https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Legoktm/pings

Pings suck because:

• Based on username linking, which is used for other things... like linking to users (c.f. <code><nowiki>{{noping}}</nowiki></code> on enwp)
• No way to verify you actually pinged someone
• Requires a signature
• Can't go back and adjust text to ping someone
  • Three preceding bullets are about same general issue, namely that you can't reliably trust pings to work
  • Technically possible to "go back" by re-signing the edit, probably?

Idea!:

• Create a PST magic word thing so you type in "<nowiki>{{#ping:User}}</nowiki>", which upon save is transformed into "<nowiki>[[User:User|User]]</nowiki>" (and support multiple users with $wgContLang->commaList()).
  • Pinging has historically been a bit weird with template expansion; we used to have "phantom" pings caused by someone transcluding a page, mass-pinging, and then having that transclusion reverted
• Echo hooks into PST somehow to do the transformation and note which users were mentioned
• Easy for users to verify their pings went through
  • How?
    • Because if it went through, the wikitext would be transformed into <nowiki>[[User:User|User]]</nowiki>
  • Maybe use Special:Log to log pings?
    • Might help prevent abuse
• Pinging has to be deliberate, but most people are already using the wrapper template so it shouldn't be too disruptive
• Need to account for pinging abuse/mis-use
  • Current pinging has hard limit for users that can be pinged
    • Right, how do you handle the maximum ping limit? Does the parser function just not get transformed in this case?
      • We can also display a warning and stop the edit.

Notes:

• Is this even technically possible???
  • Discussed in #mediawiki-parsoid on 2016-08-15 with Lego, Tim and MZ. Mostly these are Tim's recommendations:
    • Add a flag like Parser::SFH_SUBST_IMPLIED to Parser::setFunctionHook(), check it in Parser::braceSubstitution() before the check for mSubstWords
    • Note: Check for PST mode using <code>$parser->ot['wiki']</code>
    • Add new method to Content which returns the full ParserOutput as well as the new Content object; use Parser::getOutput() after preSaveTransform() returns and then prepareContentForEdit() would put the PST ParserOutput object into mPreparedEdit in a new member
• On-wiki templates might be implemented differently, so overriding them with magic word might cause problems.
  • Syntax is different (<code><nowiki>{{#ping:foo}}</nowiki></code> instead of <code><nowiki>{{ping|bar}}</nowiki></code>), should be fine
• What about saving pages that already have a old "ping" template on them? Will it trigger new notifications?
  • Matt pointed out that the syntax would be <nowiki>{{#ping:User}}</nowiki> so it wouldn't conflict.