One of the features I liked about reply-link script on enwiki is that it pre-filled a {u|username} ping template in the reply. It'd be nice to have this as a default or optional feature (and to be able to set which template it uses as some wikis have multiple).
Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Replying/Flow
This has been discussed. The team has also considered a different approach, which would give you a tickbox (either checked or unchecked by default). Imagine something like pinging via the edit summary, instead of needing to include a link to your username in the actual comment.
Are you using it in the visual or wikitext source modes? In the visual mode (and hopefully, eventually, in both modes), if you type the @ symbol, you can easily search for the name you want to link.
A tickbox would be nice, and/or a preference to set the default. I've been using it in source mode, I'll try it out in visual, didn't know about the @ thing. Thanks!
The prefs setting could go two ways: Does my pref make me defaultly ping all those other editors, or does it defaultly make everyone else ping me? What do you think?
I think everyone would absolutely love the second one. I wouldn't want to set the preference if I could have the recipient set the preference for me.
I would love it if the person I'm replying to could set it for me and if I could set myself to "always ping". I'm forever trying to guess whether the fact someone didn't ping me means they hate being pinged to a discussion they're already participating in. I've seen people get quite annoyed by that, but my own preference is to be pinged every time I'm replied to.
Also if you've set yourself to always be pinged on reply, and someone replies to you and removes that auto-ping, it provides interesting information. :)
I asked about default-pinging editors at w:en:Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project#Experiences, and people have been enthusiastic about getting lots of pings.
This post was hidden by Levivich (history)
Just one more thought to add to this: pinging in the text of the comment (i.e., starting this comment with "@Whatamidoing") is better, IMO, than just having a checkbox that would put the ping in the edit summary or somewhere other than the text of the comment. For two reasons: 1) the @username in the text of the comment makes it very clear who the comment is directed towards (clearer than just the indent level, and sometimes the indent level you need to use doesn't match who you're pinging or to whom you're addressing a comment or part of a comment), and 2) it creates a record on the page that a particular comment included a ping, so others see that in the future (whereas if it were in the edit summary, it would be much harder to find)... this can be useful later, and also useful for monitoring canvassing.
In that case, when I reply after you, but not specifically to you, then I could backspace over the ping to remove it.
Have any of you checked your contribs to see how often your talk-page replies (not starting a new section or correcting a typo, for which this wouldn't apply) include pinging someone? If we're voluntarily pinging people in 25% of replies, then I don't think we'd want to suggest it in 100% of replies. But if we're doing it in 75% of replies, then we probably should.
Levivich, you might have seen this on enwiki, but for anyone else who's interested:
If you want to try out the toolbar for the wikitext 'source' mode, go to the end of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing on your home wiki and tick the box for "Enable experimental tools in the quick replying and quick topic adding features' source modes"