Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications/Flow

Automatic Topic Subscription Feedback: GKFX

6
GKFX (talkcontribs)
  1. What did you find unexpected about how the prototype looks and functions?
    • Testing as directed looked good to me in terms of UI. However, I (with the account GKFX) didn't receive any notifications for these edits (by me as GKFX2) despite being GKFX being subscribed, which seems wrong. I've checked my notification preferences which were all enabled, although I had not set an email address.
  2. What do you appreciate about the prototype?
    • Straightforward UI.
  3. What do you wish was different about the prototype?
    • I am interested in how "Once deployed, being automatically subscribed to discussions will be an opt-in feature for everyone except new accounts" will work - I hope that discovering how to opt in will be easy enough, particularly for people who are already using the discussion tools available. I would be interested in instead having a checkbox "Subscribe to this discussion" under the reply box, checked by default. This would be much like the "Watch this page" checkbox when editing articles, but with the presumption that people usually do want to see replies to their topics.
PPelberg (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Thank you for giving the prototype a try and taking the time to articulate what you encountered. Responses below...

I (with the account GKFX) didn't receive any notifications for these edits (by me as GKFX2) despite being GKFX being subscribed, which seems wrong.

Question: do the steps I've listed below accurately and exhaustively describe what you experienced?

  1. Visited Patch Demo and created a new account (username: GKFX)
  2. Started a new discussion titled New section title
  3. Noticed the You have been subscribed popup appear
  4. Clicked the Okay, I got it button
  5. Logged out of Patch Demo
  6. Visited Patch Demo again and created a new account (username: GKFX2)
  7. Posted two comments to the New section title discussion you started in step "2."
  8. Logged out of Patch Demo
  9. Logged back into the GKFX account
  10. ❗️Did NOT receive notifications for the comments you posted with GKFX2in step "7."

I hope that discovering how to opt in will be easy enough, particularly for people who are already using the discussion tools available.

We too are curious about whether experienced volunteers will find it easy enough to discover Automatic Topic Subscriptions. We'll be evaluating how "discoverable" Automatic Topic Subscriptions are by looking at the percentage of topic subscriptions that are initiated manually vs. automatically in T280896.

I would be interested in instead having a checkbox "Subscribe to this discussion" under the reply box, checked by default.

Question: Ah, this is an interesting idea. Can you say more here? What do you think would be valuable to you about having the ability to adjust whether you are notified about new comments in a discussion each time you post a new comment or start a new discussion?

GKFX (talkcontribs)
Missing notifications

I used Firefox's Container Tab feature to do the test, which lets you log into different accounts in different tabs by isolating the cookies (etc.) between each container. So I was logged into GKFX on one tab and GKFX2 on the other, and didn't log out at any point. I think I had:

  1. Created the section and let myself be auto-subscribed as GKFX, seeing the dialog box and clicking OK.
  2. Unsubscribed and resubscribed at least once to test that interface.
  3. Navigated to "Main Page", i.e. away from the talk page.
  4. Created GKFX2 in a new container tab
  5. Replied to the post as GKFX2
  6. Refreshed the page "Main Page" on the first tab (as GKFX). At this point I expected to see the notification icon light up, but nothing happened.
  7. I repeated steps 5 and 6 and got the same result again.

I've logged back into those accounts again, and noticed now that "Peter" has also replied to that section, I'm still subscribed to it (there is an [unsubscribe] link in its header), and there is no notification about Peter's edit either.

Subscribe checkbox

What do you think would be valuable to you about having the ability to adjust... I would tend to subscribe to most of the quiet, normal discussions I comment on, as there are only a few people involved and it's good to be able to follow up on any later discussion. However, if there is an enormous controversial discussion, I would be more inclined to just read what has been said so far, express my opinion, but not want to receive any further notifications on the subject unless I'm pinged. (Of course, there is already an unsubscribe button so the choice to opt out of some discussions is there anyway.) The other reason for this suggestion was to make the feature more discoverable by giving it the same familiar, fairly prominent UI that page watching currently has.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talkcontribs)

GKFX, volunteer-me is having problems with Firefox, too. Have you tried this out at enwiki, in your regular account (in prefs here)? Is automatic subscription working for you? Also, do you have NoScript or anything similar installed?

GKFX (talkcontribs)

I don't have NoScript or similar installed. I have Firefox's Tracking Protection set to strict, but I wouldn't expect that to interfere. I've tried it on my sandbox talkpage on enwiki and it worked fine, I got notifications along the lines of "GKFX-2 replied in 'New test section'". I remembered that when it broke on the test wiki I had subscribed, unsubscribed and resubscribed, but I tried that on enwiki and it continued to work. Automatic subscription seemed to work OK on enwiki too.

GKFX (talkcontribs)

I tried commenting from my brand new test account on enwiki (GKFX-2). I enabled automatic subscription in its preferences, replied, and it seemed to auto-subscribe me but without the first-use pop-up expected, and iirc the heading only displayed "[unsubscribe]" after I clicked "[reply]" again. The automatic subscription still worked fine for GKFX-2 in terms of actual notifications being generated, there was just something a bit off on the UI. So still definitely not a reproduction of the behaviour described at the start of this thread.

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