Instead of simply 'Reply', it would be a lot better if the default edit summary was 'Replying to User:Example'. ~~~~
Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Replying/Flow
That's just an unnecessary ping in my opinion. Are you saying that the user would have to be pinged or only mentioned without a ping in the edit summary?
The reply need not cause a ping, but including the user name in the summary is a good idea
I can't see why that's an especially good thing: I'd never do that in a manual edit summary. It seems somewhat unnecessary to me - you'd look at the actual edit if you wanted to know who someone was replying to, surely.
@GhostInTheMachine, how would that longer edit summary help you? What if (as happens frequently in larger discussions, I use the [reply] button to "reply to" someone, but it's really just a general comment, and not actually a response to that person's comment?
If you don't want the reply some someone specific, you can easily delete 'ing to User:Example' from 'Replying to User:Example' to give 'Reply'. The mention is an improvement, and when I reply to someone, I expect them to be pinged, rather than to manually add @Username: in my reply.
See also https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Wvseihhzla6k4gik which could easily contrast replies to people vs replies to topics.
How would an edit summary of "Reply to Alice" be better for you than "Reply"?
Yes please. "Reply to Alice" should be the default. "Reply" is better than "Replying" as the space makes a double click simple and the user could easily alter it to "Reply about ABC ..." etc.
@GhostInTheMachine Whilst I might click the Reply button just after Alice's post, I might not be directly responding just to Alice, but to a number of editors in the thread above. If I really needed to be specific, I can always change the edit summary. I feel this is an unnecessary suggestion, sorry.
My question is how it would be better. Tell me a story that says something like "If the edit summary is the generic 'Reply', then I will _____ but if it says 'Reply to Alice', I will do this other thing, _____". Or if the story is "I'll do exactly the same thing no matter what the edit summary is, but I'll feel happier", then tell me that, too.
If the generic summary is "Reply", I will not ping the person I'm replying to. I will then have to look up the username of that person, and type "ing to [[User:Click-and-Drag+CTRL+V]] to go back and fix the less-than-helpful edit summary. This is time intensive.
If the generic summary is "Replying to [[User:Username]], then I don't have to do that. If I desire a generic reply, I can easily delete "to [[User:Username]]", or learn to reply to the header (see other request), instead of replying to a person.
or you can type '@' ' and you get a dropdown from which to select the names of who you specifically want to reply to, should you feel you do want to ping them. Not a huge amount of difficulty, I'd have thought.
@ doesn't bring up anything. Maybe in the visual editor it does, but certainly not in the classic interface.
It's working on this page; it's working on en-wiki; it's working on desktop and on laptop. I believe it doesn't work on mobile, and as an IP editor like yourself isn't able to ping anyone, so it probably doesn't work for you if you aren't registered. Have you tried logging in to a non-mobile device and trying it there?
This page doesn't have edit summaries. It also uses a weird annoying interface that isn't what's on enwiki.
This page uses Flow, which has advantages and disadvantages.
It sounds like people don't actually want the edit summary to say "Reply to Alice". Instead, they want Alice to be pinged automatically, and the edit summary is one way to implement that. Is that correct?
As long as Alice is pinged, I don't particular care how that's implemented. The ES seems the best way to implement it, since it'll show in the edit history and let others know Alice was pinged. But if there's another way, sure.
I believe the devs were saying last year that the ping could be sent automagically, without showing in the edit summary. You'd want a tick box in the "Advanced" drawer, so you could un-tick the person you're nominally replying to (e.g., if your comment were more general), or to tick it if you normally have it turned off.
The next step in that workflow is to figure out whether it's the recipient or the sender whose preferences matter. Could I say "nobody should ping me automatically", and what happens if your settings are "ping everyone I reply to"? Or, as I say, to wonder whether pinging one previous participant for a reply is the right answer at all, if everyone's going to have the [subscribe] button auto-ping them for all comments.
The pinger should be the one in control
Of course the pinger should have the final decision, but I find it an interesting idea that the pingee could set the default—some people like to be pinged about replies to them, as they wouldn’t notice it otherwise, others put the pages they comment on on their watchlist anyway and are just annoyed by the extra notifications. The pinger usually doesn’t know in which group the replied-to user belongs, so it was nice if the software knew it.
The pingee can completely reject pings in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo (from everyone or from named individuals; this prevents certain kinds of harassment), but it's that problem of not know whether I want to be pinged everywhere that could be added. We currently have:
- You can ping me, if you remember to.
- I reject {some/all} pings.
And we could expand this to offer:
- I will always be pinged, even if you don't remember to.
- You can ping me, if you remember to.
- I reject {some/all} pings.
"Reply to Alice" was the default for reply-link. I got feedback that it wasn't really correct when you were replying to the discussion as a whole, not specifically to that person (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/1086806346#Reply_without_ping). Perhaps it should only show "Reply to Alice" if your comment has a ping to Alice at the front.
Or perhaps "Reply to Alice", so that the edit summary pings her, if you have the "Ping everyone" button clicked.