Echo notification emails should include recipient's user name
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Authored By

	jhsoby
	Oct 17 2025, 9:23 AM

Description

When the board election notification emails were sent out (T392232), I got three of them to my main email address (plus one for my staff account, but that's besides the point here).

However, the emails don't have any info (not even in link targets) about which account they were sent to. In my case, I have deduced that it must be my main account (User:Jon Harald Søby), my testing account (User:Jhsoby) and my bot account (User:JhsBot). I have more accounts than that registered though (all testing accounts), so it would be nice to know which specific user account each email was sent to.

Steps to replicate the issue (include links if applicable):

Have several user accounts that:
- meet the criteria to vote in board elections
- have the same email address (it probably needs to be verified for each account too)
Wait for the next board elections…? 😅

What happens?:

You get email notifications for each account, but the emails are completely identical. The only thing that's actually different is the markasread URL parameter in the URL for the "Vote now" link, but that's just a number.

What should have happened instead?:

The emails should start with "Hi, $username", so that the recipient knows which user account it was sent to.

Software version (on Special:Version page; skip for WMF-hosted wikis like Wikipedia):

Other information (browser name/version, screenshots, etc.):

Related Objects

Mentioned Here: T57838: Mention my user name on the user-talk page change email
T71981: User rights change notification email does not specify in body which account was affected
T249408: Show useragent data and username on new device login emails
T392232: Deploy Notifications for 2025 Board of Trustees election

Event Timeline

jhsoby created this task.Oct 17 2025, 9:23 AM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptOct 17 2025, 9:23 AM

jhsoby updated the task description. (Show Details)Oct 17 2025, 9:24 AM

Stang subscribed.Oct 17 2025, 9:29 AM

To clarify, this is referring to the Echo notifications and not the emails sent with sendMail.php, which open with Dear $USERNAME, I think. It may require upstream changes to how Echo distributes email since if I remember correctly it is not possible to include variables in these messages.

jrbs renamed this task from Board election notification emails should include recipient's user name to Echo notification emails should include recipient's user name.Oct 24 2025, 8:41 PM

I believe the username is mentioned in the "To:" header of all Echo emails.

It's possible to add the username to this message, here: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaMessages/+/2dc8bbe509d0de5038640a71234b07ce6bee0779/includes/Notifications/BoardElection2025PresentationModel.php#37

		return $this->msg( 'wikimedia-boardelection2025-notification-body', $this->getViewingUserForGender() );

We don't seem to do this for any other notification though, and I found some similar requests for other notification types: T71981, T57838, T249408.

Maybe the username should instead go in the footer? We could add something like "This message was sent to $USER" next to "To control which emails we send you, check your preferences".

Echo notification emails should include recipient's user nameOpen, Needs TriagePublicBUG REPORTActions

Description

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Event Timeline

Echo notification emails should include recipient's user name
Open, Needs TriagePublicBUG REPORT
Actions