Help talk:Notifications/Archive 4

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Archive 1

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Notifications of pings

Quick query! I tried to ping some users here but apparently noone got pinged. Is this because of the way I linked to the usernames? My ping in this edit seemed to work. I am guessing I am not allowed to rename the links from User:Addshore to Addshore. Is this a bug for a feature? :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 19:51, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Pinging only works if you sign the post at the same time as you link to the usernames. Try it again, updating your sig. (Using the bar doesn't matter, so long it ends up being a valid wikilink to their page.) Ignatz mice•talk 20:46, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Ahhhhhh!! This make perfect sense :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 09:05, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

== Orange bar works perfectly but can't bring back notifications ==

Hi, last week I changed my user name and a few days ago thought I should probably check the notifications - which I had hidden via WritKeeper's script and by setting preferences. I disabled the script, reset the preferences, (multiple times), but the little notifications number won't reappear. Does this have anything to do with a the user name change, or am I doing something wrong? Thanks, Victoria (talk) 19:35, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

It was likely due to a change in your common.css file. I removed it for you. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:40, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I tried commenting out I see, but that's apparently not enough. Victoria (talk) 21:55, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

You cannot use HTML style comments in a CSS file :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:32, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Template:Talkback vs. Wikipedia:Notifications

In my opinion, Wikipedia:Notifications has made Template:Talkback obsolete. Template:Talkback should be modified to pop up a message indicating this, and Wikipedia:Twinkle should be modified so as to no longer allow placing of talkback notices. Agree? Disagree? --Guy Macon (talk) 12:11, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Duplicated question, please discuss on WT:Twinkle#Template:Talkback vs. Wikipedia:Notifications Technical 13 (talk) 16:33, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Bug report

I don't use bugzilla, so here goes: My notification icon (and orange bar) showed I had a new message on my talk page. After I closed my notifications and read my talkpage my count went to zero as expected and the orage faded. However, after a couple of moments my talk page bar went on orange, but it was for the same talk page message I had already read. XOttawahitech (talk) 19:00, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Weird :/. OS/browser/skin? And; if it happens again, can you let us know? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I've been having a similar issue all day and can add that it usually occurs when there is a wikibits failure and it effects a large chunk of my javascript (like edittools also fails to load when this happens)... Technical 13 (talk) 20:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Thanks! But (again) a heart icon...? Brainstorming for our own Wikipedian "thanks, good edit" symbol...

Templates biting newbies

First of all: I really, really like this "Thanks"-feature! There is so much negative feedback on Wikipedia (reverts, AfD etc., all with reasons, but...) we need more positive feedback. And a small "Thanks, good edit" is something many people have thought about (not a "big" barnstar, not a long talk page message, just a quick and simple "thanks!") See also my comments on mw:Extension_talk:Thanks#Early_thoughts. German user:leyo and me had brainstormed about a similar idea, "wikithanks" for IPs and newbies (especially for pending changes on deWP), based on a modified "WikiLove". You can read a little bit about the proposed ideas here (german, sorry, I hope you can manage with googletranslate) and on meta:Talk:Flagged_Revisions (at the end). "Thanks" looks like the perfect solution for this. BUT.

BUT, why oh why the heart icon, again? The universal "I love you" symbol... It's too similar to WikiLove and too girlish. Why not have our own sign for "hey, good contribution, thanks!"? I see a lot of imitated "Like" and "+1" on Wikipedia talk pages. Because it's quick and easy to understand. But we're not Facebook or google+, let's design our own! Something that is short and can be typed (like "+1") Maybe a "plus star in brackets" like this:

[+*] , as an icon similar to this

[

] or

[

] ? (Better a bigger plus and a smaller star?)

I don't think [+*] is already used for other things? How about a little brainstorming? Or even a design contest? Wikipedia has [citation needed] and the OrangeBarOfDoom, what's next? --Atlasowa (talk) 22:14, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Is "girlish" a bad thing, especially since we would like our editor base to include a lot more "girls"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:18, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

+ is used for section headings in many cases, and has connotations of addition rather than positivity. I also disagree that it's 'girlish'. Stylised hearts as a symbol for affection or gratitude are something older than the internet (and, well, if showing gratitude is for girls, I need to go see my doctor pretty fast, because he's got some explaining to do). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:18, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Come on. Stylised hearts are not a symbol for gratitude or for "thanks", but a symbol for affection and for love, especially (but not exclusively) romantic love, see Heart (symbol). And it's very generic, not a Wikipedia thing. No, "girlish" is not a bad thing. But unless you want to send pink hearts all over Wikipedia, you won't be able to use the "thanks"-feature, and most users are not into Love bombing (throwing hearts at people you don't know, without really meaning it), see the usage graph and stats for WikiLove.

Okeyes said that: "+ is used for section headings in many cases, and has connotations of addition rather than positivity." Yes, the "thanks"-feature is about additions, about contributions that are deemed good or praiseworthy by another user. It's 1) about the [edit], therefore the brackets [ ], 2) about the contribution/addition "+" and 3) about the appreciation/positive feedback/quick thank you with a star " * " like a small WP barnstar or a rating star (5-star-hotel etc). It's trying to say: "Hey, good edit!" or "Thanks, I like your addition to the article!" or "Thanks for your helpful contribution to the discussion!" In short: To appreciate the edit, not to love the editor. The heart icon is too unspecific and too ambiguous.

We could at least make it more specific, like this:

or this:

[ +

] , hmm [ + <3 ] ?

Other opinions and ideas? --Atlasowa (talk) 07:41, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

A heart would carry the wrong implications for me. Is a green tick too patronising?--SabreBD (talk) 09:46, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The green tick

in a box seems already taken for "review" (what is that?) How about the green

for thanks? --Atlasowa (talk) 10:16, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

BTW, I just found Wikipedia_talk:Notifications/Thanks --Atlasowa (talk) 10:16, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Is a thumbs up sign taken for anything? That seems closer to the spirit of a minor thanks.--SabreBD (talk) 10:49, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I very much like the thumbs-up idea. Perhaps something based on WP's rendering of the Unicode symbol: [+👍] or something. Ignatz mice•talk 11:54, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes, the thumbs up sign is kind of taken:

Like (see Template:Like, 673 transclusions) by Facebook ;-) Although they didn't create the Thumbs signal, of course.

People obviously having difficulty with the "thanks" button

I've only received three "thank you" messages, but all of them were from people that were obviously perplexed. I'm fortunate enough not to have the menu item presented to me, but it should obviously be changed from where it is for those that do see it. I seriously doubt that people were thanking me for the edits that they proceeded to revert. For those that wonder, yes, that screensnip is from English Wikipedia).—Kww(talk) 21:45, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for the screenshot, also reported here: Wikipedia_talk:Notifications/Thanks#(undo .7C thank) and bugzilla:47658. --Atlasowa (talk) 10:22, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

This week's new features

Hi folks, here's an update on some of the new Notification features we released today on the English Wikipedia -- as well as our next steps:

1. Thanks notification
This experimental feature offers a new way to give positive feedback on Wikipedia. It lets editors send a private 'Thank you' notification to users who make useful edits -- by clicking a small 'thank' link on their history or diff page, as described above and on this overview page. The purpose of the Thanks notification is to give quick positive feedback to recognize productive contributions. We hope that it will make it easier to show appreciation for each other's work -- and it should be particularly helpful for encouraging new users during their first critical steps on Wikipedia. We have intentionally kept this notification as simple as possible, so we can all evaluate it and improve it together. Once you have had a chance to try it out, we welcome your feedback about this feature, and look forward to a healthy discussion on this talk page.

2. New features
Today, we also released a couple more features and bug fixes on the English Wikipedia and MediaWiki.org:

Talk page messages are now marked as read when you visit the talk page -- and the red badge is reset as well (Bug 47912)
Tooltips in preferences help explain how notifications work when you hover over question marks (Bug 47094)

These revisions were made based on community feedback and we would love to hear if they work for you. If you come across any bugs, please report them here, or post them directly on Bugzilla.

3. Next release
For our next releases, we're now focusing on these features, which were also requested by many community members:

Provide 'diff' links in the flyout for talk page messages and mentions (Bug 48183)
More metrics dashboards (see first dashboard) and a cohort study on productivity
HTML Email notifications, with clear visual cues about new activity

4. Next steps
Our follow-up goals for Notifications include:

Complete core features next month
Deploy Echo on international projects this summer
Develop cross-wiki and a few key features this fall
Support mobile + multimedia teams and developers

Our preliminary roadmap for 2013 is outlined in our E2 planning slides for editor engagement features.

Please let us know if these project updates are helpful to you -- and we will aim to post them every few weeks. In the meantime, many thanks to all the community and team members who have helped us create and improve this project! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

"Talk page messages are now marked as read when you visit the talk page -- and the red badge is reset as well" - Thank you. --Onorem (talk) 00:35, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

You're very welcome, Onorem. Sorry we couldn't do that sooner, and thanks for your patience! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:51, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

What patience? :) Thanks again. --Onorem (talk) 00:53, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks feature update

Hi everyone, thank you so much for all your helpful feedback about the Thanks feature on this talk page! We have reviewed all the comments from a variety of channels and have started to discuss and prioritize feature requests, based on your suggestions. Over a dozen people have reported issues with the thanks link, which has caused some to accidentally click "thank" instead of "undo" on history and diff pages. We are now working on this issue as our top priority, as it appears that the current placement next to undo is problematic -- as well as the lack of a confirmation or 'unthank' function. To help us solve this issue quickly, we would be grateful if you could answer a few questions, so we can pinpoint the problem more accurately -- and develop an appropriate solution in coming days. To keep our discussion focused in one place, we have posted these questions and a feature update on this Thanks talk page, and encourage you to post your answers on that thread. Thanks again for all your good insights! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Modern skin improvements are coming

@Nikkimaria:, @Amorymeltzer:, @Fylbecatulous: just as a heads-up, there is now som work in progress to complete support of the modern skin of Notifications. It will take a week or two to get deployed, but it's looking a lot better. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:53, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you muchly for the news and for remembering my affliction. ツ I shall fret not! All the best Fylbecatulous talk 23:12, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks so much, all of you! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:27, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi folks, I want to let you know that our lead developer Kaldari has been working on refactoring the code to deliver better display and performance of notifications on skins like Monobook, Cologne Blue and Modern. So if all goes well, you should have an improved UI for those skins by next week. Sorry for not getting to this sooner! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 01:32, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

"watchlist page has been nominated for deletion/merge/(mumble)" notifications?

