This was a deliberate design decision that has by now had a lot of discussion. No reason to leave open at this time.

@Legoktm so then how does Flow know which edit I was thanked for? The revision ID has to be stored somewhere, if not in the logging table.

The revision is also stored as part of the echo notification. For Flow, it's slightly different, as users are thanked for posts rather than revisions (if I understand correctly).

That's right. The notification is generated at thank time, so for both (wikitext thanks and Flow thanks) we put the post/revision ID in the event metadata but not in the public logging table.

I've written a hack that doesn't require you to set a $wg; it would just be a 5::revid parameter that you could display by changing MediaWiki:Logentry-thanks-thank to, e.g., $1 thanked $3 for revision $5.

There have been a few times when I've thanked someone and then wanted to look at the log to see where the revision was that I thanked them for, because I was having trouble finding it again. I was going to give them a barnstar "for x, y, and z" because I remembered there had been a few contributions I had found particularly important, but it had been awhile so I had forgotten what exactly they were. I tried going through his contributions manually, to try to jog my memory, but there were thousands to sift through because he's a very active editor.

In T51087#2614161, @Tjlsangria wrote:

I've written a hack that doesn't require you to set a $wg; it would just be a 5::revid parameter that you could display by changing MediaWiki:Logentry-thanks-thank to, e.g., $1 thanked $3 for revision $5.

The $wg would control whether the $5 is passed. On WMF wikis, it would not be, since this is considered private information.

In T51087#2615441, @Mattflaschen-WMF wrote:

In T51087#2614161, @Tjlsangria wrote:

I've written a hack that doesn't require you to set a $wg; it would just be a 5::revid parameter that you could display by changing MediaWiki:Logentry-thanks-thank to, e.g., $1 thanked $3 for revision $5.

The $wg would control whether the $5 is passed. On WMF wikis, it would not be, since this is considered private information.

To clarify: the reason you need a $wg to control whether $5 is passed at all is because if $5 is passed unconditionally, it could trivially be exposed using ?uselang=qqx, and it'd also be visible in the logging table through the replica DB in tool labs. To make this information inaccessible on wikis that want it to be inaccessible, it needs to not be stored.

What do you want to call the $wg setting?

I created this nifty maintenance script to retroactively populate the thanks log with revision IDs. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Tjlsangria/populateThanksLogParams.php

Change 311364 had a related patch set uploaded (by Tjlsangria):
Specify which revision was thanked in Special:Log/thanks

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/311364

Other useful parameters could include the prefixed page title and the revision ID presented as a clickable link to [[Special:Diff/xxx|revision xxx]].

As there is a patch available, should this task be reopened?

@Catrope Thanks!

Links to the revisions for Thanks are currently in

• Special:Contributions/<user_name>
• Special/Notifications

but not in

• Special:Log/thanks

As I know dewiki, to deploy this there without community consensus will probably create a shitstorm. That's why here should be a setting to disable this.

In T51087#3211361, @David_Hedlund wrote:

Can you clarify this? If Alice thanks Bob for revision 123, Bob should be able to know all of that. Eve (any other user) should just be able to tell that Alice thanked Bob, but not for what (unless this is patch is implemented and it's configured to reveal that on a particular wiki).

Links to the revisions for Thanks are currently in

• Special:Contributions/<user_name>

That is just a list of revisions, but it shouldn't allow Eve to tell which revisions Alice thanked Bob for.

• Special/Notifications

This is private to Bob.

In T51087#3211387, @MGChecker wrote:

As I know dewiki, to deploy this there without community consensus will probably create a shitstorm. That's why here should be a setting to disable this.

I don't understand the thumbs down. The task specifically says it will only be done if configured to do so.

@Mattflaschen-WMF

That is just a list of revisions, but it shouldn't allow Eve to tell which revisions Alice thanked Bob for.

Correct, I stroked the text.

I don't see what I Thanked for @Mattflaschen-WMF

A Thanks log entry for Target David Hedlund

2017-04-21T23:08:23 Testem (talk | contribs) thanked David Hedlund (talk | contribs)

But I don't know what I was thanked for. It should read:

2017-04-21T23:08:23 Testem (talk | contribs) thanked David Hedlund (talk | contribs) for your edit on 25I-NBOMe

@MZMcBride Can you please copy my concrete example to the top of this post?

You can of course modify if to another existing Thank log.

@David_Hedlund: Are you describing the behavior with or without the patch (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/311364/)?

@kaldari As Wikipedia is right now, without the patch I guess.

Change 311364 abandoned by TTO:
Specify which revision was thanked in Special:Log/thanks

Reason:
Needs discussion on task. Patch owner is banned so cannot contribute to a discussion here.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/311364

Sorry for the noise

I can understand that there are some privacy questions with this, but that shouldn't hold back developers from implementing the option for it.

And particularly when it comes to knowing which edits you personally have thanked others for or they have thanked you for, there's really no possible privacy justification for withholding that, as it's information you already know (either since it's in your notifications or since it's an action you did). Even beyond that, the confirmation text very clearly notes that thanking is public, so users consented to it being visible when they chose to thank someone. All this is something that can be discussed on-wiki in the various communities, but that can't happen until there's the option to enable the feature if consensus is found for it.

This task relates to T248330, in that when a mentee potentially worthy of praise is surfaced to me, this feature would help me to be able to review the edits for which they were thanked when determined whether/how to praise them.

In T51087#8665139, @Sdkb wrote:

This task relates to T248330, in that when a mentee potentially worthy of praise is surfaced to me, this feature would help me to be able to review the edits for which they were thanked when determined whether/how to praise them.

Thanks, @Sdkb! I added that user story to this task: T324134: Communication: connecting Thanks to a specific edit

I agree that this task relates to the T248330 and the Growth team's Positive Reinforcement project, but we actually moved similar tasks to the second iteration epic: T316699: [EPIC] Growth: Positive reinforcement - Iteration 2.

I'll move this task under that epic, but that doesn't mean we'll definitely complete it. I would want to complete this task around gathering community feedback first: T324134: Communication: connecting Thanks to a specific edit