I'm sorry if I seem condescending but this is a condescending suggestion. Rather than think little of you, this is totally like something I might decide was a good idea myself. You are busy people on this stuff. You don't sit around wondering if you should wonder what to do. You just try to select stuff and do it. However, don't delete the notifications/messages. I've posted this a couple of times and nobody has affirmed it makes sense, so maybe you just aren't quick to respond over here, and I think I detect a tone in my response. Honestly, I've been wondering if recent events haven't been similar to when the whole world went to war, that it affects us in an anonymous internationally collaborative scheme, tensions fray without even thinking about them. I don't mean to be rude. Also, I've never done a single thing to help the development of this software. I am certainly not the boss around here or anything totally stupid, because I do feel like I am demanding on this suggestion... a sense of urgency which was probably not necessary.... but all the same, please don't delete peoples notifications. Instead, please add buttons and features that allow them to much easier manage the deletions themselves... Slightly more difficult yes, but ultimately more functional...

Notifications are messages for specific individual editors. The notifications which should be kept are the ones which the specific individual editor has not requested to be deleted. No reason has been given for this action whatsoever. What is the motivation here? I want to see a practical reason for why you want to delete other peoples messages. No, the fact that they will be kept indefinitely is not a practical reason. Everything on Wikipedia is kept indefinitely unless it is against site policy or outside the scope. Allowing people to manage their own messages is definitely not outside the scope. We shouldn't have to explain that. You wouldn't be very happy if Outlook or Google mail started to delete your messages. Come on now, don't be deleting peoples messages. You are already auto deleting them. Never delete a message until the person that message is for presses a button which says, "Press this to delete these messages". That is the function you should be considering your next step here.

In fact it has been listed on the feature requests of that gadget for over 8 years. I don't think the function would depend on this particular gadget. Any gadget able to produce a random slideshow would, produce a random slideshow regardless of what the gadget was then named...

Just that a random selection feature be added. At present a slide show will run through the pics alphabetically. However, should you visit a category regularly for a slideshow, you will always start on the same page and run through the files in alphabetic order. Random would add a unique experience to large categories each time. For instance, when you view an image in Windows Photo Viewer, there is a large blue button at the bottom-middle. If you press that button it will run a random slideshow based on the folder the image was in. The request is to have the Commons slideshow emulate that functionality.

Not sure how to ping you

Apologies Aklapper my email junked my notification and I rarely look at Phabricator,

I'm sure it could be very complex I've little idea really

I'm not sure I can present it as a problem solver. Commons already uses an app called "slideshow". Yes it would be a timed cycling of the images. The ultimate functionality for it would be to display all the pictures one at a time in random order, and be able to adjust the list of queued images while it was playing.