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Mobile "new messages" notification should be more intrusive by default
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Description

Currently, when a mobile editor has new talk page message:

  • (A) If logged in, all they get is a "1" in a red circle
  • (B) If logged out, they get nothing at all

Problem (B) is T240889, and a higher priority. I've been told by several people that (A) is not a problem, because social media sites use a similar system. But:

  • Some people don't use social media
  • This is not a social media site.
  • Some sites (ab)use a similar system for Exciting! New! Offers! and other crap.
  • Talk page messages, unlike other notices, often need to be read right now, or the user risks getting blocked for doing again whatever it was we were asking them not to do.

So I'd request that all users (registered or not) be shown something that clues them in that "this one is important". It doesn't have to be the orange bar of doom, of course, though that would be my first choice.

Of course many experienced users won't like this. So logged in users should be given an option to opt-out of the OBOD (or alternative), and go back to the notification-only system.

Event Timeline

Marking this as low priority for now. @suffusion_of_yellow - could you expand a bit on why you think that the red circle is not a good enough indicator? I agree that we are most definitely not a social media site, but regardless I think it's an effective way to notify.

@suffusion_of_yellow: Can you please answer the last question? Thanks.

Marking this as low priority for now. @suffusion_of_yellow - could you expand a bit on why you think that the red circle is not a good enough indicator? I agree that we are most definitely not a social media site, but regardless I think it's an effective way to notify.

To me, on mobile app notifications are marked as red regardless they are talk page message notifications or anything else. On desktop we have two type of notification. 1. Alert 2. Notices. Alerts appear as red and notices appears as blue. It indicates which notifications are important and which are not.

Marking this as low priority for now. @suffusion_of_yellow - could you expand a bit on why you think that the red circle is not a good enough indicator? I agree that we are most definitely not a social media site, but regardless I think it's an effective way to notify.

I agree that's it's a lower priority than T240889. I also think it's a good enough indicator for people who have already figured out what it means. But new users need to figure out that some notifications might be urgent.

Suppose a good-faith editor is doing something (not obviously) bad at a rapid clip, across a dozen pages so far. We want them to stop, because they are breaking things. So we leave a friendly message: "Hey, when you do X, you break Y". They see the red circle, but they don't know it's important, so they think "I'm on a roll! I'll finish the next 100 pages and see what that's all about". 100 more pages get broken, and maybe the user gets blocked, too, for "ignoring multiple direct requests to stop doing X".

By contrast the desktop editor sees an ugly and distracting mini-banner. It says "you have new messages", so there's no mistaking it for anything else. They could still ignore it, but if they are WP:HERE in any way, they'll probably want to see what it's all about.

Note, there is a 2022 Community Wishlist proposal (by a different community member) related to this ticket at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Mobile_and_apps/Better_warning_display_for_mobile_users

I wrote there, “Yes the big red dot is hard to miss, but I think a talk-page message is higher priority than a ping (think user-warn templates on enwiki), and deserves a separate indicator.”

@matmarex, AFAICT T284642 applies only to logged-out users, this ticket here is about the logged-in experience (“Problem A” in the description).

If mobile made those notices appear in view mode (which there is no reason not to do), then yes. As it is right now, no. (Found this task from newly opened T341305: Talk page notification alert bar: revised styling to meet WCAG color contrast AA requirements)