Is there a way to ask to be notified when a page on my watchlist is nominated for deletion, merge, or another hard-to-reverse change? Specifically, something that makes clear in the email subject that the page was nominated, instead of having to rely on a meaningful changelog message being present in the email body? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 08:34, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

This sounds like a great idea The Crab Who Played With The Sea! I'll look into it it and see what can be done. Technical 13 (talk) 11:37, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Was just on my was here to suggest the same thing. There are articles on my watchlist that I expect to be AfD'd in the future, and I would not want to miss that when it is hidden between minor edits.Martin451 (talk) 13:49, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I just noticed that you want these notifications via email, is that correct? Technical 13 (talk) 15:12, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, email, because that's where all my watchlist notifications go. I'm perfectly OK with a new-style notification I can set to go to email in my preferences. I just want something I can tell from "page was edited" notifications by looking at the email subject line. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 09:20, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Theoretically the notifications should be integrated into Echo, so as a user can configure where they receive notification in Special:Preferences. Theopolisme (talk) 15:42, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

The problem with this as far as I can see is the fact that the nomination for such a thing is "just an edit" as far as the software goes and not all wikis running the mediawiki software use such a process. ~~You could probably get a good number of them if you went over and asked AzaToth and TTO about adding a feature to twinkle that emailed...~~ Actually, I'm not sure that they could do that with Twinkle either because there is no way of seeing what is on another's watchlist, not even with the API and that is a WMF "WONTFIX" iirc. As I see it now, the best you could get is a notification of "log"-able events such as the actual deletion, and yes, I realize that would be too late unless the "undeletion process" was modified somehow to make it easier to restore something. That still wouldn't help for merges because there is no notification. Oh, I wonder if there is some way to watch Tags and get notified that way. Then new tags could be made for such requests and you could get a notification. Regardless, I'm done throwing ideas into how to fix this until there is some response from someone that has the privileges to do something. Technical 13 (talk) 11:05, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

We would need to get Okeyes (WMF) and the team involved for that to happen. I was just thinking of writing a UserScript using the api to popup a little message every time the user loaded a new page until acknowledged or something. Technical 13 (talk) 18:08, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
- Okeyes said that Fabrice Florin (WMF) was point on this project now... So, let's get him... :) Technical 13 (talk) 18:27, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
- I'm looking over this again, and I'm not sure that an Echo notification would do what The Crab Who Played With The Sea wanted... I'm not sure what the proper way to do that would be. Technical 13 (talk) 18:43, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
If you're desperate for this kind of thing, you can do the following: create a legitimate alternate account (I was thinking of using the name User:Mail Daemon for mine, but figured it was too close to Mailer diablo's). When you create an article, put the AfD locations (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/(article name)) for all the articles you care about on the alt's watchlist, and then make sure the "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed" at the bottom of Special:Preferences is checked (and that it has an email address that you check). Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 13:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Is daily email option working?

(I originally posted this at VPT and was advised to bring it here.)

It took me almost exactly a week to get an email about this revert, even though my notification preferences are set for "A daily summary of notifications" and I saw and clicked on the web-based notification within a couple hours of said revert. I did not change any notification preferences during that time.

Is this something I/we need to worry about? If this is a known issue, is it already documented anywhere? --SoledadKabocha (talk) 22:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Never mind; it was probably a temporary glitch, as I got an email about this post on my usertalk within a couple hours. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 01:55, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Not notified when reverted by IP

This edit did not result in a notification for me, even though they were undoing me. Any reason? Giant Snowman 10:36, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

WP:NOTAPERSON ;) In all seriousness, I have no idea, I just wanted to spread some classic IP hate. As you were. Theopolisme (talk) 05:20, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Are we sure that this has to do with the fact it was an IP and not the fact it was a revert of a revert? Technical 13 (talk) 11:39, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure I have received notifications for reverts-of-reverts; but if that is the case, it is clearly something that needs fixing. Giant Snowman 12:23, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I have not got a notification for this revert. This is not a reversion of a direct revert but could fall into that category. Keith D (talk) 15:35, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Mark all as read button

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T49092

Can we get some functionality to mark all as read. My notifications just got swamped with over 100 notifications and the only way to get rid of them is to click each and every one. Kumioko (talk) 13:04, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

This is already under development. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:33, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy reply, actually I think its done. It just appeared a couple minutes ago. Although I'm not sure if its because I expanded all the way through all the pages. Kumioko (talk) 14:36, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Notified when a user automatically declines a submission I previously declined because of the moving around of templates in WP:AFCH

Take a look. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 14:34, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

What creates a mention?

If you look at my talk page, you'll see I have been mentioning users by doing @Example. Does this work or am I doing something wrong? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 16:58, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

You need to link to the user in question, a good way to do it is to use {{ping|USERNAME}} i.e. @Nathan2055:. Giant Snowman 17:07, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I personally use {{U|Nathan2055}} or {{Reply to|GiantSnowman}} which creates Nathan2055 or @GiantSnowman: and pings the person ("Reply to" will take multiple names and ping them all and "U" allows for a second parameter that allows you to simplify the name such as Nate or @GiantSnowman and Nathan2055:. Another important thing to note, it only pings the people if it is done in a signed edited and requires 4 tildes (3 and 5 don't work). Technical 13 (talk) 17:28, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Why wasn't I notified...

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T27141

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51695

...by this edit? Theopolisme (talk) 20:55, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Wrong Wikispace I suppose. I think its only on Talk pages and a couple other special pages yet (AN, ANI etc) TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

@Theopolisme and TheOriginalSoni: Nope, it's because Cyberpower678's signature does not link directly to either his user or user talk pages, as already discussed here. Graham87 10:35, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Then that's clearly a bug that should be fixed.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 11:57, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

That replyto ping didnt work for me either TheOriginalSoni (talk) 13:31, 8 June 2013 (UTC) Signing late

Fixing the tracked bug to the right might make this easy to fix if echo looked for the span instead of a direct link in the signature... I was thinking it had to do with the way {{Reply to}} works... Technical 13 (talk) 13:25, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

@TheOriginalSoni: Good to know: I wasn't sure if it would work because I added it as an afterthought. Graham87 14:26, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Yup, per mw:Echo/Feature requirements#User Mention: "this feature only works if the post is signed -- by adding four tildes (~~~~) when the edit is posted". So if you need to add names after you've hit save, just remove your signature/timestamp and re-sign the post. –Quiddity (talk) 17:36, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

@Quiddity: Is that requirement (going to be) properly emphasized in the doc? --Thnidu (talk) 04:26, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Be bold! But done. Tweak as needed. Keep it short. –Quiddity (talk) 04:34, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

@Graham87: Thanks for clarifying that, I was afraid I was going insane :) Theopolisme (talk) 14:31, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

@TheOriginalSoni, Theopolisme, Graham87, and C678: I wonder if it requires the whole signature and timestamp or if you can go back and ping and just replace the signature leaving the timestamp with 3 tildes... Technical 13 (talk) 18:01, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
(@Technical 13: A second account, and pinging yourself as a test, would be preferable in cases like this. All 4 people mentioned above did not need to be recalled to this thread... Also you used 4 tildes. So here's a 3 tilde test for you.) –Quiddity (talk) 18:22, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
Quiddity I actually used three tildes for the test part, and I didn't get your 3-tilde test either... Technical 13 (talk) 18:35, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I see, you must've replaced your username with 3 tildes, hence the diff didn't show it. Sorry for my confusion. –Quiddity (talk) 18:53, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
No worries... Technical 13 (talk) 19:01, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
@Graham87, Technical 13, and Quiddity: I believe the root of this problem may in fact be related to badly-formed HTML in the signature, and not to the use of alternate username links. This might be helpful to the developer(s), so I'll demonstrate the signature of Cyberpower678 (who I already alerted via talk). The sig is/was missing two closing tags (in red):

—[[User:C678|<span style="color:green;font-family:Neuropol">cyberpower</span>]] [[User talk:C678|<sup style="color:olive;font-family:arnprior">Chat</sup>]]<sub style="margin-left:-4.4ex;color:olive;font-family:arnprior">Online</sub>

This also causes the "Dot's syntax highlighter" gadget to mis-color everything below that signature, and who-knows-what-else is impacted. I have no idea where the proper forum is to suggest this might be, but the best way to resolve such "garbage-data" issues is to prevent it's initial entry: that is, if the user preferences page allows users to customize their signatures using wiki markup, then that markup must be passed through a syntax checker before allowing the user to save their changes to the database. Allowing garbage in guarantees exponential garbage out. —Grollτech (talk) 14:02, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Grolltech, hence the tracked ticket in this section... Although, I'm thinking at this point, I'm thinking that if custom signatures don't live up to HTML4strict then they should be refused with a little red error message on the preferences page saying it is invalid and to check their HTML and use the default signature instead. Then again, that would put the community in an uproar because based on my notations about 65-70% of custom signatures have invalid HTML... Technical 13 (talk) 14:22, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
- T51695 submitted. Technical 13 (talk) 14:42, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

@Technical 13: I like it, thanks! 65–70% is not at all surprising. Uproar or no, what is the alternative? Some would say that a good defensive coder should be able to handle the unexpected, and while that is true, it is an unrealistic expectation that one could foresee (and correctly handle/interpret) every possible way for a user to corrupt code. Further, I'd trout any user who screams about their momentary inconvenience, and I'd remind them that along with the privilege of having a custom signature comes the responsibility to get it right. —Grollτech (talk) 20:49, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Grolltech, depending on how the mw:Flow thing goes, the ticket may end up being invalid/wontfix. I've made the attempt anyways. BTW, your signature has invalid code too. Hit me up on my talk page if you are interested in knowing more. Technical 13 (talk) 20:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

huh? (…several mouse clicks… …he gasps…) What the— <font> tags!

(…he looks around the room…) Alright, who put obsolete tags in my signature?!?

(…silence … a cricket starts to chirp … Grolltech glares at the cricket … which stops and freezes in place…)

(…back-pedaling now…) yeah, well, uh… but the structure, you see – the HTML was perfectly-formed…

(…Technical 13 stares at him, expressionless…) right? (…still staring, Technical 13 blinks…)

Oh, gosh! look at the time! Gotta run! Thanks! —Grollτech (talk) 10:03, 18 June 2013 (UTC) P.S.: LOL, Fixed!

Oh hold on now....why is the section edit link not over at the far right anymore?

Discussion moved to WP:Village pump (technical) [1]

23:03, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

This week's update

Hi everyone, here's a quick update on our latest developments for Notifications for the June 11, 2013 week.

