Talk:Notifications

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This discussion uses Flow, a discussion style similar to many internet forums. To add your feedback, scroll to the end of any comment and click "Reply", or type your comment in the box at the end of the thread, where it says Reply to "Feedback requests - Notifications badges, and grouping notifications by type". Or you can start a new topic, with the form on top of this page. That's all, pretty much.

Newuser Welcome mail notification

2
Derek Jones Smr (talkcontribs)

Hello!

I create users in my wiki manually and specify a correct email adressess.

New user first time logging to my wiki can see its first notice "Welcome to mywiki, ‪newuser‬! We're glad you're here."

How can i sent this Welcome message or any other greetings message to the users mail automaticall after create accounts?

My wiki can sent messages to another users, its work with test mail from one user to other

Here are some other settings that may be needed:

$wgEnableEmail = true;

$wgEnableUserEmail = true; # UPO

$wgEmailAuthentication = false;

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Hello

I asked engineers regarding your request.

The answer is you can't do it without creating a new notification type (via Extension:Echo) and calling it yourself.

You'd have to change $wgEchoNotifications['welcome']['category'] from system-noemail to system. But unless you use some nonstandard registration mechanism, the user won't have a confirmed email address at this point and the email won't actually be sent.

Reply to "Newuser Welcome mail notification"
Strainu (talkcontribs)

Hi, I have a bot that tries to notify people and it seems those notifications do not arrive. I don't see any limitation in the docs, so I'm wondering what could cause the failed notifications?


I use a substituted template which receives a username as param ({{subst:pșn|user=X}}) and outputs the username using a {{u}}-like template: "Try to notify {{u|X}}". I tried substitution by hand and it seems to work, as well as the template itself and other notification methods, so the only hypothesis I have left is the bot flag.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Could you link to one or more example edits/diffs, where

  • the bot made an edit, and
  • the user has confirmed they didn't receive anything, and
  • the user has confirmed their Notification-preferences are set to receive that type of Notification, and
  • the user has confirmed they haven't "muted" the bot

That information might help someone to investigate further.

Strainu (talkcontribs)
Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Hmmm. With the I-am-not-a-dev disclaimer... and after looking at the technical docs for this feature in Manual:Echo#Mentions... My guesses would be it's either:

  1. The level-3 ===header===.
    • If I understand correctly, the code doesn't send mention-pings for new level-3 sections. Is it feasible for the bot to use a level-2 ==header== instead?
  2. or the bot-signature is not close-enough to a default-signature.
    • perhaps just remove the fullstop after the bot's userpagelink?
Strainu (talkcontribs)

The way I read the code, only level 1 does not count. It's very likely the second hypothesis, will test. Thanks!

Nemo bis (talkcontribs)

I don't understand why notifications are bucketed only by wiki. Notifications should be bucketed by importance/priority/topic. While one could think that users want to work on a single wiki at a time so that wiki is their current priority, this idea seems quite outdated with a centralised notification system, which should help reducing barriers between wikis. I want to see all the user talk messages I received on any wiki together, before anything else; I may then want to check whether any edit of mine has been reverted on any wiki and still requires my attention; etc. Then I want to review the mass of notifications (e.g. all the other discussions, if they're many) by topic, so probably by wiki. If the bucketing by wiki is not replaced, at least some things should be taken out of it (maybe configurable), like the talk edits.

Jorm (WMF) (talkcontribs)

There are two differing concepts here, and we don't have a great set of agreed upon terms for them, but for the purpose of my response I'm going to use "bucketing" and "stacking".

"Bucketing" is a "by-wiki" collection: all notifications from a specific wiki go into the same bucket.

"Stacking" is a "by-type" collection: all notifications of the same type go into the same stack.

The current design (as shown) operates on a bucket-primary, stacking-secondary process. That is, notifications are bucketed first, and then stacked within those buckets.

If I understand you correctly, you are asking for a "stack first, then bucket" ordering. There's some merit to that idea; I like it a lot for the use case you're discussing. I'm not advocating a change, however, since the reason we chose "bucket, then stack" is a technical one. It is going to be significantly faster and more accurate to bucket and then stack, because each "bucket" is actually going to be a single api call, which can be loaded and stacked independently. To do a stack-then-bucket process, we'll have to do multiple API calls to multiple wikis before we sort and stack the notifications (which will have to be done client side, in this instance).

