Topic on Talk:Notifications

Mentions require signature with timestamp?

8
Summary by Nemo bis

Mention depends on message tracking, which is hacky and muddy (checks timestamps and other criteria) and is contantly being worked on for several bugs.

Darenwelsh (talkcontribs)

I've been testing this out on our corporate wiki (currently MW 1.23.2). It seems like for a mention to work, it has to include the wiki-link to the user page I'm mentioning followed by a wiki link to my user page AND a timestamp. Is that correct? I'm curious if it would be possible to make use of the functions that determine who made an edit and when (like what is used for the Recent Changes page) instead of relying on a signature. In my tests, even if I use both usernames in links (the "to" and "from"), but don't include a timestamp, it seems to not be recognized by Echo as a mention event.

Nemo bis (talkcontribs)

Yes, it's correct. There are also other checks, for instance if you remove a line then it's not considered a message so the mention doesn't go out.

Darenwelsh (talkcontribs)

Could you explain the reasoning behind using the link to user page and timestamp in the signature instead of the methods that are used to create Recent Changes?

Nemo bis (talkcontribs)

What are "the methods that are used to create Recent Changes"?

Darenwelsh (talkcontribs)

My point is that for every page revision, there is a record of who made the revision and when it happened. So why not use that information instead of relying on the signature? The way that it is working now, if your signature doesn't include a link to your user page, it doesn't work.

Nemo bis (talkcontribs)

The signature is "only" used to (help) determine whether an edit is a new message or not. The extension checks the edit in the moment it's saved, it doesn't parse the whole talk page looking for new messages if this is what you were "afraid" of.

This was decided in the specifications: Echo_(Notifications)/Feature_requirements#User Mention (I didn't make them).

Darenwelsh (talkcontribs)

I understand that the four tildes which generate the signature are used to signify that the revision is meant to be recognized by Echo as a notification. I could see how a user might want to correct a typo and would not want that showing up as a notification. I'm sure it could be overwhelming if every edit on that discussion page showed up as a notification.

That said, when you rely on using four tildes for this feature, it seems to require that the user's signature include a link to their user page. But if someone using MediaWiki with Echo chooses to use a signature that does not link to their user page, then Echo will not recognize those edits for notifications. An example of this: A user on SemanticMediawiki.org might set their signature to link to their user page on Mediawiki.org.

Similarly, I don't see why Echo requires a timestamp in the edit to qualify for notification. When the page is saved, the revision table is appended with an entry including rev_timestamp and rev_user. Why not just use that?

Why not just determine some minimum criteria based on number of characters added to the page or use some set of regular expressions to test that it was not just a typo correction?

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I believe the reason it checks for a tilde-generated signature and timestamp, are to avoid accidental pings during section-archives, or other types of thread-refactoring, e.g. here I moved a single thread to my talkpage archive.

I'll ask if the devs there were any other rationales for relying upon this trigger. [Edit: Confirmed. That is/was the main reason.]

Thanks Nemo, I didn't know about the no-line-removal criteria. I've added that to the Notes at Echo (Notifications)/Feature requirements#User Mention.

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