1. June 11 2013 release
Here are some of the revisions we just deployed today on the English Wikipedia:

A/B test of new user productivity (read more below)
New metrics: we're now tracking views and clicks for web notifications (new dashboards coming soon)
Skin support: Modern and Monobook now work (Cologne is next) (T49932)
Thanks confirmation step has been added (to prevent accidental clicks) (T49658)

Please let us know if you have any comments or questions. If you come across any bugs, please report them here, or post them on Bugzilla.

2. A/B Test
Throughout this week, we will be running an A/B test to study the general effects of Notifications on the behavior of new editors on Wikipedia. When someone creates a new account on the English Wikipedia this week, they will be automatically assigned to one of two groups:

an Echo cohort, which will get the same notifications as new users have been getting in recent weeks
a pre-Echo cohort, which will only get the old talk page message notifications, without any Echo notifications

During this test, we will use behavioral measurements to determine which users were more active (survival rate, edits, labor hours), productive (revert rate), communicative (talk & user_talk edits) and burdensome (revert rate, block rate). We will stop bucketing new users into the pre-Echo cohort after a week, and that cohort will be switched to Echo notifications after a month, so they're not left out. Read more about this and related tests in our Research:Notifications pages on Meta.

3. Thanks notification
Our Thanks notification seems to have been generally well received by English community: over 4,000 thanks notifications have been sent in the past ten days (see metrics dashboard), and they are now as frequent as notifications for page reviews or user mentions, with ~200 unique senders/day, ~300 unique recipients/day (vs. ~40/day for Wikilove). Community members have made many productive suggestions for improving this feature, and we're grateful to the folks who have taken the time to show their appreciation on our talk page ... : )

4. New features
We're now working on these features, which we aim to deploy in coming weeks:

Flyout links (secondary links to diff pages for talkpage messages) (T50183)
HTML Email Notifications (see specs)
Mobile notifications (now in beta, in collaboration with mobile team)
More metrics dashboards
'Suppressed' content feature
Internationalization updates

5. Next steps
Our follow-up goals for Notifications include:

Complete core features this month, release on Meta
Deploy Echo on non-English Wikipedias this summer
Develop cross-wiki and a few key features this fall
Support mobile + multimedia teams and third-party developers

Our roadmap for Notifications in 2013 is outlined on this E2 planning page for editor engagement features.

Thanks to all our team members and community partners for making this project possible. We look forward to our next steps together! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Comments

I have a problem with "we are not planning to provide a preference to switch between HTML and plain text email for this first release".[2]

Now it may very well be that your HTML email is perfect in every way, but the fact that other people's HTML email is not causes me and many other people to turn off the ability of my email reader to render HTML.

Here is a partial list of problems with HTML email:

HTML email can cause your email to be silently deleted.

SpamAssassin and many other spam filters weigh the "spamminess" of incoming messages on many factors, and HTML formatting is one of them. An innocent email that would normally not trigger spam filters may get a higher spamminess ranking if HTML formatting is involved. This could push it over the threshold where it is silently deleted or sent to a seldom-read spam mailbox.

HTML email can be a security risk

Spammers like HTML email because they can imbed a 1 pixel by 1 pixel image in the email, and by default most email clients will show that image, thus telling the spammer that the email address is good and that a human reads emails sent there. There have been viruses (Bubbleboy, kak.worm) which are triggered simply by viewing an HTML message in the preview pane of unpatched versions of Outlook Express. There are other viruses that exploit the way the Internet Explorer engine (Older versions of Outlook use it to display HTML email) handles IFRAMEs. Because of this, many users turn off HTML email capability. Remember, when you use a web browser you can chose to avoid websites that may infect your computer, but with email you get what they send you, and you have no choice other than disabling HTML.

HTML emails greatly increase the number of clients you need to test your HTML on.

Anyone who creates HTML documents (web or email) needs to view them in Firefox, Chrome/Chromium, Internet Explorer, and possibly Opera and Safari. I did not mention any mobile browsers because many websites, including Wikipedia, have a mobile version to accommodate mobile browsers. Your HTML email, of course, only has one version that has to render on everything from a giant 1080p display to the 2.2" 240x320 display on my G'zOne phone.

The minute you start creating HTML emails with no plain text option, now you have to test the page on Outlook Express, Outlook (three partially compatible versions), Thunderbird, Eudora, Apple Mail (four partially compatible versions), Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Mail, AOL mail, Blackberry, PalmOS and Microsoft Word. That's right, I said Word. Word is the HTML renderer in some versions of Outlook. And don't forget screen readers for the blind; JAWS, NVDA, ChromeVox, VoiceOver...

Now consider the fact that some of the above are web-based. Think about it. The user is using a web browser to render an HTML page -- complete with head, body, and CSS -- then in the middle of that HTML page is your HTML email with its own head, body, and CSS, possibly using the same classes and ids in incompatible ways. And you have to test multiple combinations; Gmail on Firefox, Outlook.com on Firefox, Yahoo! Mail on Firefox, Gmail on Internet Explorer, Outlook.com on Internet Explorer, Yahoo! Mail on Internet Explorer, Gmail on Chrome, Outlook.com on Chrome, Yahoo! Mail on Chrome...

Conclusion:

If you really need to deliver HTML content to users over email, put it on a web server and email a link to it. Offering users a choice of HTML or plain text is acceptable, and even making HTML the default is acceptable, on the theory that those of us who don't want HTML emails are generally clueful enough to change the defaults. HTML-only email? Kill it. Kill it with Fire. Guy Macon --18:51, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Guy Macon, thanks for expressing your concerns about HTML Email. Since others have expressed similar concerns about HTML Email, we will consider your suggestion to provide an HTML Email preference. Our new UX director, Jared Zimmerman, is now looking at improvements to the global preferences, and we will bring this up to his attention. Though HTML Email is now widely accepted on the web as an effective form of communication, we respect the desire of some members to restrict their communications to plain text emails. Note that if your email client doesn't support HTML, you will continue to receive plain text emails as part of our current plan. Thanks again for your constructive recommendation. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I prefer plain-text email myself, but I can (and did) set my email client to display the plain-text version of plain+HTML emails by default. (I'm not sure which email clients have that feature, but I suspect many people who prefer plain text email use a client that does.) So as long as the plain-text version is informative (eg, doesn't just say "Your client can't display this email, neener neener!", but includes all the information in the HTML version), I can live with the lack of an option. But for the sake of low-bandwidth clients (like smartphone users or Mifi Internet access with a low-ish limit on their daily/monthly data transfers), I'd want one to be available soonish. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 12:42, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Why are you assuming that the emails will be plain+HTML? If they were willing to compose a text version for inclusion in a plain+HTML email, they wouldn't have an issue with giving me the option of receiving plain text alone. Not offering a plain-text option only makes sense of it allows you to save the work of composing a plain text version. My email client is set to treat all HTML emails as spam, and I have never had a problem with any legitimate site not having a plain text option. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:50, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Many of Guy's points are severely out-of-date. Practically no-one in their right mind still uses Outlook Express (I daresay anyone still stuck on OE would have no idea about switching off HTML e-mail). All sane e-mail clients these days give an option to prevent the automatic download of images and execution of scripts within HTML messages. Additionally, very simple HTML e-mail, such as that sent out by MediaWiki, does not need substantial cross-client checking. I suppose there is no point "opposing" the development of a plain-text e-mail alternative, but there are far better things that could be done with the developer time. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:39, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

My information is not out-of-date. Yes, Outlook Express is becoming rare in the US and the EU -- at least around the techies I tend to hang around with -- but take a trip with me to western Africa some time and I will show you a lot of users with old PCs, Windows 2000 or XP, and Outlook Express. In 2011 Outlook and Outlook express together comprised 27% of the global market.[3]

http://www.eleven.de/press-release/items/warning-driveby-spam-infects-pcs-when-e-mail-is-opened.html says:

"Berlin, January 27, 2012 – The eleven Research Team has issued a warning about a new and particularly dangerous e-mail-borne method to infect PCs with viruses and Trojans. This driveby spam automatically downloads malware when the e-mail is opened in the e-mail client. Previous malware e-mails required the user to click on a link or open an attachment for the PC to be infected. The new generation of e-mail-borne malware consists of HTML e-mails which contain a JavaScript which automatically downloads malware when the e-mail is opened. [...] "

That was over a year ago and that particular exploit no longer works on any windows computer which runs windows update. Assuming, of course that your copy passes the "Windows Genuine Advantage" check. Got a pirated copy of Windows? You can't get all of the updates, and in some cases Windows Defender stops working. Guess how many of those PCs in western Africa have pirated copies of Windows? -Guy Macon (talk) 07:50, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

And how many of these people in western Africa, using their old pirated systems, are tech-savvy enough to disable HTML e-mail, I wonder? Even if they disable HTML e-mail in their client, surely they will still be shown the plain-text alternative that is delivered alongside the HTML, meaning no further action is needed. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:02, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I estimate PC users in Western Africa to be, on average, considerably more "tech-savvy" than US PC users. They are poor, not stupid, and there are considerably more examples of users helping one another. Business doesn't bring me there often, but the next time I will do an informal survey and see how they have their email set up. Or, if someone here knows french, you could ask at some of the other-language Wikipedias. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:40, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I never meant to imply that such people are "stupid". Anyway, let's leave this argument; it's not helping the development of Echo. 02:27, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I recently received an email from a WMF staff-member, that mentioned a "link included", which I could not see. It turns out that the HTML email was not degrading gracefully, (as it usually does nowadays), and so my plain text viewing settings were indeed having problems with this particular HTML email. I joked about this with them, and they passed it along to the people working on this.