I should point out that we are in the very earliest of stages for this feature, and we are still doing research as to the best design we can create. So it may be we do a stack-then-bucket, or that such a thing will be configurable (though probably not: I'm adverse to adding preferences for changing interface behavior).

Nemo bis (talkcontribs)

Thank you for the answer: yes, you understood correctly. I hope there will be room for at least some "stack first, then bucket" (for user talk edits for instance), but I understand the performance constraints.

Sj (talkcontribs)

Revisiting this old thread: Our API framework may need an upgrade here. The idea of single wikis living in a vacuum was very simple, and specifically ignored the common cases -- more common now -- of clusters of related wikis. However, most wikis come in clusters:

  • Some are groups of wikis that are really about the same content (but arbitrarily split into multiple 'different wikis' by language[1]).
  • Others are groups of wikis on related topics, used by the same group of people. Here often a 'new wiki' rather than a 'new namespace' was chosen to make it easier to have different main pages, or different policies per topic. None of this technically requires a separate wiki; these clusters of wikis often share 90% of their templates, policies, categories.

The difference between a namespace and a new wiki, for a cluster with shared userpool, is only semantic. And we should offer APIs that let developers ignore that semantic difference. Wikimedia isn't the only group with a cluster of many wikis; most organizations I know that use wikis have a cluster of at least 2 or 3. And all of them need cross-wiki tools, notification, change-tracking.


  1. because of useful interlang features, and because we have no way in the metadata to note the language of individual pages on a single wiki, or to filter RC by such metadata
Sj (talkcontribs)

Bump: Can we unbucket notifications now?

Reply to "Buckets"

Email Notifications for Everything!

3
PeterEssexHeritage (talkcontribs)

I would like the option to receive notification by email for any event. This would mean that infrequent users, like me, would not have to log-in to the Wiki to check things.

The emails should include as much information as possible about the notified event, in the email body.

The emails should keep being sent, even if the user hasn't logged-in to check the previously notified event.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Thanks for the suggestion, and the detailed use-case explanation on phabricator. :)

As you probably saw, I've merged the task you filed, into the older task (Phab:T114587 into Phab:T33928).

That said, Echo is not part of the software used for sending these watchlist notifications - Echo is an extension that is only ~3 years old, and watchlist notifications are part of "core" mediawiki. However, there have been discussions about changing that, and hopefully things will change in time, as the developers decide how to best handle these things.

Hope that helps.

PeterEssexHeritage (talkcontribs)

Thanks, Quiddity.

I would also like my comments here to be taken into account for all Echo notifications, as well as Watchlist notifications.

As a relatively infrequent user, I would like to monitor everything from my email client without logging-in to Wiki - email is where many of the notifications I receive about other things arrive.

Ideally, the emails would have taglines in the subject, or be from a specific email address so they can be automatically filed for checking together.

Reply to "Email Notifications for Everything!"

Notifications from InternetArchiveBot

4
Katpatuka (talkcontribs)

I'd appreciate NOT to be notified by email from bots like InternetArchiveBot. Adding them to Notifications setting in Preferences does not suppress those emails.

Matěj Suchánek (talkcontribs)

What kind of emails does it send to you?

Katpatuka (talkcontribs)

Example from zhwiki:

您好!

Wikipedia页面东禅寺水库已于2021年2月12日 (星期五)被InternetArchiveBot更改,请浏览

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%9C%E7%A6%85%E5%AF%BA%E6%B0%B4%E5%BA%93

查看当前版本。


要浏览此次更改,请参见https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E4%B8%9C%E7%A6%85%E5%AF%BA%E6%B0%B4%E5%BA%93&diff=next&oldid=59810881


要查看您上次访问以来的所有更改,请参见https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E4%B8%9C%E7%A6%85%E5%AF%BA%E6%B0%B4%E5%BA%93&diff=0&oldid=59810881


编辑摘要:补救1个来源,并将0个来源标记为失效。)

#IABot (v2.0.8

Xaosflux (talkcontribs)

It looks like this is the issue being discussed at phab:T262750 - you may want to follow the discussion there.

