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Enable echo-cross-wiki-notifications by default
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Description

Per this discussion: https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Community_noticeboard#I_have_briefly_returned

Most users expect this expect this feature by default, yet not only is it disabled by default, it is also unintuitive to enable. There is no way to enable it globally. It is enabled (globally) by default on all other large MediaWiki instances that I know of. (including Wikimedia)

Event Timeline

I like this idea. It's particularly useful for people with cross-wiki presence but who might not understand this option exists since it's poorly advertised (buried at the bottom of a preference menu). I don't think it would do any harm to people who only participate in one or a couple wikis and in fact it would help in cases where people need to be 'centrally notified' of something through Meta but aren't regular participants there (especially say, global username violations or something to do with a wiki request when they're only active on one). If it's not feasible to make this a default then perhaps there is a way to make people more aware - I think more people would use this if they knew.

That said, you can enable it globally through Special:GlobalPreferences. That raises the other issue with it though - to make it useful (ie, actually work globally out of the box) you have to first travel to global preferences and then enable the setting. It's not intuitive and I don't find the interface for it to be very friendly.

Bukkit subscribed.

I personally would not support such a change. I have cross-wiki notifications on strictly Meta for a reason, I do not wish to have notifications regarding other wikis on any non-meta wiki.

I like this idea. It's particularly useful for people with cross-wiki presence but who might not understand this option exists since it's poorly advertised (buried at the bottom of a preference menu). I don't think it would do any harm to people who only participate in one or a couple wikis and in fact it would help in cases where people need to be 'centrally notified' of something through Meta but aren't regular participants there (especially say, global username violations or something to do with a wiki request when they're only active on one). If it's not feasible to make this a default then perhaps there is a way to make people more aware - I think more people would use this if they knew.

That said, you can enable it globally through Special:GlobalPreferences. That raises the other issue with it though - to make it useful (ie, actually work globally out of the box) you have to first travel to global preferences and then enable the setting. It's not intuitive and I don't find the interface for it to be very friendly.

<thank>

It can be enabled with a single line of code:

$wgDefaultUserOptions['echo-cross-wiki-notifications'] = true;

I personally would not support such a change. I have cross-wiki notifications on strictly Meta for a reason, I do not wish to have notifications regarding other wikis on any non-meta wiki.

Well, users with specific use cases that would require disabling it are more likely to be pro users that would have little issue with disabling, while new users without such cases are more likely to be confused.

I would support this, but would oppose making this the only option. Users should be able to opt out. Cross-wiki pinging is useful because it allows people to receive notifications faster.

I would support this, but would oppose making this the only option. Users should be able to opt out. Cross-wiki pinging is useful because it allows people to receive notifications faster.

Disabling it would always be an option, all it does is change the default.

I wouldn't say that that discussion is finalized. Either way, if I remember correctly, that isn't done by default due to the number of jobs which it'd create which may overload the jobqueue. I don't know if this is still the case though so this decision would be entirely up to the technical team.

@Agent_Isai’s explanation does make sense, and if that’s true then this would have to be declined. Will ask @John to weigh in though.

It would probably be best for someone from the MediaWiki team to weigh in as this falls primarily under them and not the infrastructure team.

If this were not feasible because it overloads things then of course that is the end of it. At that point it should be considered if there is a way to better advertise the feature or make it more intuitive for those who would benefit from seeing it, as I think it is currently very obscure and heavily underutilized.

Unknown Object (User) added a comment.Mar 10 2023, 05:25

This has some technical reasons not to do it.

But personally I also oppose such a change, as it would get quite annoying to have all notifications on all wikis, and would increase the risk of "ghost" notifications whereas if you lose access to a wiki you might have unclearable notifications, and would create additional unnecessary work for SRE to have to manually clear them from the database when it so happens.

BrandonWM claimed this task.

Closing as declined per @Universal_Omega. Perhaps @Raidarr's method of advertising the feature could be executed in some form, but alas, that discussion is for Meta/Discord/IRC and not Phabricator.

Unknown Object (User) reopened this task as Open.Mar 10 2023, 05:55
Unknown Object (User) removed BrandonWM as the assignee of this task.

I don't think this was quite finished yet, I'd still like to here Reception123's thoughts on this as well.

Unknown Object (User) unsubscribed.Mar 18 2023, 03:23

I think it's best to have a community consultation given disagreement on this topic.

Agent_Isai claimed this task.

Closing as declined as nothing can be done as of now. Please create a new task if consensus is achieved after which SRE can consider the technical aspects.