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)[reply]

• Watchlists: This is Not going to be displayed on watchlist pages (just history pages, and diff pages), correct? (At least initially). If true, that probably warrants an explicit mention on the project page. (To prevent people worrying/complaining about "more links/cruft in my watchlist"). Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 23:06, 28 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, it's not on watchlists (or other feeds, like RecentChanges) for now. Just diff and history. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Shouldn't it be on watchlists though? I mean that is where most experienced editors interact with the history pages, and not having it there interferes with effective communication and interaction with new users, Sadads (talk) 23:09, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Namespace: Will it be in all namespace's history pages, or just article-namespace history pages? (the docs currently state the latter). Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 23:06, 28 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • As far as I can tell on MediaWiki.org (check out a talk page like Talk:API, or your user talk), it will be on all namespaces. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I've tried to fix/clarify both those points in the project page. Reword as needed. –Quiddity (talk) 01:21, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Quiddity! Sounds like namespaces is something we should discuss. I think it's potentially useful to have it in places like the talk namespace, but I think we should see if it has a good signal:noise ratio in practise. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:13, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

2 quick notes on namespace: The main example image (currently used twice on the same page) uses the "user talk" namespace. We might want to change that, if the ideal use-case is for article edits.

Relatedly, I rambled a little about how I appreciate the feature's potential, and used talk-namespace edits as my example.

So, yeah - some potential good uses, and some potential restrictions to consider if it gets misused. But definitely better than anonymous upvotes! –Quiddity (talk) 07:55, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd really like to have this available from the watchlist too. That's where I see new edits crop up, and I'd like to thank the editor there and then. For people who complain about cruft on their watchlist you can always just make it easy to opt out. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:48, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes! <3 groupuscule (talk) 01:59, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • How can you thank someone for an edit when you haven't seen it? I don't see any point in putting it on watchlists. –anemoneprojectors– 14:28, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • You can see changes from watchlist if you have turned on the awesome gadget that shows changes when you hover over "diff". groupuscule (talk) 16:51, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The current position of the button is very badly chosen in my opinion. It is too easy to click the "thank" button when one actually wants to "undo" an edit (or also the other way round). Especially since there seems to be no way to take back the thanks currently? --Patrick87 (talk) 02:17, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a "confirm thank" prompt would probably be the easiest solution.--Turtleey (talk) 03:39, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. I accidentally thanked a vandal. Brycehughes (talk) 05:24, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Patrick87:, @Turtleey:, @Brycehughes: Out of interest, why did you click the link you think ? Was it muscle memory, expectation that no longer matched, or 'jumping' content or something ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:02, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fortunately I didn't click the wrong link accidentally for now (I didn't dare to try the link at all because I assume there is no possibility to undo the "thank"), but it's somehow strange to find the "undo" link (which is used to revert vandalism most of the time) besides the "thank" link (which should be used for very good contributions). Dealing with vandalism and thanking authors are two different workflows, that don't have anything in common (at least not for me), therefore it's confusing to have both buttons directly next to each other. Maybe I'll get used to it, but that was my first impression (and I thought we were supposed to give feedback based on our first impressions on the new function? That's at least what new editor will see.). --Patrick87 (talk) 11:33, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the helpful feedback :). I'd argue they're part of the same workflow; a good/bad evaluation of content. Bad, undo. Good, thank. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:42, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, but given that they are part of the same workflow, one would naturally expect similar behavior. Undo is at least a two click process. Brycehughes (talk) 17:00, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The reason why these are different workflows for me: "thank" doesn't change any article content at all, it's just a social feature; "undo"s main purpose is to change article content while it is not a social feature (although the author gets notified in the meantime. Therefore the functions are totally different for me. --Patrick87 (talk) 17:20, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so no one has actually experienced this problem yet ? The report is about the potential risk to click the wrong link ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:41, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Editors are describing misclicks due to its position in the discussion here. Position aside, the additional problem is that there is no confirmation and no way to retract a thanks (like you can with undo), thus as people try or test the feature for the first time, many will expect to be able to confirm or at least retract, which they won't be able to do after they try it, and then we may have a lot of extraneous and misplaced love floating around the place. Brycehughes (talk) 22:10, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I had assumed there would be a confirmation. So I picked a random edit and clicked Thanks. Oops. Brycehughes (talk) 16:41, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think we can all agree that the 'history/rc' like pages are messy and have been for quite a while (this was known even when undo was introduced some 5 years ago). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:41, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For anyone interested, there's an open bug here regarding the Thanks workflow: bugzilla:47658. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:54, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the placement isn't terrible (to me) if there's a way to undo it. A confirmation would also be nice. I just thanked an editor I reverted. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 17:57, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I experienced the problem once yesterday: "thanked" an edit that I was intending to undo with an explanation. In my case it was apparently because the page had not fully rendered and the content "jumped" a bit just as I was aiming for the "undo". I agree that we should have a confirmation page or at least a way to reverse. --Arxiloxos (talk) 19:36, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd agree that there should be a way to confirm the thanks in order to prevent mistakes. AutomaticStrikeout  ?  02:37, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Add my name to the list of people who would like to have a way to undo a "thank" (or, better still, the "thank" feature removed outright but I doubt that's going to happen; I prefer going to someone's talk page than lazily pressing a button); I accidentally "thanked" someone I was reverting/undoing after automatically clicking where the "undo" feature used to be. The "thank" I gave is meaningless because I reverted the edit I was supposedly expressing gratitude for. Acalamari 09:05, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree that there should be a a way to undo or confirm the thanks. Hopefully this is implemented as one of the first updates to this new feature. - tucoxn\^talk 22:27, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, the current way to get rid of the "thank" links is to tick "Exclude me from feature experiments" in preferences. However, I'm guessing this won't always be a feature experiment... Will there be another option to disable this once it is non-experimental? – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:26, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good question! Fabrice? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:49, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi PartTimeGnome, thanks for your question. I'm afraid we have not yet determined a solution for this turning off the Thanks link when it is no longer experimental. We'd like to first see how this feature is being used, then determine the best option with your help. Perhaps it could be tied with the Notifications preferences, so if you tell us you don't want to be thanked, we can assume that you don't want to thank people either? Suggestions welcome, but take your time ... :) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It makes sense to me to disable sending thanks if receiving is off; I see no use for send-only. However, it is reasonable to want to know if someone thanks you while not wanting to send thanks yourself (i.e. receive-only).