Therefor, the staff are well-aware of this problem, and they know that they have to conduct tests to make sure that any HTML degrades gracefully, or plain-text versions get automatically included, or whatever other solution works for 100% of us. All will be well. –Quiddity (talk) 08:28, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

As an info-security person myself, I have to say that Guy Macon is right-on-the-money on this point. Using the mention of Outlook Express so as to discount the entirety of Guy's message isn't terribly helpful... in fact, Western Africa aside, I can practically guarantee that even among the relatively-small community of those who follow this talk page, at least one person's parents or grandparents are still using Outlook Express to read their email. I think the fundamental take-away from this – if I can turn back to "we are not planning to provide a preference to switch between HTML and plain text email for this first release" for one last moment – is that not providing an initial preference upstream is fine, but only if, out-of-the-gate, we will support the downstream client's right to choose either. —Grollτech (talk) 15:10, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't get the discussion I think. Nowhere has there ever been stated that plain text emails would seize to exist. All users will receive HTML AND plaintext versions of the email notifications and it's up to the client to figure out what to do with them (as explicitly mentioned in the linked specifications). Are we looking for a problem, or is there an actual problem ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:11, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I am fully aware that the email server can be configured to automatically generate a plain text version of an HTML message and send it along with the HTML version. Will there also be a commitment to forgo all of the HTML bells and whistles and never use any HTML feature that causes the content of the automatically-generated plain text version to differ from the HTML version? If so, what conceivable reason could there be to not offer this automatically generated plain text version by itself? --Guy Macon (talk) 18:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

"We will send both plain and HTML versions"... what part of that insinuates that this would be an automatic mailserver based conversion ? There is no reason for that and I highly doubt that will be the case. There will be HTML and plaintext templates, both will be added in the same MIME based email. Doing anything else would be against industry standards that are so often mentioned in the specifications. @Fabrice Florin (WMF): can you confirm that so we can put an end to this? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:06, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, @TheDJ: you are absolutely correct. Both the plain text and HTML versions will be provided in the same MIME based email message, so if your email application doesn't support HTML, a plain text message will be displayed instead. The messages will be nearly identical, except that the HTML emails will have more secondary links to related pages than the plain text emails (e.g.: diff page, user page or article page) -- as described in this feature requirement and outlined in this spreadsheet. @Guy Macon:, we discussed your proposal to add an email format preference with the team yesterday: this preference would enable people who do not want HTML emails to select plain text emails instead. We are prepared to offer this as an experimental feature for the next few months, and track its usage, to determine whether or not to keep it in the long term: based on that usage data, we can all make more informed decisions in a few months, as part of a larger design review of our many preferences. We should be able to add that preference in the next couple weeks, and I will post an update on this page when that feature is live. Hope this will address your concerns. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! That completely address my concerns. It will be interesting to see what percentage of users choose each. I assume that HTML will be the default with a check box to choose plain text; you really do need to set a default, because every time you require a decision without giving a default value you lose some small number of users. One way to get good data in such a case is to offer checkboxes for for both plain text and HTML without mentioning that "do nothing" is the same as checking the HTML box. That way you end up with a count of those who choose HTML, those who choose plain text, and those who accept whatever the default is. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Notification messages deployable by admins

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T23377

Is there a way for admins to send notifications to all registered users, or possibly a subset of them (for important matters after gaining consensus for it), or is this being developed ? I don't see it mentioned. We had consensus for something similar a while ago, site wide messages (mw:Extension:SiteWideMessages), but it never got implemented. This could be integrated into this system. Cenarium (talk) 17:44, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I had thought I had seen a mention of an idea like this on one of the other Bugzilla tickets and it was quickly shot down as a WP:SNOW like idea but I can't seem to find the discussion. Technical 13 (talk) 18:13, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

(e/c)Not yet, but echo was explicitly developed to make more messages of different types and audiences possible in a unified way. So such a feature can be built on top of the current notification system, though I suspect that there will be a few features with a higher priority before the team gets around to that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:15, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi @Cenarium:, thanks for your question. We considered this general announcement feature, but could not include it in this first release, because it would require more time than we have for this development phase, which is ending in a few weeks. However, it is included in our backlog for future releases, and we hope to revisit this proposed feature later this year. Note this is not a trivial issue, and it will require more community discussions to determine guidelines for making such broad announcements, which have the potential to reach millions of users. We have a similar issue related to how to enable developers to provide new types of notifications while preventing possible spam from being sent to millions of users. We aim to start these discussions in coming weeks, so we get enough community feedback to start the design process for these complex features. To be continued ... Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay. I found the discussion here, and the request is T23377. I remember other similar discussions which showed support for such a system, basically the watchlist notice isn't visible enough and the site notice is too visible, while neither are easily modulable. As long as there are sufficient safeguards and opt out possibilities, it's something the community would appreciate. As a note, it's not something that should reach all users, but only those active to see it. So it's closer to the number of active registered users, 122,731. Cenarium (talk) 21:39, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Turn off notifications from individual editors

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52148

An extremely handy feature would be the ability to turn off notifications if certain editors mention you in their talk page posts. My idea with this would be to be able to ignore mentions from things like bots. For example, today I received a few hundred notifications because EdwardsBot sent out the WP:GOCE newsletter to our mailing list, and my name is included. It could operate something like the Watchlist in reverse. Another option would be to just generically ignore bot mentions, since they aren't be something that requires a reply anyway. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 01:54, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Straight up, I think that your use case can be solved by simply not triggering notifications that would be fired by the actions of a bot. What you've described probably really sucked for you but is actually a useful event from a product design standpoint.

I have filed T52148 about this.

My next edit will test to see if SineBot triggers a notification for me.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 02:14, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

This is a test to see if a bot fires a notification.

02:14, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Just a reminder to bot operators, that the template {{noping}} should be used when mentioning a user in newsletters and suchlike, to prevent the aforementioned issue. 930913(Congratulate) 23:04, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

"Should", says who? I, for one, still think {{noping}} is an ugly hack and should not be used. Anomie ⚔ 00:39, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Concur. Templates shouldn't be the solution here.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 02:25, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

@Jorm (WMF): It's not the solution, it's a hack until the bug is fixed. 930913(Congratulate) 02:35, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Anomie: Says people who don't want a few hundred notifications et al. It's not ugly^{[weasel words]} and I know of no other alternative, pending a bugfix. 930913(Congratulate) 02:35, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I haven't seen anyone except you calling for this particular template. Or is it a "We have to do something! This is something! We have to do this!" situation? Also, to answer your "^{[weasel words]}", I say it. It's not necessary to insult people expressing opinions on talk pages by throwing "^{[weasel words]}" tags at them. Anomie ⚔ 11:01, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Sinebot is already on MediaWiki:Echo-blacklist and unless you also have it on your Special:MyPage/Echo-whitelist then Sinebot's work shouldn't be firing off echo... Maybe EdwardsBot Should be added to the blacklist? Perhaps an edit request on MediaWiki talk:Echo-blacklist would be the best place to ask and request it? I don't see anything not working right here. I want HostBot, ClueBot, DPLbot, etc to fire of echo notifications when I'm mentioned by one of them... See T49910 and T49946. Technical 13 (talk) 20:23, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not insulting you

it was a light hearted dig. You might be interested to know that {{vandal}} uses it to prevent AIV reports alerting the vandal. 930913(Congratulate) 21:26, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

AFC Bug

Any update on the AFC bug that tags users as being mentioned when their only interaction with the page was to review it? Thanks! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:13, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Mentioned somewhere else

The current notifications contain two links to the section where my name is mentioned. One after "mentioned you on", the other is an arrow. Why is that? I find this odd because the interface is so clean and slick. The arrow seems superfluous.
It's very uncommon to link to a users page outside of a signature. What we do instead (in the German Wikipedia): Start an answer with an unlinked "@username:" or put "@username" in the summary line. Is it possible to add these two cases to the code?
Oh, and please check for a link to the users page in the summary line.
Why is Special:Notifications so small? It wastes so much space. I know about line length and readability but I still find your current max-width: 600px; odd for two reasons. It should be em. And it should be wider. Even on my tiny 1024px netbook it feels like wasted space. I suggest 60em.

--TMg 08:20, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments TMg. Let's see if I can address any of them...
1. I believe this is a matter of opinion. I happen to like the arrow.
2. We use some various templates to like to users on en:
  - {{U|username |alternate text }}
  - {{reply to|username1 |username2 |username10 }}
  - {{ping|username1 |username2 |...|username10 }}
  - {{noping|username }}
  - And soon... {{pinggroup|Group |member1 |member2 |...|member5 }}
3. Already requested, see: T51446
4. There are still "some" people that use 640x480 or 800x600 so any bigger than 600px would be an issue for some people.
I hope that I've satisfied "some" of your questions if not all. Happy editing! Technical 13 (talk) 15:03, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

It may be a matter of opinion which one you like. But these are facts: It's a duplicate. It's redundant. The arrow is hard to hit with the mouse because it's so small.
We tend to use way less templates in the German Wikipedia than you do in the English one. ;-) But I guess we will have to introduce at least one or two.
I think you missed something. It's a max-width attribute. It scales down if the screen is smaller.

--TMg 16:16, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I did not miss that at all. max-width should be smaller than the smallest expected desktop resolution of 640x480. If it was set to 750 max width (to accommodate 800x600), and something used the whole 750, that would look horrible and break stuff on a 640x480 screen. I'm sure that explanation probably doesn't help you, and I encourage someone else to try and reword it for me. Thanks Technical 13 (talk) 16:24, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Your description applies to min-width. There is no min-width in the code as far as I know. I'm talking about the max-width. It is to narrow. Make it wider please. --TMg 18:20, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Notifications notifications

Can't this list be moved to a subpage ? It's talking lot's of place that could be better used by more documentation. I don't want to break anything. Cenarium (talk) 17:09, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I've template-collapsed the list for now. I'm not sure if bots need it uncollapsed in order to acccess/utilize the list?

It is already in the subpage Wikipedia:Notifications/Newsletter, and could just be {{main}} linked or something, if that's a better solution. –Quiddity (talk) 20:29, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Good idea, few suggestions

This would be great to replace / supplement talkback templates. Here's how: add two types of notifications. 1) "Somebody replied in a talk page discussion you participated" and 2) "Somebody replied in a discussion page thread you participated". This would be a very useful feature.

I miss the old diff showing the last edit, even through it wasn't perfect (as it was showing only the last). I'd love for the new notification systems to give me diff links. So for example, when I get "Piandcompany posted on your talk page. "→‎Talkback: reply"" I'd also like to have a diff link to his edit. Ditto for all the others notifications.

Instead of having all notifications lumped into one counter, I'd like to see more of a Facebook split; with all the different types having their own separate counters and icons.

Keep up the good job, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 20:28, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Note: Thread moved here from /Thanks.

Those 2 features are just a part of what WP:Flow will solve. It's being designed to fix/improve a large number of workflows, of which discussions are just one example. It will work alongside Notifications, in ways that are still being explored.

As for diff-links in the current Notifications, that is a feature-request in bugzilla:48183. See also the thread above at #When are we getting diffs, Part Deux for further discussion and links.

Splitting the various Notification-types into separate counters is an interesting idea. I'm not sure if that would be more or less overwhelming/efficient for each editor's personal tastes... I assume the devs are building it in a simple way to start with, and then will add complexity as the need/requests come in. Ie. Starting small, but with an adaptable structure. –Quiddity (talk) 20:50, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I can certainly see the latter as an optional feature: chose between current or split. Still, the choice would be good (just think about it this way: would you prefer if Facebook merged all notifications into one type?). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 22:10, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't really use Facebook, so I don't know! –Quiddity (talk) 22:16, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Notifications update

Hi folks, here's a quick update on today's notifications release on the English Wikipedia.

