I agree with Matt and Oliver as well.
I don't think we can avoid giving people individual control of which notifications
they receive.
But I definitely think that adding a dismiss option in the flyout is an effective way to
give people that control, so they don't have to go to the preferences page if they
don't want to.
I also think that bundling can help in a number of ways, as outlined in my feature list
below (I am including the entire thread, to make sure nobody feels left out from that
discussion)
I will create a feature requirement stub for both options (and a few more) in coming days,
and we can prioritize them as a team in next week's planning session.
But this discussion is touching upon the central challenge for this product: how to make
sure that we inform people without spamming them.
It will take us a while to completely solve this challenge, but we should not ship
anything that doesn't have some good solutions to this difficult problem, IMHO.
Cheers,
Fabrice
On Jan 10, 2013, at 12:30 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
Agreed with Matt. I wasn't involved in the
discussions referenced, I think, but my opinion is that you cannot simply give people a
boolean option on this kind of thing. "firehose of sewage or nothing" means a
lot of people are going to go for "nothing", at which point we've sort of
undermined the entire system.
On 10 January 2013 20:19, Matthew Flaschen <mflaschen(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On 01/10/2013 01:36 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:
I'm fine with either of these choices, but we
have to actually reach
some kind of consensus on this.
From where I'm standing, I think there should be sane defaults, but each
notification type should be separately configurable.
If not, you risk people turning everything off, or worse, using the wiki
less.
Matt Flaschen
Yes, bundling will be on a per notification basis,
i.e. some notifications will be bundlable and some probably won't.
Ryan Kaldari
On 1/9/13 1:35 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
> Great :). Any thoughts on distinguishing bundle-worthy/individual-worthy types of
alert?
>
> On 9 January 2013 21:32, Fabrice Florin <fflorin(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> Just wanted to let you know that Benny and Kaldari just deployed a first fix to this
page link feature, to make sure that it restricts it only to 'content namespace'
on MediaWiki.
>
> For example, this notification will no longer be sent if someone puts a page link on
a talkpage.
>
> We'll keep making improvements on this and related features in coming weeks, as
outlined below.
>
> In the meantime, if someone really dislikes this feature, you can turn off email
notifications for it on your preference page:
>
>
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> -f
>
>
> P.S.: Matthew and Oliver's recommendation to create a separate 'your page was
moved' notification is duly noted and will be added to the wishlist. Keep in mind that
right now we are focusing on building core features for new users, so it's likely this
would take place later this year, not right away.
>
>
>
> On Jan 9, 2013, at 10:58 AM, Fabrice Florin wrote:
>
>> Thank you all for these great comments and suggestions!
>>
>> They will be very helpful for our next steps, not just for the page link feature,
but for the other core features we're planning right now.
>>
>> Here is a quick summary of what I think are new features to consider:
>>
>> * Restrict the definition of a page link
>> We would only focus on article namespace links, and remove talkpage links or
other page links that could create spam. We would also remove any redirects or page moves
from that definition. Some of these things could be done partially today (e.g. exclude
talkpage links), if we can get a deployment window.
>>
>> * Make email notifications opt-in for experienced users
>> By default, we would uncheck the preferences box for page links, so that
experienced users are not flooded with more information than they want. So if you have
more than 100? edits, that preference would be disabled until you choose to enable it.
>>
>> * Keep email notifications enabled for new users
>> This feature is actually quite valuable for new users, so they can find out what
is happening with their new page. So we would check the box for anyone that has less than
100? edits, so they can benefit from this feature. I have to say that for myself, it is
one of the most useful notification I have found on MediaWiki, since I rarely get talk
page messages or have my edit reverted, even though I'm very active (I understand this
would be different on a more active Wiki).
>>
>> * Bundle email notifications
>> As Luke points out, spammy emails is one of the biggest risk we are facing with
this project, and it is much better to send too few notifications rather than too many. So
we should look for bundling solutions that allow us to either:
>> - stop sending emails after you've reached your daily limit (which could be a
preference: 'don't send me more than 5 emails a day'); or
>> - only send 1 email every 4? hours or something like that (which could also be a
preference: 'only send me 1 email every 4 hours')); or
>> - send a 'digest' email after you have received x notifications per day
(e.g.: '15 people linked pages you created today. See all your notifications')
>> Intelligent bundling is perhaps one of the greatest design challenges for this
project, and I recommend that we all focus our energy to tackling this problem in coming
weeks.
>>
>> * Flyout dismiss
>> We definitely want to add a way to dismiss notifications by type in the flyout.
We had planned to do this in the second release, but could accelerate this if need be. I
still think bundling is a higher priority. This will also be a tricky one to implement,
because matching the user intent may prove hairy.
>>
>> Thanks again for all your great feedback and creative ideas, which are music to
my ears!
>>
>> To be continued,
>>
>>
>> Fabrice
>>
>>
>> On Jan 9, 2013, at 10:25 AM, Luke Welling WMF wrote:
>>
>>> Erik's point "But it's definitely too spammy to turn it on for
established users by default." is key.
>>>
>>> We need to be very careful about turning on any email notifications for
existing users. It's something that a significant number of people are very touchy
about, and annoys everybody if sent in high volume.
>>>
>>> I don't like magic thresholds where the system behaviour changes without
user interaction. People expect computers to behave predictably. If you sent me an email
every 2 days to say something had happened to my article then stopped, I'd assume that
my article was no longer being linked to, not that I'd crossed over x edits and now
need to enable the preference manually. If we really want to go that way, you need to
tell people it happened, and how to undo it.