Reply to "Notifications from InternetArchiveBot"

I think this is good

10
Darkfrog24 (talkcontribs)

I just discovered this. Knowing that could mute notifications from individual users might have helped dispel a fight on Wikinews six months ago. I felt like people were ringing my doorbell over and over while I was trying to sleep. More people need to know about this feature. I don't know if it does exactly what I hope, but it looks great and my thanks to all the users who worked on it.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Thank you for your gratitude!

A good way to be aware of these new things is to subscribe to Tech News. Only 7 Wikinews community pages receive this newsletter, I invite you to check if your Wikinews is subscribed. You can also subscribe to Tech News for yourself if not already done.

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

It would be nice if there was a prominent link from the actual notification to this page, so people know where to go for more information. Not everyone has the time to go through all the technews. Just my $.02

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

@Ottawahitech, I'm not sure to understand what you mean. Can you rephrase your suggestion?

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

@ Trizek (WMF):

> @Ottawahitech, I'm not sure to understand what you mean. Can you rephrase your suggestion?

I would love to, but just finding my way back to your post took way too much effort. Let's face it, these flow discussions do not work. I cannot even indicate who I am replying to, is it Darkfrog24 or to you?

Darkfrog24 (talkcontribs)

No, Ottawahitech, it's not me. I made the first post in this thread but no others. I keep getting notifications about it (they do not bother me).

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

@Ottawahitech, this topic is about Notifications, not Flow. If you want to complain about Flow, it is there.

If you have feedback about notifications, and especially how to mute notifications, please share them in this topic.

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

@ Trizek (WMF):

> If you want to complain about Flow, it is there.

I tried, but failed. So, since I have your attention here @ Trizek (WMF) I get the distinct impression that wmf is ignoring feedback from us? I have a feeling I can spend my life following links from page to page, but never get a straight answer from anyone. Surely I am not the only one who feels this way?

I say I failed, because I clicked on the link you suggested and found this: "no longer in feature development" - why? There are only two messages in that discusion, the first one is the question that is on the minds of many, posted by User:Martin m159. The 2nd and last message is a post by User:AKlapper (WMF) ithat instead of replying merely links somewhere else.

But worse, THERE ARE NO REPLY BUTTONS anywhere for anyone who wants to participate in that discussion.

---

UPDATE: I see a different userid now when I look at the same thread: User:Valerio Bozzolan, weird?

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

First, would it be possible to have this discussion using a different tone. I can understand that you are frustrated and you want to share your frustration, but I invite you to remain civil, and avoid using caps or passive-aggressive wording.

About your impression of the Wikimedia Foundation ignoring feedback, I hope this is not the case. I'm sorry of you have this feeling. I like to get feedback about active projects I work on and the teams I'm helping like feedback too.

Flow/StructuredDiscussions are no longer developed and will be replaced at some point by this new talk pages system.

If you like to reply to a conversation on Flow/StructuredDiscussions that has been resolved, please re-open it. You can re-open a Topic anytime, by clicking on the Topic's menu (three dots icon).

This said, I'd like to keep things in topic here. So I won't reply to comments about Flow/StructuredDiscussions anymore in this current topic; please post at the appropriate venues.

Thank you for your understanding.

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

I have attempted to respond, again. This time on your talk-page.

Reply to "I think this is good"

Watchlist notifications

3
Subfader (talkcontribs)

2 years later there is still no watchlist support?

I plan to add Echo on my wiki, but this will be the first thing users will miss.

PeterEssexHeritage (talkcontribs)

Email Notification for Pages on User's Watchlist

The current system of email notifications for pages on a user's watchlist needs improvement:

- It is not clear which types of edits (normal, minor, or bot) will trigger emails.

- Because the notification emails stop if a user doesn't visit the changed page while logged-in, it can be difficult to report any problems with the notification emails, because the reporter will always be asked if they are sure they visited the page.

- I would personally like a notification email for every change to a page on my watchlist, whether I visited the page after the last change or not.