The main features this week are new links to diff pages, which were requested by a number of power users for talkpage messages (T50183), as well as for mentions and thanks notifications.These diff links now appear both on the notifications flyout, near the timestamp ('View changes') -- as well as in the plain text emails.

We are now working on a couple more features in coming weeks:

Once these final features are done, we plan to start deploying Notifications on more wiki projects, starting with Meta and a couple non-English Wikipedias. In the fall, we hope to take on more features, as time and resources allow. For more information about our next steps for this project, check our 2013 plan for the E2 team.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank developer Ryan Kaldari for all his fine work on Notifications: he has now joined the Mobile team, where I am sure he will continue to amaze us with cool new features. Many thanks as well to Benny Situ, who will be leading our development work on Notifications going forward, and is the man to talk to about engineering questions for this project.

Please let us know if you have any questions about notifications. Enjoy the new features! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Mention notifications

Do editors receive notifications when their username is mentioned (i.e. linked to) in edit summaries, apart from reverts? benzband (talk) 08:59, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm a bit curious here as well. Any one know the answer? -- ^(T)Numbermaniac_(C) 10:31, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok I've just tested using your username… If isn't the case, could it be implemented? benzband (talk) 12:58, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

It's not working yet, but I submitted bugzilla:49446 a few weeks ago, so hopefully in the future it will be a possibility. (Voting for that bug, or adding yourself to the CC: list, might help.) –Quiddity (talk) 18:08, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, i've voted and added myself to the cc: list. :) benzband (talk) 20:02, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I just joined the cc list as well, because that didn't work. -- ^(T)Numbermaniac_(C) 02:16, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Ping question

Why did I get a ping for [4]? NW (Talk) 14:53, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Likewise, I received a notification for that edit as well. Imzadi 1979 → 14:58, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

That edit transcluded Rschen7754's entire user page, and you are both mentioned on that. — HHHIPPO 15:10, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion: Close the notification)

(in case i) anyone is reading here and ii) it has not been suggested already and c) c) what I suggested for OBoD too): I want to see a "[x]" beside the yellow notification bar so that I can close it without checking the notifications (alright, I'll not forget that there was a notification). It is required when you are very much busy with some work and don't want any distraction. --Tito☸Dutta 10:58, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

@Titodutta: We're unlikely to add that since the point was to have a persistent notifier of unread messages, especially for new users who might get important messages related to their edits. If the persistent distraction is too much, you can just turn off the orange bar completely using the "New message indicator" checkbox in your preferences. You will still get notifications, emails, etc.--Eloquence * 05:55, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Clicking on notifications

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53006

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53005

Sorry if this has been mentioned (I'm not following this page as closely as I was in the past). When I click on a notification (from the navbar dropdown) it immediately takes me to a page—my talk, the user who thanked me, my page that someone reviewed, whatever. It does this even when I hold down CMD (Mac) to try and make it open in a new tab. If there's a secondary link (like a diff), clicking on that goes to the specific secondary link as expected—but clicking on it using CMD opens the secondary link in a new tab as well as the main link in the current tab, which rather defeats the purpose. I'm thinking this is something to do with JavaScript? Can it be fixed?

Also, talk page notifications on Special:Notifications don't have diffs. Seems it'd be pretty easy to port over from the dropdown... Ignatz mice•talk 11:29, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks -- filed both these issues in BZ.--Eloquence * 05:52, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Red Bar of Doom and Oblivion

I have question: I see the notification system has implemented a mini-Orange Bar of Doom, the same lovely bar that says "you have new messages". Now is there also a Red Bar of Doom and Oblivion implemented that says: "You are blocked" or "You are using a blocked public IP"? If not, don't you find it a good idea? Fleet Command (talk) 21:25, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

positive feedback and ass-kick

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T50568

(+)The notifications is nice; pinging is nice. It's an upgrade in communication and I use it already.

(-)Getting the damned red "1" coming back after one has already clicked on the notification is really disconcerting. I don't know if I can ignore it (will it eventually turn to zero)? and it makes me wonder if there was a followup notification. Bad. Has been like this for a while. Why can't this be fixed?

TCO (talk) 15:59, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

All right, I just looked at the bug report. It is not prioritized, not assigned to anyone, and has been there since May. Get someone on this. And if you need more input, then beat the bushes for it, do self-testing, etc. This is a real pain in the butt, since one ends up clicking the red 1 about 20 times over the course of a half hour. It takes away from the whole Pavlovian benefit of the notification system if there is genuine confusion over whether there is a new notification or just lingering.

And I'm using Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7 on a Dell laptop. Pretty standard middle American configuration.TCO (talk) 16:04, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the bug is being actively commented on. They're trying to consistently reproduce it, but have been unable to so far. –Quiddity (talk) 18:50, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

K. Thanks. TCO (talk) 19:06, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Some thoughts 7 weeks in

Taking a before-and-after look at things:

Before "Notifications", we got a yellow message bar that said we had new change to our personal talk pages, and included a diff to all changes from that point on. Advantage: really big. Disadvantage: appeared only at the top of the page, wasn't visible if the user scrolled down. Some suggest that diffs are hard for new people. If we chose, we got an email notification of a change to our talk pages, with a diff to the specific change as well as a diff to all changes since the new addition. And that's it.

With "Notifications" (after significant modification post roll-out): We have a red number at the top of the screen if someone has done something to trigger a "notification". This number doesn't always work properly and lots of people have problems with it not returning to zero. If someone posts a message to one's talk page, a very small yellow flag comes up attached to that number. The yellow flag does not include a diff. If one clicks on the flag, one is taken to one's talk page. There are also other reasons for getting notifications: for example, if someone wikilinks your username on another talk page (which so far has mainly been used to try to draw me into disputes, although occasionally there was a response on a page that was already on my watchlist). There are "thanks" - the link is built right into the history of every page beside someone's username! - that don't actually result in a thank-you on the user's page, but instead something attached to that red number again. So, instead of encouraging me to take the time to post something personal to another editor that gives them recognition visible to the entire community, it's encouraging me to send secret messages to people. (I clicked the "thank" button once, and was disturbed to find out that it does not show up on the user's talk page, which is not publicly viewable. I can see how this could be used to harass people.) It seems nobody's done anything to any of the pages I created, nor reverted any of my edits, but this is unsurprising. The overleaf page uses the term "review", which means several very different things in this project. It should say "patrolled", or "curated" because it is linked to new page patrol/curation, not article review processes. Nobody but this extension calls new page patrol/curation "review", and it needs to be corrected. After much pressure, we now receive diffs in the emails. Thus, we're finally back to where we were beforehand.

I strongly recommend that for this and any future products, the first step should be identifying exactly what you are planning to disable before you even get so far as planning what you want to do. A huge amount of time and energy that could have gone into your customer's primary product was wasted on trying to get the base functionality back. Then please let's alpha test it, and perhaps even do some alpha testing on a completely different project for a change? English Wikipedia gets pretty tired of being the guinea pig for everything. As for me, I use the diff link in the email, and I don't do much else with this, but I don't see any harm in having it. Risker (talk) 05:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I understand what you mean, and there have been so many major user-facing changes planned for this year that it all seems overwhelming some times.

As a point of fact, though, the English Wikipedia isn't "the guinea pig for everything". mw:UniversalLanguageSelector/Deployment/Planning, to name only the most recently deployed software, put the English Wikipedia in Phase 4 out of 5. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanked twice

Yesterday both User:Revent and myself received thanks from the same user for the same edits twice, in my case at both 3:23 UTC and 4:35 UTC. Is giving thanks twice for the same edit supposed to be possible? Huon (talk) 09:59, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Tested and confirmed. It is possible, but slightly difficult. It requires having the history page, and a specific diff-change, open in separate tabs/windows. If I "thank" in one of those tabs, and don't refresh the other tab, then the second "thank" link doesn't auto-update to "thanked". Given how rare this situation is likely to be, and how complicated a fix is likely to be (?), I imagine this won't be changed.

(It's somewhat comparable to having 2 copies of someone's talkpage open, and leaving a twinkle/wikilove template message in one copy, closing it, not seeing the template in the talkpage (and not realizing the non-updated tab is the one still open), and so leaving a duplicate twinkle/wikilove message. Though in that situation it could be redacted.)

HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 18:28, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

It should probably be reported as a bug anyway. User:Quiddity, do you have a Bugzilla account yet? If you don't, you can create an account (warning: e-mail addresses/account names are public) and file this bug yourself. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Done. bugzilla:51303. :) –Quiddity (talk) 00:49, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Comment I actually inadvertently managed to thank User:Theopolisme three times earlier today, as commented about here. Quite helpful (though coincidental), is the 'screenshot' here, and the fact that what I actually 'did' (as far as loading pages) is still in my page history. It's not quite as was described above...

6:56 AM - Watchlist - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

6:47 AM - Talk:List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1935–1939) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
6:47 AM - List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1935–1939) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
6:46 AM - Talk:List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1925–1934) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
6:44 AM - Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Huon: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
6:44 AM - Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Huon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
6:44 AM - Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Huon: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
6:42 AM - Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Huon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

6:41 AM - Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Huon: Revision history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What was actually happening here is that, after using the 'thank' button at 6:43, I was 'control clicking' on buttons inside various browser tabs to open other linked pages in new tabs (I do this /all/ the time in various contexts while editing WP.) Apparently, every time I did so from the 'revision history' after thanking, the 'thanks' was resent, and I know I didn't control-click thanks or hit it more than once.

