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Email notifications appear to be unreliable
Open, Needs TriagePublicBUG REPORT

Description

I have email notifications enabled globally for all listed events (except for "Comment on subscribed talk page topics" and "Translations", which appear to be recent additions), as well as web notifications. However, over the last month, email notifications appear to have skipped a few events, especially thanking actions, though one undo too.

On the English Wikipedia, while having been notified via web about the following actions (as seen from the screenshots below), the email notifications did not get sent.

email missing notif 2.png (202×524 px, 9 KB)

email missing notif 1.png (131×844 px, 5 KB)

On Commons, while having been notified via web about the following actions (as seen from the screenshots below), the email notifications did not get sent.

email missing notif 3.png (237×522 px, 9 KB)

email missing notif 4.png (128×771 px, 6 KB)


Edit: Another batch of undo alerts missing email notifications from Commons:

T291305 email missing notif 5.png (689×545 px, 28 KB)

Event Timeline

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald Transcript

@Trizek-WMF -- have you heard of this happening with more users? Or have you heard of it happening in the past?

@Trizek-WMF -- have you heard of this happening with more users? Or have you heard of it happening in the past?

I haven't heard about it recently on the wikis I'm monitoring, I'll check at more places.
I don't remember if it happen in the past.

I have been missing out on dozens of email notifcations since my report (can include the specific ones too). Please fix this ASAP.

There isn't much that could be investigated without info where to look (wikis, specific edits, etc)

I have provided specific edits in the task description, but will edit in a couple more later on.

I must ask, just in case (but I think you already checked): aren't these emails in your spam folder?

No, my spam folder has been empty all the time.

I checked email notifications delivery functionality in betalabs. The testing showed no issues; the following was tested:

  • email delivery global settings for thanks/revert notifications - non-article namespaces were checked too.
  • whether the local settings for thanks/revert notifications override the global settings - works as expected.
  • all testing was for the email option "Individual notifications as they come in"

The above tests are not exhaustive, of course and the email setup on production may be different.

The following needs to be checked for the user 1234qwer1234qwer4 on enwiki and commonswiki in production (pinging @Urbanecm)

  • the email notifications settings - up_property like 'echo-subscriptions-email%' for the user
  • bounce_records table (just in case)

[...]
The following needs to be checked for the user 1234qwer1234qwer4 on enwiki and commonswiki in production (pinging @Urbanecm)

  • the email notifications settings - up_property like 'echo-subscriptions-email%' for the user

See P18391.

  • bounce_records table (just in case)

I'm not sure what I'm looking for there. Querying by their mail has no results:

mysql:research@dbstore1005.eqiad.wmnet [wikishared]> select * from bounce_records where br_user_email = '<1234qwer1234qwer4> email address';
Empty set (0.001 sec)

mysql:research@dbstore1005.eqiad.wmnet [wikishared]> Bye

I checked the links below (from the task description) - all links redirect to deleted revisions:

That doesn't change the fact that they were live when the notifications were sent.

I will try to add a set of other unsent notifications now.