- The current system has reported bugs.

See the following tasks in Phabricator:

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T29884 - Enotif doesn't send email if page on watchlist edited following a minor edit and enotif not configured to send minor edits.

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T40874 - Minor bot edits don't trigger email notifications even with "E-mail me also for minor edits of pages" selected.

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110850 - Wikipedia Watchlist Notification Emails Not Arriving.

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114587 - Email notification for every single change to a page on watchlist.

Tinss (talkcontribs)
Reply to "Watchlist notifications"

Get notification when category gets a new member?

3
GoodClover (talkcontribs)

It appears that subscribing to changes on a categories' page doesn't notify you when new pages are added to the category, this feature would be very useful.

Does anyone know if this is possible, and if so, how?

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Thank you for your feedback!

At the moment, it is not possible to get a notification when a page has been added to a category.

Getting a notification, or a watchlist entry, when a page is added to a category, is something requested time to time. Overall, this is covered by the need to have better tracking options for categories.

The need of a tracking option has been suggested as a feature request during the last Community wishlist survey. But I'm afraid that this suggestion is far from being the most wanted feature.

Notifications aren't on a feature improvement list for now, so I'm afraid that you may have to wait until new plans are made for Notifications. Sorry. :(

GoodClover (talkcontribs)
Reply to "Get notification when category gets a new member?"

People keep complaining that the notifications are broken don't they...

20
RTG (talkcontribs)

When you get a notification or alert, you click the button. If you are not on the wiki it came from, it doesn't appear. It in fact disappears from the button list. Then you get freaked out... where did this notification go? What was it about?


If the button is going to change colour on a wiki, it doesn't matter which wiki asked it to change colour, the notification must appear in the place where I pressed the button.


Once the list is fixed to actually display the notifications... there is never a reason to remove anything from the list unless the user specifically goes to "All notifications" and removes the item from the list. If a door handle disappears when you use it, then you close that door, you are now locked in. This is no added bonus in the design of a door.


Thanks o/

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

What I have is when you get a notification or alert, you click the button. If you are not on the wiki it came from, it appears as a cross-wiki notification.

Don't you get this? By any chance, haven't you deactivated it?

RTG (talkcontribs)

I don't even know where the settings are, preferences I suppose, when I got his notification I was having a look at the main page on Wikipedia. It showed on the blue button on the left and it showed me the last Wikipedia note I got. The trick is to click into "See all notifications" and then to click "All" or "Read" and check each wiki to see which one was most recent. I've definitely lost a few notifications before I figured this out. I did see a lot of complaints somewhere, the help section of en.wiki I think. Seems to be relatively easy to fix however now that I can see where they went !

RTG (talkcontribs)

On the right doh! The button on the right. The other left.

RTG (talkcontribs)

No my cross wiki is enabled...

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Oh, you mean not getting - or not retrieving - notifications from Special:Notifications? Because all notifications displayed there are also listed on the panel when you click on the bell or the tray.

RTG (talkcontribs)

I get to Special:Notifications from the bottom of the list of the bell or tray when I click them and no new notification appears. Although I have cross-wiki notifications enabled, you may be on to something because I've purposely allowed the lists on each button to grow long. They do not show notifications from other wikis, either here or on en.wiki. On this wiki the list is solely from this wiki, however cross-wiki is checked in preferences. On Special:Notifications each wiki has its own list no mater which wiki it is on.


I'll try to summarise. Cross-wiki is enabled on all wikis. My buttons light up for a notification, but when I press them, I have to navigate to Special:Notifications where the new notification will be marked as read. I have to search through the notifications marked as read to find what wiki lit the buttons. When I press a lit button, it will mark all notifications as read, but it will not show notifications from other wikis. All cross-wiki is doing for me is marking notifications as read without showing them to me.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I came this conversation following a cross-wiki notification from another wiki. At least cross-wiki notifications work for one user. :)

Did you had cross-wiki notifications in the past? Is missing these notifications a new issue you're facing? If so, since when? Have you enabled a global preference/gadget/script recently?

On Special:Notifications, when a cross-wiki notification is read, it disappears from the list. On the panels it doesn't disappear unless if you click on the blue dot.