This might not be the same method other users were using to 'break this', but...it's how I accidentally did it, and to be honest not possibly doing so in the future would kinda require me to specifically remember to "not do that" after thanking. I 'suspect' that a simple fix for this would just be refreshing the page after you 'confirm' thanking and the popup window closes, however. Revent (talk) 23:05, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your superb detective work, Revent. That's really interesting, actually...and even more interesting to the developers, I bet :) Theopolisme (talk) 00:24, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks indeed, Revent. I've updated the bugzilla entry, pointing to your explanation here. –Quiddity (talk) 01:04, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Appearance

For me, the notification box appears centered on the left side of the window, thus making half of it invisible. This includes most of the text, so that I can click on the notifications but not read what they are. Hyacinth (talk) 03:05, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Hyacinth,

That sounds frustrating. Do you have a small screen? Can you tell us what browser/OS you're using? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Mac OS X version 10.5.8, Firefox 3.6.8 and Safari 5.0.6. Hyacinth (talk) 07:01, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe my screen is small, it's 11 X 7. I don't think it would matter because altering the size of the window [horizontally] doesn't move the box. Hyacinth (talk) 08:13, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

A question

Will I get a notification if someone uses a template I have created in my userspace? If not, can this feature be added? Thanks. Nick1372 (talk) 01:14, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

You can currently check What links here to see if people have transcluded it—obviously doesn't work for substing. It would be nice to have that built in to Notifications. Ignatz mice•talk 01:47, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm new at this. What's the difference beetween substing and transcluding? Nick1372 (talk) 00:09, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

{{subst:current}} and {{current}} both produce the "current event" template. {{subst:current}} copies-and-pastes the wikicode from the current event template (as it appeared when substed) into wherever it is; {{current}} simply shows the template (and future versions, as the template itself is edited)—an Alias, if you will. Ignatz mice•talk 03:45, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion

It will be great, if it'll notificate when somebody replies me on any talk page. --Rezonansowy (talk) 10:10, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Page link notifications for reverts

Would it be possible to disable page link notifications where the edit that "adds" the link is a reversion? For example, if an article contains a link to a page I started, and a vandal blanks that article, I currently get a notification telling me that a new link to that page has been added when the vandalism is reverted. --W. D. Graham 14:41, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

AfC shuffling results in notification

The {{AFC submission}} template has a parameter that has the names of the user that declined an article, and parses it into a userpage link. When WP:AFCH shuffles these templates around to sort them, previous reviewers on an article get notifications because of the userpage link. Any way to change this? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:26, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion

This suggestion is from WP:VisualEditor/Feedback:

The last thread above makes me think it would be useful to add a class of Echo notification which produces a highlighted banner (similar to what happens when your user talkpage is edited). While the effect for each user would be the same, their talkpages would not be updated (just a single "notify all" page of messages would be updated) so there wouldn't be 19 million page edits, RC/watchlist updates, &c. Most sitebanners are less personal than this and might not trigger such a notice. But "message everyone personally the next time they log on" messages -- such as major interface changes, major licensing changes, a sea of fire, &c -- could be handled this way. – SJ + 07:33, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea to consider. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:13, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree ;-) — HHHIPPO 19:38, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

While it's an interesting idea, please keep in mind that this feature is not functional for users with older browsers or operating systems (including the older but stable versions of the most common browsers), who do not or cannot use javascript, or who have consciously opted out of the use of this. There is no problem with using something like this *in addition* to other means of contacting editors, but it should not be the only means of communication. And I am fairly certain that the result of a "notify all" message would be for more people to opt out, rather than be happy to get messages, given how many people already opt out of many of the banner notification systems now. Risker (talk) 19:04, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Spurious notifications

Every day I get a new notification or two that "Don't Stop Believing (TV series) was linked from X". When I visit X and look at the history no such linking has occurred. For example, the last message (from today) is that it was linked from Glee: The Music, Season 4, Volume 1, which had only one edit today, which did no such thing, and the prior edit to that page was May 29. I currently have 18 notifications of links to this page but no other spurious messages. It's not a big deal. I can always unwatch the page (it's just one of many thousands on my watchlist I don't even remember editing back in the mists of time) but it might be emblematic of a larger issue affecting others. I was thinking it might have something to do with the {{Don't Stop Believing}} and/or the {{Glee}} templates on the page.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:08, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

It was added to {{Glee}} in this edit, and I suppose it's possible that the transcluding page for some reason didn't get the pagelinks table updated. Then today's edit would have done the full reparse and link table updates, triggering the notification. Anomie ⚔ 12:24, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I think this is related to the issue I have noticed recently in relation to new articles I have created. A few days ago I created the article Goodwyns and added it to Template:Mole Valley. Five of my last seven notifications have said "Goodwyns was linked from X" where X is an article that is also linked in the Mole Valley template. In each case, somebody has merely edited article X. This is a bit concerning: will I continue to get notifications every time any change is made to any of the ~80 articles that are linked in that template? And likewise with any other new articles I create? (I wonder if it happens only to articles that are included in templates/navboxes?) Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 11:19, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

This is not a problem with Notifications, rather, it's how WP:What links here works. In order for a template that carries categories or links to register the page it is on with the category tree or What links here, the page the template is on must be edited or purged. It's the way it works, and Notifications can't change that. Nick1372 (talk) 14:43, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, that's fair enough; thank you for the explanation. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 15:20, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Scope of notifications

Are editors notified when they are mentioned only on talk pages (not in Wikipedia space)? Specifically, is The Signpost not covered by the system because it is in Wikipedia space, not talk space? See this discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:48, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Followup question on scope: if my understanding is correct (that only talk pages are part of notifications), then FAC, FAR, GAN, DYK etc pages are not included ? Could the scope be spelled out completely somewhere in the FAQ? I have been (perhaps incorrectly) thinking that I could "ping" via notifications people to FAC pages, which are in Wikipedia space. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Hover over the circled question marks under Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo to see the various things people can opt in to. Note both that non-talk pages are not covered, and that all of the settings are optional so you can never assume that someone by mentioning them will notify them regardless of where you post, unless you know which notifications they've chosen to receive. A number of people dislike the changes to the interface and will have opted out altogether. Bear in mind that this whole setup is temporary, and will change completely in a couple of months when FLOW goes live and talkpages in the current sense become obsolete. 78.149.172.10 (talk) 15:22, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Didn't get pinged

I was supposed to get {{ping}}ed here but didn't. Could it have been because the ping-sender subsequently modified the tag (to add additional ping recipients) a couple of minutes later here? Or is there a problem with multi-person pings? Just curious. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 13:19, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@TransporterMan: In order to ping someone, you must 1) link to their user (or talk?) page and 2) sign your post with four tildes. The pinger there didn't do that. Ignatz mice•talk 13:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit reverts

My edit was reverted here [5] yet I did not receive a notification. Is this feature working? I checked to see if I had it on under preferences and I do. Does the article need to be watched for it to work? That would sort of defeat the purpose. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:28, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Your edit was undone, not reverted (although it has the same effect, it is two different processes). To be honest, I've kind of wondered why reverts but not undoings were included, since they have the same editorial effect, although I suppose the latter can be added as an enhancement. Risker (talk) 01:32, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

(I have a limited understanding, but afaik...) The reverts (rollbacks) use an edittoken associated with the particular edit/editor (mouseover a rollback link, and see the "&token=...... string at the end of the url), so it is impossible to fake a rollback notice.

In contrast, the "undo" function just autofills the edit summary - and only if it's a single diff that is being undone - with the details that it includes, which could easily be faked or deleted before the undo-er presses "save".

I submitted bugzilla:49446 ("Linking a username in an Edit-Summary should trigger a notification") a few weeks back, which will presumably result in an undo having the desired result. (but the notifications will be avoidable, via unlinking or deleting the username from the summary). It will certainly encourage us all to check our edit-summaries a bit more! –Quiddity (talk) 03:10, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay thanks. Look forwards to seeing this feature added. Will definitely help dealing with spam. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:26, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not understanding Risker's distinction between a revert and an undo. An undo counts as a revert with regard to Help:Reverting, and it's how everyone without WP:Rollback or a vandalism tool such as WP:Huggle reverts. I often do get a notification when someone reverts by using the undo feature, though there have been times when I didn't get notification when I was reverted that way. Flyer22 (talk) 03:46, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I would understand if the distinction, with regard to getting a notification, was being made between using a feature to revert and manually reverting. But it appears that the IP used the undo feature. Or is it believed that the IP may have engaged in the faking aspect that Quiddity mentioned above? Flyer22 (talk) 03:57, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm. I was wrong. A simple Undo does indeed send a notification - I tested with my alt.

I'm not sure why some single-edit undos would fail to send a notification. I couldn't see anything in Bugzilla. If anyone figures out how to replicate the bug, post here, or make a new bug there. –Quiddity (talk) 04:15, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the code, it appears that Echo detects an "undo" by looking for the field wpUndidRevision in the submitted form data. This field is present in the form created when using the 'undo' link, but it isn't maintained if you use the Preview or Show changes buttons on the edit form. So "undo → Save page" would be notified as an undo, while "undo → Preview → Save page" or "undo → Show changes → Save page" wouldn't be. Anomie ⚔ 10:43, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting, Anomie. Flyer22 (talk) 20:20, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Miss it

I miss Notifications when I'm on other wikis. I reach for the 'thank' link when someone does some translation for me, and there's nothing there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:12, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

See now, I like the emails I get from other wikis better, although the ones attached to notifications are *much, much* better than they were at the start. But remember what your mother and/or grandmother said. Bread-and-butter letters have to be written properly. A thank you left on someone's talk page, even if it's only five words, is so much more meaningful, and it reflects well on both the receiver and the sender. I'll not belabour this further; I'm apparently now considered the disappointed mother of Wikipedia as it is. (Tip of the hat to @Tom Morris: for that nick.) On the other hand, I wouldn't be able to ping Tom about this. :-) Risker (talk) 03:58, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

My email pings with "Risker mentioned you on Wikipedia". And here I was thinking I was now party to an ArbCom case or an ANI thread... —Tom Morris (talk) 07:55, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

'Thank' is useful when the primary message to be communicated is "Hey, I saw that you got started on the page we were talking about; thanks". You probably wouldn't be happy having your talk page light up multiple times a week just to hear that I saw your activity, plus all the times that I have to talk to you about something in particular. 'Thank' is less intrusive than a talk page message, and that's often what I want. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:37, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

When are we getting diffs, Part Deux

I refer readers to this archived discussion from last month which leads to a bugzilla that hasn't moved very far since that time, if it's moved at all. I've just spent the last month getting all kinds of lovely email notices on a daily basis about changes to pages I watch at Meta. They have a diff to the specific change, a diff to all changes since I last viewed the page, an ordinary link to the page...in other words, they're actually useful. I could click them on my mobile and actually see what had changed without any difficult maneuvring. Today, for the first time in a while, I got an email telling me about a change to my talk page. The only thing it included was a link to my talk page, which was useless. Mine isn't the longest talk page in the world, but it didn't tell me if it was an addition to an existing section, a new section, whether or not it had an edit summary...nothing. And that doesn't even count the fact that a mockup was made a month ago to add diffs to the flyout attached to the little red number - and still has not been implemented. If you can't give us diffs, at least put a link to page history into the flyouts. It's a real nuisance to have to poke around in the page history to figure out what this "new" edit is; the least you can do is link us to it directly. At this point, the net result of this new system is that I'm ignoring all the notifications I'm getting, and I've not looked at the red number at the top for weeks, despite being logged in almost daily. It's great to create features that are hoped to help new users. But please stop creating features that eliminate the most useful parts of the ones that they're replacing. Risker (talk) 03:47, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I suggested this at the Hackathon: Make the date a hidden link to the diff (same color as now, only changes color on hover). Done. Experienced users will find it. Unexperienced users don't need it. --TMg 08:03, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

