@suffusion_of_yellow: Is one of these browser windows in private mode, or not?

For logged-in editors, it's almost as bad. All they get is an unexplained "1" in a circle, but still no banner.

That sounds totally correct to me and I expect many users used to social media that the "1" in a circle is a notification. That weird banner should not be shown.

If this ticket is about the lack of a "You have new messages" banner in the mobile interface for logged out users, then I do not see any bug here. Not sure as the steps are confusing and don't explicitly list an expected and an actual outcome, and if that was in mobile or desktop or in that one window or that other window.

In T240889#5745743, @Aklapper wrote:

@suffusion_of_yellow: Is one of these browser windows in private mode, or not?

For the IP test, I just used Tor Browser Bundle with the default settings. I imagine that's similar to private mode. Ideally someone who doesn't mind making their IP public should run this test with a normal browser.

In T240889#5745757, @Aklapper wrote:

If this ticket is about the lack of a "You have new messages" banner in the mobile interface for logged out users, then I do not see any bug here. Not sure as the steps are confusing and don't explicitly list an expected and an actual outcome, and if that was in mobile or desktop or in that one window or that other window.

Sorry, I guess I'm making it more complex than needed. Try:

1. Have someone leave your IP a message.
2. While logged out, in mobile view, visit [[Wikipedia:Sandbox]]. Click "edit".

The expect result is a "you have new messages" banner, or some other clue that another user wishes to talk to you.
The actual result no banner.

I believe, this is intentional, as such this is not a bug. You're just seeing it odd because you're using the mobile version (for the first time?) judging by your comments on enwiki. The "you have new messages" banner is for desktop. Mobile uses different notification and it's conspicuously colored and incremented per notifications (up to 99). It would be quite intrusive and poor design to send banner that will fills screen edge to edge to mobile users.

The notification shown for mobile users is big (in proportion of the screen) and strategically placed. You can only intentionally ignore it. It's of course even bigger and noticeable than comparable notifications from other services.

Twitter mobile	Facebook mobile	Wikimedia mobile

@Ammarpad: I only see the red circle when I'm logged in. I see no indication of any kind that there is a message, when logged out. Do you?

In T240889#5746752, @suffusion_of_yellow wrote:

@Ammarpad:.. I see no indication of any kind that there is a message, when logged out. Do you?

No. Notification is not shown for non-logged users (but remember there are also many things not shown on mobile, for example IP range edits are not visible on Special:Contribs). Also see my comment below, this task title is referring to all users not only non-logged.
(Comment edited after understanding the question more.)

This task now seems inconsistent with the original enwiki post which my comment above (T240889#5746727) was originally written for. The initial bug description was "New messages" banner not showing on mobile?. And this task's name still reflects that, though with different description. Now please describe which issue you are reporting, (and if necessary create another task) as the issues are fundamentally different, and relate to different extensions, even though related.

Possible actions:

1. "New messages" banner should be shown on mobile. (feature request)
2. Notification is not shown for IPs on Mobile (bug) (probably intentional, I don't know though)

What to do:
If you decide to go for both, please open new task for 1 (and rename current task)
If you decide to go for 1 only, the task description should be amended.
If you decide to go for 2 only, the task name should be changed.

This will greatly simplify things, and allow teams from each extension to triage their own issue.

"New messages" banner should be shown on mobile. (feature request)

That feature request will be declined: We only display the orange bar of death if the Notifications extension is not installed on a wiki, as of T58834...

From test test in my prior comment and the other notes above, it appears that we are delivering newtalk notifications one way or another to:
Desktop users

But we are failing to deliver this to:
Mobile Website Users

@suffusion_of_yellow I suggest refining or splitting it to multiple tasks as well. Is your core concern communicating with "mobile editors" or "logged out mobile editors"? The former appears to have at least some form for notice they have new talk, while the later appears to have none.

@Xaosflux: Thanks! I consider the IP issue a high priority problem, the logged-in issue less so. I had assumed that the goal had been to deliver the banner to all users, in one form or another (as on desktop), and a simple bug was preventing the display. Now that I know that part of this is intentional, I will split the task.

@ovasileva: Why was this one marked low priority? I understand that people might disagree with me about T240976, and I'll respond to your question there later, but this one's a big deal. We literally have no way whatsoever to initiate a discussion with logged-out mobile users. Worse, we think we're talking to them.

There a whole lot that a new user could do, that's 100% allowable on other sites, but not here. Pasting copyrighted text. Speculating on the personal lives of celebrities. Using talk pages as a general forum.

We have arbitrary rules, that no one could ever guess until told about. 3RR. Not removing some kinds of deletion templates. Not blanking content without an edit summary.

The normal procedure is to leave a message on the user's talk page, informing them of our policies. If they ignore it, leave another ones. And so on. Eventually, it becomes obvious they're just ignoring us, so we block them.

So users engaging in perfectly good-faith behavior are being blocked for "refusal" to "listen" to our "warnings", that they don't even know exist. That's a terrible experience, for a new user , and it's completely unacceptable for this to go on.

Eventually, it becomes obvious they're just ignoring us, so we block them.

I'm curious how high the rate of IP users is that are not ignoring "their" talk page. Especially if they don't have a static IP. (Anybody having any numbers?)

In T240889#5751876, @Aklapper wrote:

I'm curious how high the rate of IP users is that are not ignoring "their" talk page. Especially if they don't have a static IP. (Anybody having any numbers?)

How would one measure that? You could check for IPs editing their own talk page, of course, but how do you distinguish an user who saw the message, thought "Oh, oops", and stopped, vs. one who didn't see it, but just became bored and went on to another site?

I agree that dynamic IPs are a problem, both for mobile and non-mobile IPs. Often the only way to communicate is the block message. That's a horrible solution, but we didn't create the problem, ISPs did. Maybe there needs to be a "range talk" feature, open to some privileged users, but that's another discussion for another day.

@suffusion_of_yellow regarding "range talk", lets assume for a moment that it did exist - how would you expect notification/clearing of such a notification to function?

In T240889#5752169, @Xaosflux wrote:

@suffusion_of_yellow regarding "range talk", lets assume for a moment that it did exist - how would you expect notification/clearing of such a notification to function?

I really don't know; I was just thinking out loud. There are other problems, e.g. where is the user supposed to reply? Maybe I'll start something at WP:IDEALAB,

Yup, this is definitely very important. How exactly are editors supposed to communicate with mobile IP editors if they receive absolutely no notification from talk page messages?