If we don't show the thanks link, that would technically expose the users preference to not receive thanks. I'm not sure if there is a better alternative than the current method of silently failing.

(In reply to comment #1)

If we don't show the thanks link, that would technically expose the users
preference to not receive thanks.

Why would that be a problem? It's what we do with EmailUser, it would not be nice to silently drop emails would it.

There's a distinction between thanking a user and the user receiving a thanks notification, isn't there? The current behavior is to log the thanks and attempt to notify the user of the thanks. If the user has opted out of receiving thanks notifications, that's his or her choice, but he or she was still thanked.

Is it appropriate to restrict my ability to thank another editor?

(In reply to comment #3)

There's a distinction between thanking a user and the user receiving a thanks
notification, isn't there?

Yes. Aside from logging, a row is created in the echo_event table if you thank a user who has disabled it, just no notification will be created.

• Bug 70765 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

gryllida wrote:

In my view the thanks button should be absent in such case. Otherwise whoever thanked me will think that it reached me, but it did not. I prefer when they realise that I got nothing.

This could be the source of problems during editing disputes, where one participant has thanked an 'opponent' for a good edit, which should be a quick way to reduce the tensions. The thanker will expect better interaction thereafter, but if the latter person doesnt receive the thanks then the two people are now operating with different expectations of how the other person should behave, and if the thanker mentions the 'thanks' the latter is going to be confused and possibly even suspicious.

In T57401#591364, @Legoktm wrote:

If we don't show the thanks link, that would technically expose the users preference to not receive thanks. I'm not sure if there is a better alternative than the current method of silently failing.

There's a similar issue with mention notifications - T68078: Indicate mentions in edit preview and in "Your edit was saved" message - it'd be good if we could resolve both.

I believe the only 2 that are currently public, are "Enable email from other users" (implicitly), and the gender-setting which clearly states "This information will be public" (via this message https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Prefs-help-gender ).
Who would decide, on what preferences that are currently considered "private", can be changed? Legal dept.?

Any consensus?

I have not been around here for long, but I I agree with @jayvdb's viewpoint that when the thank feature is used for purposes beyond simple acknowledgement/appreciation, it's necessary to let the thanker know that the recipient is not being notified. If we don't want to let them know, then keeping the link is fine.

I think there is consensus that we should not give false expectations to people. If we're unsure about revealing the target user's preferences, it's ok to either remove the confirmation altogether (and just grey out the thank link) or to change the text to something less definite à la "we sent a pigeon their way".

Going through this, I see these options:

1. Keep the user's notification setting private and (per @Nemo_bis):
   1. Remove the confirmation, or
   2. Give a less definite message.
2. Make the user's notification setting public and:
   1. Expose it through the API (for Pywikibot-Thanks).
   2. Change the process of thanking a user who has disabled thanks notifications using one of the options from T120753#1863894, or perhaps a new option.

Can we reach consensus on which one of these options should be implemented?