Next time you have a missing notification, can you take screenshots of every steps you went through? You can share them they way you prefer, even by email.

RTG (talkcontribs)

Trizek, over a year at least, and it is very simple. I press the button. The note I see is the last one from the wiki I am on when I press the button. The solution is simple. Never delete a notification ever unless I press a delete. There is no need to delete a notification ever., from the list where the button is, from the list at Special:Notificions, none of it. If you think there is a reason that peoples notifications should be deleted before they ask for them to be deleted. ever, you are way off what is required. Give me a reason to delete someone elses notification if they have not pressed a button which says delete? What if I press a notification and I have to rush out the door or my computer crashes, you've really made the notifications as difficult as you possibly can without purposely trying to make them difficult, with this one minor, needless issue. It is a frustrating thing. It is not really anything but a frustrating thing. The length of the list does not make it less usable, but deleting items from the list makes it no use at all. Please decide to fix it today.


The only gadget I have enabled allows me to transfer images from Wikipedia to Commons. I definitely had this problem before I enabled the gadget. You have said it yourself. When an item is clicked in the list it disappears. Are you afraid that I might want to see it again? Am I supposed to have a photographic memory? Please, stop deleting what are essentially my messages. Don't ask me why or think about it. They are messages for me. Allow me to decide when I am finished with them. Nothing else can make sense. I don't want emailed every time I create a redirect. I check Wikipedia 10x more often than my email even if I have not edited.Can you not see how deleting my messages is outside your remit? Yes you can. Yes it is. Leave them there where I can see them. That is what those messages are for. They are not there to be clicked. Clicking them is a feature. They are there to be seen. Come on, fess up, you don't know why they are deleted. You just assume it is a standard form of housekeeping. If your emails auto deleted, and they said they didn't know why you thought that was an issue, you'd go nuts and drop the email site immediately. You do agree with this. Don't allow me to seem as though I do not appreciate your hard work, but you've got to stop deleting notifications now, yes?

RTG (talkcontribs)
RTG (talkcontribs)

In the above screens, I opened both Wikipedia and Commons at the same time. They both would show the blue button before I pressed it. I have this page open in them, but the notification was for this thread. As you can see only notifications for that site are showing. Cross wiki is enabled of its own volition. And you can see how I've had to open Special:Notifications to find my way here. I'm a committed tab user.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Screenshots are empty, sorry.

A notification is never marked as read until the user mark it as read or visit the page where the notification comes from (their talk page, a talk page where they are pinged...).

  1. get a cross-wiki notification
  2. click on the alert - I have the "you have a cross wiki notification" notification. Nothing happens if I leave the panel.
  3. click on the bundled notification - I have the detail of where the notification is. Nothing happens if I leave the panel or don't click on the notification.
  4. click on the notification - I'm redirected to the place where the notification is. The notification disappears from the wiki where is doesn't originate from. Is this last step the issue you mention?

I understand your frustration and I'm doing my best to help you. Please don't forget this. I just try to understand your case and document it, so that the team can re-discuss about the issue.

RTG (talkcontribs)

I blanked the screenshots when I thought you might have seen them. I'll blank my bookmarks bar and leave them uploaded this time.


I have never before seen "You have a cross-wiki notification", or even heard of the cross-wiki setting before you mentioned it. I assumed notifications were automatically cross-wiki. I'm so sure that at some time I have had a cross wiki notification, but all I can truly remember is that I sometimes got notifications, but when I clicked the icon, no new notification appeared. I always assumed I had been pinged to a discussion and missed it.


What may be relevant is that I have been through the list of Chrome functions at one time and disabled many of them, but I imagine the notifications are server side only. I used to use the green on black version of Wikipedia, and I use a personalised signature. That's all the preferences I remember using. I just do not play with the preferences and settings.


