Thread:Talk:Echo (Notifications)/Multi-level warnings and the user talk notification

At English Wikipedia, we recently discussed multi-level warnings and the user talk notification. The issue was set up as follows: An admin posted a set of w:Template:Uw-spam in March 2012 that lead to a block. The user recently indicated that they were not aware of all the messages. When the first w:Template:Uw-spam1 was posted to the user's talk page, the user saw You have new messages ( last change ). Over the next eight minutes, the admin posted three additional escalating warnings, but the "You have new messages (last change)." notification never changed, so the user in fact was not aware that there was something going on beyond someone trying to get a message to them. Not stopping to read a message is not an excuse for continuing spaming, but I think this is a problem in that it would be better to make the user additionally aware that there is some more urgent going on than someone merely trying to send them a message so that the user more likely stops to see what that might be. The above received the following suggestions:
 * To address this, perhaps the background color of the User talk notification can be tied to (1) the w:Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace being posted and (2) the permission of the editor posting the user warning. In other words, if an admin posted a series of user warnings like these, the color of the User talk notification should change to match the escalating warnings, with the last "You have new messages" notification background being red. (The color of the User talk notification would not change if a non-admin posted the same user warnings.) I think this will increase the number of times a user stops their behaviour before being blocked. Thank you for your thoughts on this. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 06:02, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
 * If we had a serious notice to post, perhaps we could make it so that instead of a link to a talk page, the editor only saw the new notice, and nothing else, until they acknowledged it. So this is some sort of more immediate talk method. Perhaps it could be done with a special style sheet, but be careful that we don't slow everyone else down while doing it. I think that not only admins should be able to use such a messaging facility, or colour changing facility, as it is likely that new page patrollers, or other change patrollers will need to use it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:23, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed to changing the template to something like "You have new warnings" instead of "You have new messages" and changing the background to red, but I don't think that this a high priority for a developer's use of time. After this user's block for spamming, maybe they will behave better in the future. Hopefully they learned that they ignore messages at their own risk. Pine ✉ 06:28, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, changing the notification based on what has been placed on the talk page isn't feasible without some relatively big changes. I think the simplest thing to do would be to add a number to the notification, for how many times your talk page has been edited since you last checked. When people see the number rise, they'll know something's up.  Equazcion ( talk )  06:47, 10 Jun 2012 (UTC)


 * The above responses are all great ideas I think any change to the original "You have new messages (last change)" should be enough to warn them that something is up and they really need to take a moment and look at their talk page. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 09:37, 12 June 2012 (UTC)