I am going to bet that if we exposed the name of the editor adding a link in page-linked notifications we will substantially increase their impact on editor engagement.
Proposal
Let's replace:
Rim Fire was linked from List of wildfires
with:
MelanieN added a link to Rim Fire from List of wildfires
Rationale
• page-linked notifications will scale at a faster rate than Thank notifications (they are currently generated at a 2x rate and keep in mind only newbies are opted in by default)
• as of August, 1 out of 5 recipients of page-linked notifications have a lifetime editcount smaller than 100
• these notifications mostly* deliver positive feedback: knowing that a page got linked somewhere else in Wikipedia is currently the only user-generated positive signal other than Thanks that I can receive on Wikipedia
• for existing users (who by default are opted out from receiving page-linked notifications), exposing the author will provide readily available information on who's doing what
• for newbies, we'll reinforce the perception that it's not Wikipedia creating a link but another human being who (1) liked your work enough to award you a link and (2) you may want to connect to as someone with similar interests (yeah no, need to wait until an interest graph is implemented)
• we have solid evidence on the negative impact of automated, dehumanized messages
I really don't think we need to A/B test this but I wanted to hear from you if this change has enough support to be implemented and if there are other concerns.
Dario
* the main exception to look out for is links from project-namespace pages where, for example, AfD notifications happen.