You have given me 4 options but none of these seem to be correct. I get the lit button, I press it, it shows only on-wiki notifications. After I press it, the button is no longer lit no matter what I do or what I see.


https://snipboard.io/grjpGR.jpg


https://snipboard.io/ZbeiVa.jpg


https://snipboard.io/OiTna1.jpg


No, I don't expect anything from you, Trizek. In fact, I had taken it for granted that you were a volunteer until now, but I should be aware that you are an employee. I may have been a little bit condescending in the other thread, about deleting notifications. I know we should expect more careful interaction with volunteers and more demanding interaction with employees. It is difficult to explain that. You're fine. I'm sure the screenshots will show the full content of my problem. I press the button, I get on-wiki only, though the button lights for the notification, and goes back to unlit after I clicked the list. In these screenshots we can see "Notices from other wikis"... but on en.wiki my notification list is long. I have not seen this before and to find it on en.wiki I have to scroll a long way down.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Then you press the button (I assume that's the bell icon or the tray icon), you have your list of unread notifications.

The simple notifications you mostly have are notifications for the wiki you are currently on. If you click on one of them, you directly go to the page where the action is happening.

The "More notices from 4 other wikis" on the second screenshot is indeed a cross wiki notification (actually 4 of them, bundled). These notifications are listed by date and hour. The 4 cross-wiki notifications you have may be older than the others.

You can discard a notification (mark it as read) by clicking on the blue dot at the top-right. You can mark it as unread by clicking on the grey circle, at the same place. How often do you do this?

Careful interaction with everyone should be the standard. After all, we are all humans beings. :) The only difference is you can be more demanding on the quality of my relation with you. Speaking of which, I'm not around until Monday. See you then!

RTG (talkcontribs)

When I took these screenshots was the first time I had noticed this item which appears white as though it was something I had already read before. It is also so much more visible on the Commons wiki because there is much less interaction and very much less notifications. On the en.wiki it is not visible when I open the notifications from there.


I never discard a notification. Why would I do that? I cannot understand where you are getting the idea that notifications are deleted as standard. Why don't you put the most recent notification at the top, and never delete any notifications, which is what I believe is the standard way of doing it on other systems, and it will be completely obvious and intuitive...

RTG (talkcontribs)

You are probably wondering how I have notifications which I have not previously clicked, but most of my notifications involve current discussions. I can usually access discussions from my contributions, so I have purposely opened my contributions when I have notifications, read which pages have pinged me, and access them from the contribs, so that the messages will not be deleted from the list and I can open it to easily remind myself they are there.

RTG (talkcontribs)

Today I got a notification for this wiki but I saw it very early in the morning and went back to sleep for a while, not remembering what it was about or exactly which page it was on. I had to go to the Special:Notifications list to find which wiki it came from. Once I had clicked the item in the list... it is no longer available. I had not participated in the discussion, so the page is not available in my contributions. Once I clicked it from the Special:Notifications list, it is gone. Fix that genre of notification deletion and you'll go a long way toward fixing my whole problem here.


It is like walking up a flight of steps, but each step crumbles behind you. The situation where it is complained as a problem is obviously rare, however, the situation where this deletion is a useful feature has yet to be defined. It is totally natural and understandable to add this feature, however, please refine it, thanks o/

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

So you suggestions would be to mark a notification as unread, or as "keep for later"? Or another idea?

Do you think that improving Special:Notifications to have a way to fetch a previous notification (by wiki, by date...) would help?

RTG (talkcontribs)

I think you would "keep for later" by default, then add a way to delete from Special:Notifications, not auto-deleting anything unless specifically as an extra option.


Allow me to group them by date, but more significantly, make cross-wiki notifications rise to the top of the bell and tray lists when there is a new one.


Yes ordering Special:Notifications by date would help a search of most recent notifications.

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

This thread had promise - if Flow worked! As it stands it is a garble of text created by only two people. Who is responding to who? It is impossible to follow IMIO.

Reply to "People keep complaining that the notifications are broken don't they..."

More than 2,000 Notifications, will start to be removed

33
Summary last edited by Jackmcbarn 06:41, 3 October 2020 3 years ago

July 2019: T227853 is open in order to see which notifications shoudn't be deleted.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/159413/ - This update adds a script to delete any Notifications that are older than the most recent 2,000.

Up until now, they were stored indefinitely, meaning that some users have many thousands of read Notifications adding up in the database. 2,000 was chosen, because it is the number of Notifications that the "mark all as read" button effects.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)
Ricordisamoa (talkcontribs)

What if I want to preserve important notifications and delete the newest instead?

