Last modified: 2014-09-10 15:15:11 UTC
Looking at [[mw:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal]], currently "Email options" is under the "User profile" tab of [[mw:Special:Preferences]]. I think "Email options" should be moved to a separate "Notifications" tab in MediaWiki core. This will allow third-party extensions (such as Echo) to more easily add their preferences to a dedicated, sensible section of Special:Preferences.
This sounds like a good idea.
Change 125762 had a related patch set uploaded by 01tonythomas: Moved "Email options" preference to separate "Notifications" tab. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/125762
This will increase the clicks of distance from "Add * to my watchlist" options, which are logically connected to enotifwatchlist... Moreover, that section includes "Email" and the link to Special:ChangeEmail, which should really be in the main pane and at any rate the same pane as "Global account status" (for CentralAuth wikis). I'd rather: 1) merge the two "Display options" of Watchlist/RC and move the Expand/Hide* options to RC (so that we finally solve the false dichotomy here and the unexpected interactions between the two); 2) rename "Watchlist" to "Watching and notifications" or similar ("Following changes" would be a more traditional MediaWiki way to call it: [[m:Help:Tracking_changes]]), move there the email options other than "email" itself.
Krinkle said: > but I do think the tab name is confusing. it uses terminology that sounds > ambiguous, is probably quite hard to translate, and doesn't match terminology > we use elsewhere (sounds a bit foreign to MediaWiki). but: (from comment #3) > 2) rename "Watchlist" to "Watching and notifications" or similar ("Following > changes" would be a more traditional MediaWiki way to call it: > [[m:Help:Tracking_changes]]), move there the email options other than > "email" itself. Any more opinions? An alternative would be a simple "Updates".
Right now "Watchlist" (from MediaWiki) and "Notifications" (from Echo) are separate preference tabs. Neither is particularly small or related to the other. Why should they be merged at all?
(In reply to Krinkle from comment #5) > Right now "Watchlist" (from MediaWiki) and "Notifications" (from Echo) are > separate preference tabs. Neither is particularly small or related to the > other. Why should they be merged at all? Right, that wasn't the original purpose of the bug. How about making the Notifications section part of MediaWiki and moving the email notification settings to it. Keeping the settings for the display of the Watchlist page and how things end up on it, separate.
(In reply to Krinkle from comment #6) > How about making the Notifications section part of MediaWiki and moving the > email notification settings to it. Of course you can't really do this, it will be the opposite: create a section in core for a handful enotif settings and then change Echo to use it. It's still an improvement in clarity, we can start from here. > Keeping the settings for the display of > the Watchlist page and how things end up on it, separate. Watchlist settings interact heavily with what the enotif settings end up doing, so it's counterintuitive to have them apart, but there's no need to fix all problems at once.
Watchlist settings contain: * When and how something is automatically added to your Watchlist. * What and how things are displayed on Special:Watchlist. * Authentication token for the Watchist data. None of these affect notifications. And while you may get e-mails from pages changes on your Watchlist, or Echo notifications (if installed), the association seems arbitrary. Besides, the setting for something being added to your Watchlist doesn't relate other people's edits being made. It relates to the default value of the "Watch this page" checkbox on pages you edit yourself. It still allows the user to opt-out. There could be any number of preferences that influence default settings of the edit environment in general. And while edits can generate notifications, it'd imho be confusing to store them under notifications. (In reply to Nemo from comment #7) > (In reply to Krinkle from comment #6) > > How about making the Notifications section part of MediaWiki and moving the > > email notification settings to it. > > Of course you can't really do this, it will be the opposite: create a > section in core for a handful enotif settings and then change Echo to use > it. It's still an improvement in clarity, we can start from here. > Exactly. Right now Echo uses an internal pref section id of 'echo'. So we'd update Echo to extend the built-in notifications section instead of adding a new one for Echo.
Would such a change also obey/unify settings for the prefered mail format (plain vs HTML)? See bug 70245 for a related request.
