting a link to the edit if it's an edit. It's still impossible to say whether anything is wrong but I'm more certain now that you just have wrong expectations. Watchlist notifications don't even exist, except by mail and not a part of the notifications feature. And notifications about responses to comments without a mention don't exist at the English Wikipedia (some wikis use other software for discussions). PrimeHunter (talk) 11:31, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

disabling the bell & rectangle

Are there any scripts or hacks that will disable or prevent rendering of the bell and rectangle icons between my username and the link to my talk-page at the top of the Wikipedia interface? — fourthords | =Λ= | 18:08, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Fourthords: add the following to Special:Mypage/common.css: 
#pt-notifications-alert,
#pt-notifications-notice{display: none;}
--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:24, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
A-ha! Thanks so much! Is this information listed somewhere that I might just've missed it? This won't propagate across Wikimedia (or even different Wikipedia languages) projects though, will it? — fourthords | =Λ= | 18:29, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
In general, if you want to hide something, right-click on it in your browser and choose "inspect element" and then look for the item's ID or it's class. You can then put the item ID (preceeded by a #) or its class (preceeded by a .), and follow it with {display: none;} to hide it via CSS. You will likely have to do this for each wiki -- I don't know of a way to set a global-crosswiki css file short of using a browser plugin such as greasemonkey. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:37, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
I gotcha. Thanks again! — fourthords | =Λ= | 18:45, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
You can use m:Special:MyPage/global.css to set it across all WMF sites. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:28, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
That's very very awesome! Thanks so much! — fourthords | =Λ= | 20:07, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikimania 2018 wiki

This does not appear to be enabled on the Wikimania wiki. Can this be done? · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 17:22, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

It is enabled there. What makes you think it is not? I thanked a random edit by you. Were you notified? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:38, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Fatal exception of type "InvalidArgumentException"

I cannot read my notifications. The bell has a number (currently 4). If i click on it, it says I have no messages, but if i show all or open in a new tab i get an error like: 

Internal Error
[WsZsqQpAAD8AADbK9ogAAACN] 2018-04-05 18:36:26: Fatal exception of type "InvalidArgumentException"

or 

Internal Error
[WsZsswpAMFMAAIWUM9wAAABM] 2018-04-05 18:36:35: Fatal exception of type "InvalidArgumentException"

Restarting my browser doesn't help. Checking on a different browser on a different computer also yields similar results. How can I fix this? Nessie (talk) 18:46, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

@NessieVL: Thanks for the bug-report, that helped. There's a bug for this that is being worked on now at high-priority, tracked at phab:T191335. It cannot be fixed at our (editor) end. I'll let you know if that changes. Thanks again. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
thanks @Quiddity (WMF):. It looks to be working now, atleast On my phone Nessie (talk) 21:31, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Echo isn't obvious enough

I recently attended Wikipedia:Meetup/Pittsburgh/ArtandFeminism2018CMOA. Many new users seemingly remained oblivious of echo. I think this should be disabled by default for new editors as well as IPs and replaced with {{OBOD}}. I am horrified, generally, at how easily humanity ignores signs. This is another case where the notification does not do enough to grab attention, especially when warnings are being handed out. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:20, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Good idea. --NeilN talk to me 20:22, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Don't know if it still works like this but a few months ago, a new user on registering an account would be sent an automatic Welcome message, but could access it only if they noticed a "1" in a little red box at the top of their screen, and knew to click on it – but they're new, and unlikely to be aware of the notification system: Noyster (talk), 21:57, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I like Echo; it works well for me. More than once I've seen new editors at edit-a-thons and I've been amazed with how much they ignore. While writing a new article, editors seem to only read what's in the edit section and see no writing or indicators above or below it. I think we assume that editors are paying attention to what we provide them when I think their attention is very closely bounded to what they edit. Instruction to new editors also seems to focus too much on the buttonology of editing and not enough on community norms or stuff like notifications. I sent out welcomes to the edit-a-thon participants but I have doubts they ever read them, if they even know they have a user talk page. The Orange Bar of Doom did much more for getting attention. While performing countervandalism, I get the impression that many don't understand there's a problem until they're blocked. Only then (they say) they see the multiple warnings on their talk pages. I doubt admins want to block new editors just to get their attention. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:02, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Page review e-mail notifications bug

Even though I’ve disabled them, I still get e-mail messages saying that a page that I created has been “changed” when it’s reviewed. I don’t get e-mail messages saying that my pages have been reviewed anymore, but I do get e-mail messages saying that they’ve been changed. I’m aware that this is not about the article, but I’m not sure where else to report this bug or ask for help about this. Interqwark talk contribs 12:46, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Changed behaviour - amended link

This edit notified me. I thought that they wouldn't do that, it needed to be a whole new line. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:56, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

You were pinged in the edit summary ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:15, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64: That was a new feature, completed in March. See phab:T32750 and subtasks. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:39, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Welcoming new users

