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The 'Thanks notification' offers a new way to give positive feedback on Wikipedia. This experimental feature lets editors send a private 'Thank you' notification to users who make useful edits -- by clicking a small 'thank' link on their history or diff page.
The purpose of this notification is to give quick positive feedback to recognize productive contributions -- and it should be particularly helpful for encouraging new users during their first critical steps on Wikipedia. This small feature is now being tested on MediaWiki.org and we aim to release it on the English Wikipedia at the end of this week -- or the following week. We have intentionally kept it as simple as possible, so we can all evaluate it and improve it together, based on user feedback.
We welcome your feedback and look forward to a healthy discussion on this talk page, once you have had a chance to try it out. If you would like to test it in advance, you can do so on MediaWiki.org right now, as outlined on this testing page. And any user who does not want to be thanked will be able to disable this notifications in their preferences. To learn more about this feature, check out this Thanks overview page -- and our first specifications. We'll post an update here with more info once this feature is live. Fabrice Florin (WMF) ( talk) 17:58, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
The other day I wanted to thank someone, but Thank links don't seem to appear on my phone. Checked on more than one browser. (Android 9, with Firefox and with Chrome.) TooManyFingers ( talk) 19:31, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
I should probably add that, at least as far as I am aware, Wikipedia still considers its mobile UI an extension; you could even call it an afterthought. That is, the mobile experience is not integrated into the help pages much if at all - everything related to the mobile UI is listed on the specific help pages for mobile, and only there.
In other words, the reason this page does not bring up issues related to or specific to mobile browsing is because desktop browsing is still the entrenched default, at least if you judge by Wikipedia help (which this page is part of).
Not saying that's an excellent answer - I am not defending anything here. Just saying that this is what I believe to be the answer, and now you know it too. CapnZapp ( talk) 07:57, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
Although it is explained and cleared in the Help:Notifications/Thanks#Confirmation, I had for a long time just clicked away thinking that by confirming it would then send some message to the user talk page and "spamming" or bring me to their talk page, and polluting it. There are probably other editors that may also be hesitant to use this Thank function because of this. Anyway, just my 2 cents. — Arthurfragoso ( talk) 00:43, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
Currently, it's possible to disallow thanks, which means that you don't see them, but does not in any way prevent other users from sending them. (It's rather like an e-mail blacklist which deletes incoming mail without notifying the sender.) I think it would be better if it were impossible to send thanks to users who have disabled thanking. The thanks "button" would not appear for edits by those users. You would not be able to thank them, regardless of whether they'd see it or not.
Rationale: Suppose that Alice (A) has disabled thanks, but Bob (B) wants to thank her. If B thanks A, that notification will never be seen, and B may possibly (over time, and many thankings) feel snubbed or ignored. On the face of it, that's B's problem: but the issue is that B thinks he is interacting, while A is totally oblivious and unable to know this. It would be better if B simply knew "I cannot thank A", and did not get misled about what A thinks or knows about B.
More pragmatically, it would also save some small amounts of editors' time, since it's particularly stupid if people are firing off thanks into an unreadable void, when they could be editing instead (or perhaps writing meaningful talk-page messages).
Equinox ◑ 05:29, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
I have not disallowed thanks from othersI'm sure you realize what you meant to say was "I have not disabled being notified when others thank me", User:Redrose64. (Normally a useless nitpick; less so given the subject matter of this particular discussion) Cheers CapnZapp ( talk) 14:50, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
I was going to use the Anonymous user who edited after my first recent edit here as example. Luckily, first, I realized the user's edit had been a removal not an addition. (Didn't pay enough attention to the colors' code.) I cross-checked, then, the claim in the Edit summary that the removal was of a duplication and found that what remained didn't include a nice extra piece of info in the bullet point that was removed, hence my most recent edit of the Muses in popular culture article. Now I can still use this first-edit Anonymous user as an example. I'd like to thank the user for finding and removing the partial duplication. (If I'm extra-dedicated I'd also do a custom recruitment pitch TO the user (maybe drawing attention to the flaw in the user's edit, maybe not).) In any event Anonymous users are potential named or pseudo-nymed users and a Thanks is cheap and appropriate for Anon's too (in any event) I feel. Swliv ( talk) 17:54, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
I have been editing Wikipedia since 2006. I give Thanks fairly often. For such a simple device as Thanks, it did not occur to me to look for documentation.
I just looked for and found the documentation after giving several consecutive Thanks and then being annoyed at having to acknowledge that I meant it each time. I have been annoyed for the same thing many times before, but I was never sufficiently motivated do do something about it. Now I see that the Thanks is only infinitesimally public, there is even less reason for warning the Thank-er that the Thanks will be public. I would not mind if you showed only the Thank-er a link or button to undo the Thanks.
Thanks for considering this suggestion. — Finell 02:29, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
The confirmation message was added because the "thank" link is next to the "undo" link, and initially several editors accidentally thanked vandals for edits they intended to undo.
You cannot "un-thank" a thanks once confirmed.
