Duplicate notifications if a topic is archived by a user who posted in it
Closed, ResolvedPublicBUG REPORT
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	Tacsipacsi
	Sep 11 2021, 4:20 PM

Description

Steps to reproduce

As user A, subscribe to an existing topic on, say, Talk:Main Page.
As user B, reply to it.
As user B, archive the said section to e.g. Talk:Main Page/Archive 1.
As user A, look at your notifications.

Actual result

There are two notifications about user B’s reply:
- one linking to Talk:Main Page, with the timestamp when the reply was posted;
- and one linking to Talk:Main Page/Archive 1, with the timestamp of the archival.

Duplicate notification - Patch Demo (668779,27).png (193×500 px, 14 KB)

Expected result

There is one notification, with the timestamp when the reply was posted, linking to Talk:Main Page/Archive 1. (Fixing the link is rather a feature request and may not be possible at the current stage of the project, but the duplicate notification is definitely a bug.)

Software version

Patch demo of If96a0df1efbf5cadfb6bf2bf8f7ad5c9c90ea142 at https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/de6265b1b7/. The bug doesn’t seem to be connected to the patch, though.

Details

	Subject	Repo	Branch	Lines +/-
	Suppress events from comments that are more than 10 minutes old	mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools	master	+30 -0

Customize query in gerrit

Related Objects

Mentioned Here: T273341: Topic permalinks: design and implement user experience
T284200: Implement a way to relate the components of a conversation

Event Timeline

Tacsipacsi created this task.Sep 11 2021, 4:20 PM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptSep 11 2021, 4:20 PM

ppelberg added a project: Editing-team (Kanban Board).Sep 17 2021, 1:31 AM

ppelberg moved this task from Backlog to Triaged on the DiscussionTools board.

This is a limitation of the current system. For every edit, we send notifications for every comment added by the current user. This works well when archiving is done by bots that don't post any comments themselves, but not so well when it's done by humans.

We don't have a reliable way to tell if an added comment is a "new" one, or if it's being archived from another page. We probably could try to guess it better (e.g. depending on how old the timestamp is, or on whether there are comments by other users), but I didn't want to invent a complicated system that would probably still not be perfect, and would result in missed notifications (like how the mention notifications sometimes don't get sent for reasons that are difficult to understand).

(Also, the current behavior has another drawback: when an unsigned comment is signed by someone else or a bot, that doesn't send a notification.)

I would actually want us to work on a better approach – we could have a database where we could look up each comment, and check whether it exists (or existed) on another page already. This would also be useful for permalinks to archived comments (T273341), and all kinds of fancy analytics work (T284200). But it would be a significant effort.

Esanders renamed this task from Duplicate notifications upon topic archival to Duplicate notifications if a topic is archived by a user who posted in it.Oct 18 2021, 10:49 PM

I think a timestamp check wouldn't be unreasonable. There would need to be some flexibility (x minutes) as the timestamps are generated at different times (one at parse time, one in deferred updates) and the timestamp signature timestamp doesn't include seconds.

ppelberg subscribed.Oct 19 2021, 9:39 PM

Esanders moved this task from Incoming to Ready to Be Worked On on the Editing-team (Kanban Board) board.Oct 26 2021, 3:32 PM

Esanders claimed this task.Nov 8 2021, 5:56 PM

Esanders moved this task from Ready to Be Worked On to Doing on the Editing-team (Kanban Board) board.

Change 737444 had a related patch set uploaded (by Esanders; author: Esanders):

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Suppress events from comments that are more than 10 minutes old

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/737444

gerritbot added a project: Patch-For-Review.Nov 8 2021, 6:00 PM

Esanders moved this task from Doing to Code Review on the Editing-team (Kanban Board) board.Nov 9 2021, 2:14 PM

Change 737444 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools@master] Suppress events from comments that are more than 10 minutes old

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/737444

Maintenance_bot removed a project: Patch-For-Review.Nov 9 2021, 11:10 PM

ReleaseTaggerBot added a project: MW-1.38-notes (1.38.0-wmf.9; 2021-11-16).Nov 10 2021, 12:00 AM

matmarex added a project: Editing QA.Nov 10 2021, 12:32 AM

matmarex moved this task from Code Review to QA on the Editing-team (Kanban Board) board.

QutieBot added a project: QTE-TestingOverview.Nov 17 2021, 6:08 PM

QutieBot moved this task from Inbox to Rummana on the QTE-TestingOverview board.

@Tacsipacsi, at enwiki I'm only seeing this when one of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:One_click_archiving scripts is used. Which page did you see this at, and what script or bot was used for the archiving?

Ryasmeen edited projects, added Verified; removed QTE-TestingOverview, Editing QA.Nov 30 2021, 1:31 AM

@Whatamidoing-WMF, I archived from Talk:Main Page to Talk:Main Page/Archive 1, and I used a very sophisticated tool called clipboard. :)

DLynch moved this task from QA to Ready for Sign Off on the Editing-team (Kanban Board) board.Apr 25 2022, 5:25 PM

ppelberg closed this task as Resolved.May 7 2022, 1:04 AM

JohnFromPinckney subscribed.Apr 16 2023, 2:48 PM

	F34640457: Duplicate notification - Patch Demo (668779,27).png
	Sep 11 2021, 4:20 PM

Duplicate notifications if a topic is archived by a user who posted in itClosed, ResolvedPublicBUG REPORTActions