According to this edit by SkyGazer 512 (talk · contribs), 'As soon as you've created an account, you will get a "Welcome" notification saying, "Welcome to Wikipedia, [User]! We're glad you're here.' Although this is not a talk page message, this surely goes against community consensus, see WP:FDB#Bots to welcome users and WP:PEREN#Use a bot to welcome new users. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:11, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64: That is (or was) indeed correct as of January. I remember vividly me getting the welcome message, and it is clearly stated on the MediaWiki article as well. I also tracked down my earliest notifications, and as you can see from the following picture, I definitely got the welcome notice when my account was created. However, it is always possible that this has been changed since then. --SkyGazer 512 What will you say? / What did I do? 19:35, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
I reverted the change but on reflection I may be wrong. I think the WMF started an A/B test a few months ago where they sent such notifications to some users and not others, then did mini research projects trying to work out whether the notifications had a beneficial effect. I can't find information on that at the moment. At any rate, it would be better if any addition was based on a document from the WMF because they try things and then stop them. Perhaps related to Wikipedia:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia. Johnuniq (talk) 00:39, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
Agree, it would be good if we were told these things. We try to help new users and have no idea what has already been offered to them, still less have we any community input into this vital onboarding process: Noyster (talk), 07:43, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
Those notification types have been part of Echo since it was released in 2013, see FAQ from 2013. It was introduced before I started working for WMF, but I think it is distinct from our old consensus against automatic or indiscriminate welcome-messages because: it isn't going on the usertalkpage (which has the significant effect of turning redlinks->blue) and doesn't clog up recentchanges or inflate editcounts, and potentially helps newcomers notice the personal bar at top with all those useful links, and it gives them a hint as to where to go next. Where it links to was last discussed (afaik) at MediaWiki talk:Notification-welcome-link. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata notifications query

Hello, I appear to be getting notifications about things happening on wikidata that do not appear to have any relevance to me. So how do I switch off all notifications from wikidata on wikipedia and commons without turning off all crosswiki notifications as I would still want commons notifications on wikipedia and vice versa. Keith D (talk) 16:09, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Disable "Connection with Wikidata" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. If it's already disabled then try to enable it, save preferences, and disable it again. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:23, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks I have tried that and will see what happens. Though the explanation indicates that is only for pages I have created, and none of the notifications so far have been for pages that I have created. Keith D (talk) 17:28, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@Keith D: Could you give us an example of 1 or 2 of the Wikidata-related Notifications you've already received? (Examples almost always help!) That way we can investigate in more detail. Also, as addendum to PrimeHunter's suggestion, if the notifications are coming from Commons you'll also need to locally disable the "Connection with Wikidata" at your Commons' preferences. Cheers. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Example "The page ‪Category:Kevin Kilbane‬ was connected to the Wikidata item Q350802, which contains data relevant to the topic." - which is meaningless to me. Though I have edited Kevin Kilbane page and it is on my watchlist. Keith D (talk) 17:44, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@Keith D: You did start that page. ;-) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:06, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes, but that is not on my watchlist. Keith D (talk) 19:15, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@Keith D: Ah now I understand. You said above "none of the notifications so far have been for pages that I have created", hence the confusion. Yeah, the feature you're suggesting is much wanted. Currently best described (at a technical level) in the phab:T70060#2166931 comment. The existing feature we have is unrelated to watchlists, and is purely based on the database listing of pages you've created. See also phab:T46787 and others linked from there. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
I would not class that as a page as it is a category. I would only class page as a main space article or wikipedia space item. Keith D (talk) 19:27, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@Keith D: "page" refers to all namespaces (but some namespaces cannot have Wikidata items). You created the category page so you were notified when it was added to Kevin Kilbane (Q350802). I guess all the notifications were for pages you created. A bot has recently added category pages to a lot of Wikidata items. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:54, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@Keith D: It's a page none-the-less though. A category is no more than a tag attached to any page. A red category is still a category that exists (even when later emptied). A blue category, is a category that specifically a wikipage was created for. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:10, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia

Off-topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Please I need to add a profile on Wikipedia, Who can help me out on this? DJ TIMIC (talk) 10:55, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi DJ TIMIC, and thanks for asking for assistance - I'll be happy to help you and set expectations before you start editing. Wikipedia is not for advertising or promotion, nor is it a a social network or a place to host a profile of yourself. We also discourage and steer people away from writing about themselves or even about things that they have a personal conflict of interest with. We're here because we want to build an encyclopedia and write content to articles in a completely objective manner. If you're here to help us build the project, welcome! If you're not, I hope that you consider doing so. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 11:02, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Are page link notifications broken?

The last one I received was on June 28. I'm the creator of several articles and redirects that get linked to all the time so I doubt it's a dry spell. —Xezbeth (talk) 17:35, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Xezbeth - I haven't received any for quite some time either. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 11:03, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
phab:T200119 says it's resolved. mw:MediaWiki 1.32/wmf.19#Core changes says the fix was deployed last week, Thursday at the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:32, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
@Xezbeth, Oshwah, and PrimeHunter: More at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Notifications: "A link was made from" no longer works?. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:31, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
Redrose64 - Thanks for pointing me to the discussion :-). ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 19:41, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
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