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Notifications/Thanks page. |
|
Archives:
1,
2,
3Auto-archiving period: 90 days
![]() |
This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived. |
The 'Thanks notification' offers a new way to give positive feedback on Wikipedia. This experimental feature lets editors send a private 'Thank you' notification to users who make useful edits -- by clicking a small 'thank' link on their history or diff page.
The purpose of this notification is to give quick positive feedback to recognize productive contributions -- and it should be particularly helpful for encouraging new users during their first critical steps on Wikipedia. This small feature is now being tested on MediaWiki.org and we aim to release it on the English Wikipedia at the end of this week -- or the following week. We have intentionally kept it as simple as possible, so we can all evaluate it and improve it together, based on user feedback.
We welcome your feedback and look forward to a healthy discussion on this talk page, once you have had a chance to try it out. If you would like to test it in advance, you can do so on MediaWiki.org right now, as outlined on this testing page. And any user who does not want to be thanked will be able to disable this notifications in their preferences. To learn more about this feature, check out this Thanks overview page -- and our first specifications. We'll post an update here with more info once this feature is live. Fabrice Florin (WMF) ( talk) 17:58, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
The other day I wanted to thank someone, but Thank links don't seem to appear on my phone. Checked on more than one browser. (Android 9, with Firefox and with Chrome.) TooManyFingers ( talk) 19:31, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
I should probably add that, at least as far as I am aware, Wikipedia still considers its mobile UI an extension; you could even call it an afterthought. That is, the mobile experience is not integrated into the help pages much if at all - everything related to the mobile UI is listed on the specific help pages for mobile, and only there.
In other words, the reason this page does not bring up issues related to or specific to mobile browsing is because desktop browsing is still the entrenched default, at least if you judge by Wikipedia help (which this page is part of).
Not saying that's an excellent answer - I am not defending anything here. Just saying that this is what I believe to be the answer, and now you know it too. CapnZapp ( talk) 07:57, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
Although it is explained and cleared in the Help:Notifications/Thanks#Confirmation, I had for a long time just clicked away thinking that by confirming it would then send some message to the user talk page and "spamming" or bring me to their talk page, and polluting it. There are probably other editors that may also be hesitant to use this Thank function because of this. Anyway, just my 2 cents. — Arthurfragoso ( talk) 00:43, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
Currently, it's possible to disallow thanks, which means that you don't see them, but does not in any way prevent other users from sending them. (It's rather like an e-mail blacklist which deletes incoming mail without notifying the sender.) I think it would be better if it were impossible to send thanks to users who have disabled thanking. The thanks "button" would not appear for edits by those users. You would not be able to thank them, regardless of whether they'd see it or not.
Rationale: Suppose that Alice (A) has disabled thanks, but Bob (B) wants to thank her. If B thanks A, that notification will never be seen, and B may possibly (over time, and many thankings) feel snubbed or ignored. On the face of it, that's B's problem: but the issue is that B thinks he is interacting, while A is totally oblivious and unable to know this. It would be better if B simply knew "I cannot thank A", and did not get misled about what A thinks or knows about B.
More pragmatically, it would also save some small amounts of editors' time, since it's particularly stupid if people are firing off thanks into an unreadable void, when they could be editing instead (or perhaps writing meaningful talk-page messages).
Equinox ◑ 05:29, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
I have not disallowed thanks from othersI'm sure you realize what you meant to say was "I have not disabled being notified when others thank me", User:Redrose64. (Normally a useless nitpick; less so given the subject matter of this particular discussion) Cheers CapnZapp ( talk) 14:50, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
I was going to use the Anonymous user who edited after my first recent edit here as example. Luckily, first, I realized the user's edit had been a removal not an addition. (Didn't pay enough attention to the colors' code.) I cross-checked, then, the claim in the Edit summary that the removal was of a duplication and found that what remained didn't include a nice extra piece of info in the bullet point that was removed, hence my most recent edit of the Muses in popular culture article. Now I can still use this first-edit Anonymous user as an example. I'd like to thank the user for finding and removing the partial duplication. (If I'm extra-dedicated I'd also do a custom recruitment pitch TO the user (maybe drawing attention to the flaw in the user's edit, maybe not).) In any event Anonymous users are potential named or pseudo-nymed users and a Thanks is cheap and appropriate for Anon's too (in any event) I feel. Swliv ( talk) 17:54, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
I have been editing Wikipedia since 2006. I give Thanks fairly often. For such a simple device as Thanks, it did not occur to me to look for documentation.
I just looked for and found the documentation after giving several consecutive Thanks and then being annoyed at having to acknowledge that I meant it each time. I have been annoyed for the same thing many times before, but I was never sufficiently motivated do do something about it. Now I see that the Thanks is only infinitesimally public, there is even less reason for warning the Thank-er that the Thanks will be public. I would not mind if you showed only the Thank-er a link or button to undo the Thanks.
Thanks for considering this suggestion. — Finell 02:29, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
The confirmation message was added because the "thank" link is next to the "undo" link, and initially several editors accidentally thanked vandals for edits they intended to undo.
You cannot "un-thank" a thanks once confirmed.