>>>
>>> I think the best approach with email is to enable it for new users, so they
see the place is alive, but only suggest to existing users that they turn it on, even if
"suggesting" means as a one off sending them a sample of what this week's
digest would look like for them.
>>>
>>> Even for new users we should have cadence controls in place before we launch
on busier wikis. Nobody wants 10+ emails a day. Best practice is one immediate one, then
bundle up subsequent ones for a few hours, but if that is too much work for V1, only
trying to send every x hours and risking delaying the first one by x hours is a better
compromise than risking sending 100 mails a day.
>>>
>>> Luke
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jan 9, 2013, at 10:22 AM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
>>
>>> It turns out it currently sends you a notification when a page is moved,
because that creates a redirect aimed at it. oy.
>>>
>>> On 9 January 2013 11:35, Oliver Keyes <okeyes(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9 January 2013 06:47, Steven Walling <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 10:35 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
>>> I do get these too a fair bit from
mediawiki.org, about 5-10 a day. I
>>> actually kinda like them, but I'm an information junkie.
>>>
>>> To clarify here: I like the onsite notification, I just don't like the
email. The notification feels like serendipitous information discovery, where I get to
learn something I couldn't otherwise. The email feels like work, probably because I
can more easily ignore a notification in the flyout.
>>>
>>> On the "easy to disable" front, I'm not sure if this is on the
roadmap
>>> already, but having an inline way to dismiss notifications of a
>>> certain type would IMO be nice, e.g. a simple "Disable this type of
>>> alert" link within the actual notification itself.
>>>
>>> Great idea! Giving people an immediate touch point means they feel like they
have control, like swatting a fly.
>>>
>>> This would be awesome. I can't imagine the backlash if we deploy the
feature as it's currently written on enwiki.
>>
>>
>> On Jan 9, 2013, at 3:35 AM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9 January 2013 06:47, Steven Walling <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 10:35 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
>>> I do get these too a fair bit from
mediawiki.org, about 5-10 a day. I
>>> actually kinda like them, but I'm an information junkie.
>>>
>>> To clarify here: I like the onsite notification, I just don't like the
email. The notification feels like serendipitous information discovery, where I get to
learn something I couldn't otherwise. The email feels like work, probably because I
can more easily ignore a notification in the flyout.
>>>
>>> On the "easy to disable" front, I'm not sure if this is on the
roadmap
>>> already, but having an inline way to dismiss notifications of a
>>> certain type would IMO be nice, e.g. a simple "Disable this type of
>>> alert" link within the actual notification itself.
>>>
>>> Great idea! Giving people an immediate touch point means they feel like they
have control, like swatting a fly.
>>>
>>> This would be awesome. I can't imagine the backlash if we deploy the
feature as it's currently written on enwiki.
>>> --
>>
>>
>> On Jan 8, 2013, at 10:47 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 10:35 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
>>> I do get these too a fair bit from
mediawiki.org, about 5-10 a day. I
>>> actually kinda like them, but I'm an information junkie.
>>>
>>> To clarify here: I like the onsite notification, I just don't like the
email. The notification feels like serendipitous information discovery, where I get to
learn something I couldn't otherwise. The email feels like work, probably because I
can more easily ignore a notification in the flyout.
>>>
>>> On the "easy to disable" front, I'm not sure if this is on the
roadmap
>>> already, but having an inline way to dismiss notifications of a
>>> certain type would IMO be nice, e.g. a simple "Disable this type of
>>> alert" link within the actual notification itself.
>>>
>>> Great idea! Giving people an immediate touch point means they feel like they
have control, like swatting a fly.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Steven Walling
>>>
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
>>
>>
>> On Jan 8, 2013, at 10:35 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Vibha Bamba <vbamba(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
>>>
>>>> if we were to define thresholds > only notify when its been linked to
10
>>>> other articles
>>>> and switch this on for users with under x edits only?
>>>
>>> I think it'd need to be restricted to new users, and also limited to
>>> links from within the article namespace (otherwise you get too much
>>> meta-crud). Beyond that, if it's easy to disable, I think it could be
>>> a nice way to surface activity and "aliveness" to new users. But
it's
>>> definitely too spammy to turn it on for established users by default.
>>> Thresholds might make things too complicated though.
>>>
>>> I do get these too a fair bit from
mediawiki.org, about 5-10 a day. I
>>> actually kinda like them, but I'm an information junkie.
>>>
>>> On the "easy to disable" front, I'm not sure if this is on the
roadmap
>>> already, but having an inline way to dismiss notifications of a
>>> certain type would IMO be nice, e.g. a simple "Disable this type of
>>> alert" link within the actual notification itself.
>>>
>>> Erik
>>> --
>>> Erik Möller
>>> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> On Jan 8, 2013, at 3:15 PM, Vibha Bamba wrote:
>>
>>> Would this notification make sense:
>>> if we were to define thresholds > only notify when its been linked to 10
other articles
>>> and switch this on for users with under x edits only?
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Steven Walling <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
>>> I have gotten four emails about this cross-linking notification this morning
alone. Too much noise.
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> From: MediaWiki Mail <wiki(a)wikimedia.org>
>>> Date: Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:53 PM
>>> Subject: A page you started was cross referenced on MediaWiki
>>> To: Steven <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>
>>>
>>>
>>> Onboarding new Wikipedians was linked by MediaWiki user Superm401, from this
page: Guided tours
>>>
>>> View more:
>>>
>>>
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Guided_tours
>>>
>>> ________________________________________________
>>>
>>> To control which e-mails we send you, visit:
>>>
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo
>>>
>>> Wikimedia Foundation, 149 New Montgomery St., 3rd Fl., San Francisco, CA
94105.
>>>