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@wikimedia.org> wrote:
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@wikimedia.org> wrote:
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 Jan 8, 2013, at 10:35 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Vibha Bamba <
vbamba@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@wikimedia.org> wrote:
I have gotten four emails about this cross-linking notification this morning alone. Too much noise.