Last modified: 2006-10-29 12:19:15 UTC
I recetly had an idea to make a bot to go around replacing common templates with the {{subst:}} versions. You can see the list of templates that would be affected by looking at [[User:SubstBot]] on en.wiki. However, since most of these templates are talk page templates, this might cause disruption when many users get erroneous "new message" alerts. Possible solutions: 1. Mediawiki software ignores edits made by identified and approved bot accounts to user talk pages. This is probably not satisfactory since some bots might want to leave real messages on talk pages. 2. Mediawiki software ignores edits made by anyone that are marked as "minor edits". This might be a good idea, since it would let users edit their spelling and so on without disruption. But some users may find the change confusing. 3. Mediawiki software ignores edits made by identified and approved bot accounts that are marked as "minor edits". This seems like a decent middle ground.
I'd welcome number 2: minor edits to talk pages do not creating a "you have new messages".
I would like this as well, actually. I the more I think about it, the less I think it would hurt.
This is not an exact solution to your problem, but I'd like to mention to you the following: "e-mail notification" comes, if enabled, with a user option "send e-mail notification also for minor edits": depending on this option, watching users will or will not receive e-mail notification for a changed page if the page editor has checked "this a minor edit".
Yeah, the problem is that not everyone would use this option, and bot behavior would still result in a "New messages" dialog appearing an Wiki pages, even if they are set as minor edits.
However, hiding minor edits could well help vandals who target userpages. I'm aware that anons can't flag edits as minor, however, people can and do create user accounts for vandalism. I like to know what's going on on my user page and talk pages, and I suspect that rings true for many others.
You don't get a message when someone edits your userpage either, and yet somehow, userpage vandalism gets reverted.
Good point. There are admins with CDVF out there, at least.
*** Bug 5760 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 2583 [details] Tested patch making minor edits by bots NOT trigger newtalk Implements Behaviour 3. (MINOR edits by botflagged accounts do not trigger the newtalk banner)
Created attachment 2588 [details] Modified patch implementing a separate permission key for this behaviour Per discussion with brion on IRC, I've modified the patch as described above.
Fixed in r17281
