Notifications/Sorting schemes/en

The overall task is: Deciding how to sort the notification types (e.g. "new usertalkpage message", "your edit was reverted", "a page you created has been linked to", "thanks", etc) into two groups. The current sorting has some problems.

There were formerly two proposals. After some feedback we have decided to keep only one alternative to the current scheme (April 2016). The team wants your feedback on it (your preferences, or concerns). The recommendation is we start off with the "By urgency" grouping (prototype).

Please share your feedback at the Phabricator task or here on MediaWiki.org.

Problem to solve
There are currently two Notification flyout menus, one for Alerts and one for Messages. Different notification types show up on different menus. There have been criticism over time that the scheme for dividing up the messages is unclear and/or inconsistent. These criticisms include the following:
 * Ideas of "urgency" and "requiring follow up" are mixed together, making it difficult to explain or predict why different items are in each flyout.
 * Currently, "Alert" items are automatically "marked as read" on opening the flyout. Yet some of these require follow-up or other action to be fully understood (e.g., Mention), so this feature's value is not always clear.
 * Because "Alerts" are perceived as "Urgent", the "Thanks" and other items seem out of place in that flyout.

Goals

 * To create a scheme that is easy to understand, learn, and predict.
 * To give editors clearer information about their new notifications.
 * To reduce unnecessary distraction from non-urgent notifications.
 * Something that works well for editors who get large (and small) quantities of notifications.
 * Something that scales well, as new (requested) notification types are created.
 * Something that scales well, once cross-wiki notifications are available.

Types
See examples of the most common notification types at: File:Notifications Catalog.png

Options

 * 1) Current
 * 2) Urgent versus Non-Urgent
 * 3) (formerly and now abandoned) Follow-up versus No follow-up (is a reply needed/likely)

(This table has no annotations, and just shows the most common notification-types. See a more detailed version here at googledocs which also includes a 3rd and 4th (more complicated) alternative.)