As expressed in the links I posted in the next section (and still a problem), I agree with Risker that this has been a real nuisance, and an impediment to enjoyable and productive editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with this. When I click the a notification or the "You have new messages" link, it's a hassle to have to go through the page history to find the diff of the specific change I am being notified of. Can't we tweak the software somehow so clicking the "You have new messages" link brings me to the diffs of all messages since the last time I checked, you know, exactly like used to happen? --Jayron32 15:40, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Jayron, there is a workaround script mentioned in my posts ... I haven't had time to try it, though, since this horrid miserable new invention had made my editing here so unproductive, frustrating, time-consuming, and expasperating. Because of this impediment to editing, I am finding it very hard to even keep up here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:50, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Workaround scripts are nice, but not a solution to the problem. We have hundreds of thousands of users, and fixes should be made at the software level, rather than forcing users to find and implement a kludge on their own. --Jayron32 16:01, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, d'oh ... evidenced by the fact that this faulty new thingamajig is so affecting my editing that I haven't even had time to implement a workaround (nor do I know how to anyway, nor should I have to anyway ...) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:03, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Risker, Jayron32, TMg and SandyGeorgia. As promised, we have just released new links to diff pages for three notifications on the English Wikipedia, in response to your request (T50183). This feature is now live for talk page notifications, as well as for mentions and thanks notifications.These diff links now appear both on the notifications flyout, near the timestamp ('View changes') -- as well as in the plain text emails. I hope this address your concerns effectively. Please let us know if you have any questions or follow-up recommendations. See the update below on our next steps for this project. Enjoy the new features! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:42, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

User:Fabrice Florin (WMF):

For me the diff link is underlined the whole time because I have underlined links enabled. Because of this I don't see the hover effect. Seems there is a little text-decoration:none; missing in the code somewhere.
Why not simply use the date as suggested? As said, unexperienced users don't need the diff link in my opinion.
The whole area is a link now. Is this new? I find this very confusing and disturbing. The mouse pointer never changes. Never, not even on the edge between the notifications. I can't tell what happens when I click. There is no target shown in the status bar of the browser. Opening in a new tab (middle mouse button) does not work. It's very hard to tell if I hit one of the links or the area outside of the link. The color changes are very slightly. This renders the bold link at the top of each notification pretty much a fake link. It tricks the user in thinking there is a link but it is no link any more. It's like random what I hit in the end. Imagine what happens on a touch device if you try to hit the tiny little diff link with your finger. Suggestions:
- Make at least a few pixels between the notifications unclickable. So the mouse pointer changes back to an arrow when moving the mouse. This would help a lot.
- Maybe make the whole empty padding area around each notification unclickable. Change the current <li class="mw-echo-notification" style="cursor:pointer;"><div class="mw-echo-state"> to <li class="mw-echo-notification"><div class="mw-echo-state" style="cursor:pointer;"> and put the onclick handler to the div instead of the list element.
- Besides, adding raw styles to the code always feels like a hack. Maybe jQuery adds the cursor property, I'm not sure.
- Or maybe make the top half of each notification clickable but not the bottom half. This would also fix the problem with the diff link.

--TMg

Diff system STILL not working

Andddd ... the diff system is still not working. Earlier today, an IP posted to my talk, I moved it to article talk. Minutes ago, Slp1 (talk · contribs) posted to my talk, yet when I click on the new diff, I only get the old post from the IP. This new system continues to be an impediment to productive editing. Why is this whole rollout not removed until it is properly tested? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:45, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

PS-- Slp1 posted to my talk at 12:39-- at 12:48 the post is still not showing in diffs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:49, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: We'll look into this.--Eloquence * 06:00, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

thanks-- that notification worked, and did pull up a diff to your post above. But while I have your attention ...

Eloquence mentioned you on Wikipedia talk:Notifications.
Diff system STILL not working
06:00 | View changes

That "View changes" line is so small that I cannot target it with my mouse. We don't all have young eyes :) I still haven't taken the time to install the script that returns my orange bar, but at this point it is becoming clear that would be a good use of my time ... I am still spending too much of my limited editing time just trying to get things to work in here. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:09, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Another example five days later

It is 14:29 UTC as I post this.

At 10:37 Crisco made a post to my talk. I responded to it. At 14:17 Ealdgyth posted to my talk. At 14:25, GamerPro posted to my talk. In the midst of trying to get some work done, my red thingie goes off, and the diff links back to Crisco's post, with no indication of Ealdgyth's or Gamerpro's posts.

Crisco 1492 posted on your talk page.
Advice: re
10:37 | View changes

Luis cerni and 1 other posted on your talk page.
A barnstar for you!: new WikiLove message
Yesterday at 21:44 | View changes

Your edit on User talk:Malke 2010 has been reverted by Malke 2010 (Show changes)
Undid revision 563527303 by SandyGeorgia (talk)rmv personal attack
Yesterday at 14:48

Oh, yea, have a look at that last personal attack diffed :/

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:29, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Just to get this clear, this is the notifications in the flyout that have not been updated, even though the red indicator shows you that a new 'event' has occurred right ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:58, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand your question-- what is a "flyout"? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:02, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

PS, your post triggered the red button, but Crisco's post still shows as my latest diff, but when I click on "All notification", I find your post here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Almost two weeks later, again

Things seemed to work for a while, but now back to the same I mentioned above. Old notifications showing, red bar won't go away, can't get links to new posts. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:31, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: What browser/version are you using? (It should be listed under the "Help->About" menu). That info might help the devs diagnose this problem. Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 17:03, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Internet Explorer 10, Version 10.0.9200.16635 ?? I think? Someone gave me this (sucky) computer ... thanks for checking into this ... sometimes notifications are working fine, sometimes they are not. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:31, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Exasperated

Please do not post to my talk page in response to this: I've had enough of this frustration for one day, and I still have a red notification that is outdated, and I still have an outdated notification list, and I still have to work to know who has posted to my talk. [6] [7] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:07, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Thread unarchived, because:

There's another user having this problem at WP:VPT#Notification Bug. I'll invite them to contribute details, over here.

Additionally, Sandy, if you could you give any additional details, such as browser/OS, and how long the problem has been ongoing, and what the most-recent notification-type is, that might help the devs determine the problem. Thanks! –Quiddity (talk) 00:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Just a note, that a comment at VPT links this to bugzilla:48568, so hopefully that gets fixed soon. (Further Details from Sandy, or anyone else experiencing it, might still help though) –Quiddity (talk) 23:02, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Notifications released on more sites, new features next week

Notifications inform you of new activity that affects you on Meta -- and let you take quick action.

Hi everyone, I'm happy to announce that we just released Notifications on Meta-Wiki today.

This version of the tool works in much the same way as on the English Wikipedia. The only differences are that page reviews are not supported on this site -- and no notifications are sent for global user right changes (only for local user rights on Meta). To learn more about this release, visit this special Notifications FAQ on Meta.

Notifications continue to be used widely here on the English Wikipedia, and we now have a wealth of data on that usage, which you can view on these new metrics dashboards. More on this later.

Next week, we plan to deploy HTML Email notifications, which can be tested now on test.wikipedia.org, if you feel so inclined. We are also working on an improved notification structure, which will make notifications easier to read. If all goes well, these changes should be available on enwiki by the end of Tuesday.

We've also released new icons for the Thanks and Talk notifications, as shown in the thumbnail to the right. The new Thanks icon is based on feedback from community members, who suggested on this talk page that we use a smiley symbol instead of a heart, which many found inappropriate; with this new icon, our design team combined a smiley with a cartoon bubble, to suggest both happiness and interaction. We hope this new icon will work for you, as it does for many other users.

Many thanks to our colleagues Benny Situ, Vibha Bamba and May Galloway for all their fine work on these features and deployments -- as well as to all the community members who generously guided our progress!

In coming weeks, we will be deploying Notifications on the French and Polish Wikipedias and a few other wikis, before making them available to all MediaWiki projects in the fall of 2013. If you are interested in getting Notifications for your project sooner, please contact me to discuss.

I will post another report after next week's releases. Regards as ever. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 02:04, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! Thanks for all your hard work! Do you need someone to add this information to the page? Nick1372 (talk) 03:51, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your work. How do we ensure that we only get plain text emails? the HTML is, I'm trying to be kind....identical to 98% of the spam I get. I don't want Wikimedia emails to look like the stuff I don't even open, and that sets off my security software on a regular basis. And...do you mean Wikimedia projects? If so, how come other projects get to opt in, but everything becomes mandatory on enwiki? Risker (talk) 05:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I think "MediaWiki projects" means all wikis that use MediaWiki software, not just Wikimedia Foundation projects. Nick1372 (talk) 05:32, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

@Risker: "that we only get plain text emails" You don't. You should configure your email client to prefer plain text. As has been stated from the start, Echo will send dual style emails, which means HTML AND PlainText variants in one single message. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:58, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments! Nick1372, you are correct that "MediaWiki projects" means all wikis that use MediaWiki software in the section above. I have since created this Notifications Release Plan on MediaWiki.org, to track our proposed releases on other projects. Expect this page to change often, as we are now starting the outreach to determine the best timing for releasing notifications on these sites. Risker, we understand your concerns about HTML Email, but plan to release it as the default email format for a number of reasons, which I have stated several times before on this page. In a nutshell, HTML Email provides a vastly superior user interface to plain text emails, because it offers clear visual cues as to which button to click on, and reduces clutter by hiding long URLs or de-emphasizing minor legal disclaimers. Though we realize that some Wikipedians perceive HTML Email as 'evil' or 'spam', I can assure you that we are not placing any special codes that might infringe on your privacy, and are only using this proven method for providing a better experience for all our users. Users who are opposed to getting HTML Email will be able to disable it with a special user preference for switching to plain text emails. And as TheDJ points out, you will automatically receive plain text emails if your email application is set for that display mode, or is unable to read HTML emails. Lastly, we are gradually deploying Notifications on all projects using MediaWiki software, and expect this tool to be installed across all these sites in coming months; so the English Wikipedia is not being treated differently than other sites, it just happened to be one of the first pilots. HTML Email is already deployed on mediawiki.org and meta.wiki, and we expect to have it up on enwiki by the end of the day this Tuesday, July 30th, if all goes well. Overall, we are committed to continuing to modernize Wikipedia's user interface, so the movement can grow by welcoming millions of other users who expect a better experience than we now provide. Thanks for your understanding. : ) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 02:13, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