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

For indefinite preservation, I think the best option would probably be to enable the "email" preference for whichever notification types you want to keep records for.

Is there a particular type(s) of notifications that you're thinking of? Giving a few examples almost always helps. :)

Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

I would have thought the number of users with > 2000 edits would be small. If you ware worried about database size, maybe deleted some of those millions of "users" who have never edited or been welcomed.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

This change was just regarding number of echo notifications, not edits.

Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

Yes, that's not what I meant.

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

How can one determine how many notifications one has?


Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

@Ottawahitech, what do you mean? You want to know how many notifications someone has?

Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Ah, English language. :) Thank you Rich.

Ottawahitech, why do you need to know how many notification someone has? It is some private information.

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

I want to know how many notifications I have at enwiki where I am indefinitely blocked since 2017 (I think), after almost ten years of contributions. I have not been able to participate (even my talk-page access has been removed), so there is no way for me to do things like thank people, etc.

I am still hoping that my indef block will be lifted someday, and I would like to keep my notifications at least until such time.

Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

He wants to know how many notifications he has.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)
Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

Not on en:Wikipedia, as far as I can see.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I see 52 for me: click on the arrows close to "1-50" to see the total.

This is not optimal, but we never had any feedback about displaying the total.


Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

Looks like some of my notifications have already been deleted then? Can they be recovered?

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

No. They are removed from the database.

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

I have no idea where to look for "arrows" and where "1-50" is supposed to be. I suspect this may look different to someone using a different platform. For example, is this viewable to someone using a [[w:mobile]], or someone using a [[w:linux]] system?

BTW, I pretty much gave up on anyone responding to my questions here on mediawiki. [[User:Quidity]] was always pretty prompt, but I think he is no longer involved?

Another BTW, since FLOW is being tested here: where can I provide feedback to the FLOW developers?

Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

AH.. so after 39 clicks I see that I have 1996 notifications... I would really rather they not be deleted, it seems contrary to the spirit of the WIki to loose history like this. By this principle we would delete page history over 2000, or maybe decide we could manage with the 2000 most important articles! :)

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Is it possible to compare Notifications to Article history? I don't think it is.

Article history are a fundamental feature for the wikis: without them we wouldn't have the reliability we have.

Notifications are just tokens you immediately take action from. Did you had once to find something on the 1996 notifications you've received since 2013, apart from the 20 most recent ones? It is a real question, not some cynical rhetoric wording. :)

Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

Yes, in particular the number of thanks for fixing up reference names is an important metric. Keeping thanks is also important for understanding social issues. Having a list of mentions is useful if you can't find a discussion you were pinged in.

Trizek (WMF) (talkcontribs)
Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

I would have thought the number of users with > 2000 edits would be small. The number with > 2,000 echoes smaller still.

Rich Farmbrough 02:15, 7 May 2016 (UTC).

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

How come there is no response from the wmf employees?

RTG (talkcontribs)

Please... I do not see the word kilobyte here, so you really are just poking at this with a stick... And if you don't see why that is relevant, you should ''especially'' stop talking about what should be done about it! Apologies,

RTG (talkcontribs)

I should just add my opinion. Never delete any notification ever without a genuine good reason. I have hundreds of notifications from the last year. I don't want someone to come along and delete them while I am off doing something even if they think I've seen them before, They're mine. Is that not fair?

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

I agree. Please stop deleting information that is important for contributors. Please don't decide for me what is important and what is not!

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

Very very fair imio

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)

> Very very fair imio

This is a Flow comment: I have no idea why I wrote this and who I was responding to?????

... and to save others the hassle of trying to follow links, here is the link I ended up at explaining why Flow is no longer under development. It was written by Danny Horn and was dated 2015! https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-September/082993.html

Rich Farmbrough (talkcontribs)

I now have a good example of where this has made my life difficult. An editor caused over 2000 notifications to my account, and this means everything pervious has been wiped.

This is a seriously flawed idea.

Ottawahitech (talkcontribs)
Reply to "More than 2,000 Notifications, will start to be removed"