[Commons-l] Automatic messages to users: guessing userpreferredlanguage

[Alex Nordstrom]

Sunday, 7 October 2007, Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 07/10/2007, Alex Nordstrom <lx at se.linux.org> wrote:
> >
> > It's not quite that arbitrary. You can't really equate the effort
> > of checking for and complying with such demands every time you need
> > to leave someone a message with the effort of ticking a checkbox.
>
> ...a checkbox many people don't know is there.

Agreed. We need to make people more aware of this option. Seeing as 
missing out on Commons messages seems to be a frequent concern, perhaps 
we should put it in welcome templates or even mention it somewhere in 
the signup process.

> I have a note on my Commons talkpage (with its two whole messages in
> a year and a half) saying "you'll probably get a quicker response via
> [enwp talkpage]". It's there because when I set up a Commons account
> I didn't know about email notifications for page edits (indeed, they
> may not have been enabled) and, let's face it, I would never have
> heard about them without the fact that I happened to subscribe to
> commons-l one day.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. The wording is courteous rather 
than dismissive, and if it's been there for a year and a half, Enotif 
would not have been enabled when you added it.

> My putting a note up isn't a "demand" to be complied with - and I
> don't think anyone else in my situation really thinks of it as one.

Well... you'd be surprised. Some people get quite upset if you don't 
bend over backwards to inform them that they forgot to add the legal 
information they were told to add when uploading. I've seen some pretty 
hostile reactions to Commons user talk pages being used to discuss 
Commons matters, even after the user was informed about Enotif.

-- 
Alex Nordstrom
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LX
Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to commons-l.
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