"You have new messages" lies

Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but today I keep receiving the orange "you have new messages" notification, but when I click on it I see nothing has changed (in days), nor do I have any new notifications (e.g. thanks). Known bug? --Rhododendrites (talk) 19:08, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Same here. I think the software may be mixing up talkpage messages and thanks, as when I click the number I do see someone recently thanking me. Mogism (talk) 19:10, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I too have had 7 or 8 this evening. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:13, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

And me. No "real" notifications since yesterday, and no real talk page messages for several days. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 19:15, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Least I'n not the only one being lied to lol. →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 19:33, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I get the mini OBOD, but the notifications box still has the gray 0. öBrambleberry of RiverClan 21:24, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Looks like it's fixed. Theopolisme (talk) 21:27, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't look fixed for me. öBrambleberry of RiverClan 21:29, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I just had the same problem minutes ago. And when I clicked my talk page, the new messages bar was still there. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 21:35, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm still getting it, too. ~Hue Sat Lum 21:44, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I did have a new talk page message, but I deleted, but it the orange bar is still there. Evilgidgit (talk) 21:55, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I also am having this problem; I got a message from the DYK update bot, and I have been to my talk page, the number is zero and grey but I have the mini-OBOD. Chris857 (talk) 22:03, 30 July 2013 (UTC); PS. It has cleaned out for me. Chris857 (talk) 22:24, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi all, sorry for this problem, which we believe should now be fixed. If you are still experiencing this issue, try refreshing your cache. This appears to be due to an older version of our Javascript code remaining in some of your browser caches and conflicting with our new version. We are still investigating why and how this caching bug crept in to impact the Notifications code, as we are not aware of anything we did on our end to cause it. Please keep us posted on this issue and thanks so much for reporting it! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 08:51, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

HTML Email Notifications are live

Notifications inform you of new activity that affects you on Wikipedia -- and let you take quick action.

Hi folks, as discussed earlier, we have just deployed HTML Email notifications on the English Wikipedia, after testing it on MediaWiki.org and Meta-Wiki. You can read more about this HTML Email feature here. Another related feature we also deployed today is this improved notification structure that makes notifications easier to read.

Note that you can control which email notifications your receive and how they are displayed in your Preferences page. For example, if you would like to get email notifications when someone mentions your name on a talk page, check the 'Email' box next to 'Mentions', then click 'Save'. Or if you would rather receive plain text emails instead of HTML emails, select 'plain text' next to 'Email format' and click 'Save'. Easy as pie :)

Please let us know how these new features work for you. We're particularly interested in feedback on how HTML emails work on your mobile phone. Can you see the notifications well? Is it easy to click on the notification buttons? If you experience serious issues, please report them here -- or on Bugzilla (screenshots welcome).

Next, we plan to release notifications on the French Wikipedia, then incrementally on other wiki sites throughout the next few months, as outlined in this Notifications Release Plan. If you are active on another Wikipedia project and would like to get notifications deployed on your site, please read the checklist on that page and contact me to discuss.

We hope that you will find these new features helpful. They are part of an overall initiative to improve the user experience on Wikipedia by modernizing some of our tools to better match the expectations of our users. We think that these new features meet that goal -- and look forward to enhancing them in coming weeks with your help.

Thanks to all the community and team members who helped make this release possible! We are particularly grateful to our lead developer Benny Situ for taking these two new features through the finish line today. Onward! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:16, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

My first impression (notifications for new talk page messages):

One has to look twice to realize the message is not from Facebook. Without the subject line (which is good) I would very likely ignore the message.
It looks over-designed. In my personal experience, no useful information is to be expected behind such a shiny surface. But that might just be me.
On mobile: it works, but needs scrolling. The actual text has the right width to fit on the screen, but is pushed to the right by the icon.

Overall: it works, but I'll probably switch to text-only soon. — HHHIPPO 21:50, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Hhhippo, thanks for reporting these issues. Glad you find the subject line helpful. I understand your dislike of Facebook's user experience, but should point out that every top website nowadays uses HTML email as a primary form of communication], so you may want to include them all in your comment above, to be fair. Thanks for reporting your issue with mobile: any chance you could upload a screenshot and let us know which device, operating system and app or browser you were using? That would be much, much appreciated! We are aware of the fact that the fixed width table we use for HTML email is causing problems on mobile phones and plan to address that issue in coming days. I'm sorry that you plan to switch to plain text, but am glad that we provided you the option to do so. I hope you will try to give HTML Email a chance, as I believe that your initial reaction may in time change after you use the feature for a few days. It does have some definite benefits, which is why we took the time to develop this feature. : ) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:40, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fabrice, thanks for your answer. I'm not complaining about html e-mails as such, just this particular design. To me the first impression is much more like a newsletter or advertisement than a personal, possibly important message, so there's a risk the spam-filter in my head will down-prioritize it while I'm busy with other things, for example busy doing things on Wikipedia that the message is trying to stop me from doing (to be fair, in that case there are also the on-site notifications.) I'm aware that this is based on my personal experience, and might be different for others, so this is not a bug report, just one data point of feedback.

About the mobile: it's a HTC Desire, Android 2.2.2, built-in mail client. I don't have any way of taking screenshots installed, and I'm not sure I'll find the time to do so. The text itself does get wrapped to the right width on the phone (it doesn't on the PC, Thinderbird 17.0.7, Win7), but the icon is in the way. Does that need to be to the left of the message anyway?

I didn't switch to text yet, my talk page has rather low traffic, so it might take a while before I get too annoyed :-) — HHHIPPO 08:26, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you could make them in English? The links on mine say "Bericht bekijken Wijzigingen bekijken". I believe that is Dutch. Risker (talk) 22:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC) Note: reported as T54298 Risker (talk) 22:21, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
The next one is even more broken, with the text of the message itself garbled. I'd upload a screenshot, but I have no idea what the copyright is on the design of the emails. Risker (talk) 23:10, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Risker, thanks so much for reporting this issue, which we are sorry to hear about. At this time, we cannot reproduce it on our end. Could you please upload a screenshot and a URL to the specific 'View Change' message which caused a Dutch version of the diff to appear? There are no copyright issues with posting the screenshot, as our designs are all CC-BY-SA 3.0. Also, if you are uncomfortable sharing any information in public, you are welcome to email it to me directly. Did you by any chance visit the Dutch Wikipedia recently, or select the Dutch language in any of our language selectors? We want to get to the bottom of this issue, and would like to find out steps that would allow us to reproduce it. Thanks in advance for any tips you can provide to help us solve this issue for you. Thanks again for taking the time to communicate your experience with us, even when you are not always pleased with our work. It's very helpful to us! : ) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:40, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Just to note here, the issue was identified: the email was basing its language decisions on the language preference of the sender, not the recipient. A patch has been written and is now under review. The screenshot was sent to Fabrice and the developer team directly.

That doesn't really explain the garbled text of the message that was sent, though. Risker (talk) 02:52, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Risker, much appreciated. We were already aware of the weird characters issue (e.g.: ' & # 8226 ; '), which is triggered by HTML codes like the '<font>' tag. I have filed this T54313 so we can solve that issue as soon as possible. Both of these bugs have a high priority, and we will do our best to deploy them this week if we can. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 07:37, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I do agree with Hhhippo that the icon isn't adding anything to the email message. An ever increasing percentage of email software (including gmail) prevents automatic deployment of images unless the recipient consciously makes it their preference, so it isn't being seen by a lot of people. Nice that our stuff is CC-by-SA, but it still looks so much like Facebook to me that I'd half expect them to take exception at some point. Risker (talk) 13:18, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Update: Hi guys, I wanted to let you know that both bugs reported above have now been fixed, tested and deployed on English Wikipedia. If an editor using a different language leaves a message on your talk page, it will no longer display buttons in their language, but in yours, as intended. And if a text snippet has any special HTML characters, we do not show that snippet at all, as the notification sentence above provides enough information and links for you to take action, without requiring this optional payload. We think this is a reasonable solution for now. If needed, we can tweak this some more when we return from Wikimania in mid-August. Thanks to Risker and other team members for reporting these two issues, and thanks to Benny Situ for fixing them so quickly. We also appreciate your comments above about HTML Email icons, and will pass them on to our design team so they can consider them for the next version of this tool. Onward! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:44, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm getting HTML emails but they're pretty empty compared to the linked mockup, which quotes a paragraph of text. "EdwardsBot left a message on your talk page. [View message] [View changes]", no text. Under the previous system, I'd have got something like "/* This Month in GLAM: June 2013 */ new section" which isn't amazingly helpful but is at least some indication of the message; should there be something here? The notifications came from this edit and this edit, both of which had auto-edit-summaries and were made by bots. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:46, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback, Andrew Gray. For this release, we decided to simplify the this improved notification structure (as described here), because some of the edit summaries shown in notifications included weird characters that were confusing to users and not really needed. Though we realize that some users don't mind cryptic messages and would rather have more information, other users find them very distracting. Most of the information that's really needed is included in the first sentence, along with links to find out more. So let's try this out for a while, and see if it causes serious issues that should be addressed in coming weeks. From a design standpoint, less is more! Thanks for your understanding : ) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:20, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Now I'm confused. This edit, yesterday, produced a notification saying:

Sfan00 IMG left a message on your talk page in 'File:Survival-redundancy.pn...'.

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Survival-redundancy.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to se...

So we're getting a (partial) section header and first ~150 characters (which is great) for some edits but not for others. I don't mind not seeing edit summaries, but the previous notification I got was "EdwardsBot left a message on your talk page.", no section header, no message fragment. I think this is because there's no text snippet so it suppresses the edit summary, but for a new talkpage message, the edit summary is the section name - so almost guaranteed to be meaningful and not contain too much "rm coi per ani" jargon.

I'd strongly suggest modifying this so that even if there's no text snippet (ie a template message) in a new section message the header/edit summary is retained. New users will tend to get more notifications on their talkpage than comments in ongoing discussions, so this behaviour is going to mean that they get a disproportionately high share of the unclear messages, and it can end up reinforcing bad spirals - "you have a message from X" with no text is less likely to get a response than "you have a message from X: PLEASE STOP AND TALK". Andrew Gray (talk) 11:27, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Bug report: Linked Page

Today
Comparison of feed aggregators was linked from [[:[No page]]]: See all links to this page
04:27

So, guess: which page was linked?

BTW: Actually neither at MW.org nor on this page nor on the FAQ page is an explanation to report bugs... mabdul 05:21, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

That's odd. @Kaldari: Any idea what could be causing this? (Or who else to ping?)

Re: reporting bugs, this page works, or there's a section in the FAQ at Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ#How can I give feedback? that links to Bugzilla.

HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 18:46, 6 August 2013 (UTC)