This task represents the work involved with enabling people to elect to receive notifications when new topics are posted on talk pages they are interested in.
Objective and theory of change
Objective
This work is intended to increase the likelihood Junior and Senior Contributors know when someone is talking about something they are interested in.
Theory of change
We think that:
- If people can decide to receive notifications when new topics are posted on talk pages they are interested in...
- Then they will be able to more easily and quickly identify conversations they can share their expertise/support/guidance/etc. in
- ...and be more likely to respond to those comments in a timely manner.
Requirements
For people who
- 1) Have the Enable topic subscription setting within Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing enabled and
- 2) Are logged in
- 3) Are accessing Wikipedia using any of the following skins: Vector (2010), Vector (2022), MonoBook, and Timeless
...the following should be true:
- 3) When visiting a talk page, a link should appear within the skin's existing Tools menu called Subscribe
- 4). When people click this Subscribe link a toast should appear that reads: You have subscribed! You will receive notifications when new topics are started on this page.
- 5) The link that read Subscribe in step 3), should now read Unsubscribe
- 6) Whenever a new topic is published on the page they took "Step 3)" on by someone other than them, they should receive a notification, via Echo, that reads: New topic "TOPIC NAME" started on PAGE TOPIC WAS STARTED ON by USERNAME OF PERSON WHO STARTED TOPIC"
- 7) When someone clicks an Unsubscribe link a toast should appear that reads: You have subscribed! You will receive notifications when new topics are started on this page.You have unsubscribed. You will no longer receive notifications when new topics are started on this page.`
- 8) Whenever a new topic is published on the page they took "Step 7)" on by someone other than them, they should NOT receive a notification via Echo
NOTE: the state of the Subscribe link this task introduces should NOT have any impact on whether people receive notifications about new comments in topics they are subscribed to manually or automatically.
Approaches
- Approach #1: Implement a new button on each talk page that enables people to decide whether they would like to be notified when new topics are published to it
- The demo @Esanders wrote in 886134 takes this approach: https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/b2cf82aaf0/w .
- Approach #2: Present people with the option to be notified about new topics when published to a talk page after commenting or starting a discussion
- This approach would build upon what was implemented in T262103. Note: this approach is likely too limiting in so far as it would inhibit people who have not yet participated on a page from electing to be made aware of future conversations they may want to participate in/
- Approach #3: Present people with the option to be notified about new topics that are published if/when they tap the ⭐️ to add the page to their Watchlist
- Approach #4: TBD
Open questions
- What needs to be true for the software to consider someone to be "interested in" a talk page? E.g. they explicitly decided to "Watch" the talk page? They participated on the talk page before? They started a topic on the talk page?
- How – if at all – should people watching talk pages affect whether they are notified when a new topic is added?
- Note: some people watch talk pages indirectly, by way of watching its corresponding article page. In this case, people might be confused/surprised about receiving a notification about a talk page which they may have never directly seen and/or interacted with.
References
- @Ainali: "I still have to do that to see if there is a new discussion started on some page I am particularly interested in. For these pages, I would like to auto subscribe to all new sections. Since it was so easy to unwatch a topic straight from the menu, I don't mind getting many notifications. I still find it likely to save me many clicks and loading time of pages." | mw:Feature request: automatic subscription to new sections on selected pages.
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2023/Notifications,_Watchlists_and_Talk_Pages/On-wiki_notifications_for_the_Watchlist_or_subscriptions_per_page