I currently fall in the latter category – I want to see thanks sent to me, but the "thank" link for sending my own is useless clutter (see below). If bug 49161 is fixed, this would no longer be an issue – the link would either work or be hidden from me, depending on the chosen solution. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:25, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

bugzilla:55497 shows Thanks is no longer turned off by "Exclude me from feature experiments". Wikipedia:Notifications/Thanks#How to turn off this feature needs an update. At Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive_119#Getting rid of "thank" I posted a partial solution which removes the link but leaves behind parantheses or a pipe, adding this to Special:MyPage/common.css:

.mw-thanks-thank-link {display: none;}

PrimeHunter (talk) 22:08, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just got thanked using this tool for the first time today, and I found myself wanting to say "you're welcome" to the user who thanked me. But it seemed a bit too much to actually go to their talk page and leave them a message thanking them for the thanks they gave me. Could there be a feature like a "you're welcome" button? I thought of "thank this user back" and "show appreciation", but I'm sure someone else can come up with something more snappy. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:55, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Only if, on receiving "you're welcome", I can hit a "that's OK, no problem" button... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:48, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Or we could just cut out the middleman and get the developers to code up an Infinite Loop of Thanks. ;) Seriously, though, I think something to let people know that you got the thanks and that you appreciate it might not be such a bad idea. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 11:11, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, come on! This is the price you pay with an impersonal "Thank" feature, that is triggered by pushing a button somewhere on a history page. There's no point to be able to answer back. That's exactly why I don't really like the feature at all (but I don't want to start a huge discussion about this now, just mention my reasons): On the one hand, when you really want to thank a user for an exceptional contribution, it stays impersonal and cold, no comparison to leaving a personal comment or even a barnstar on the users talk page. On the other hand it can lead to people flooding Wikipedia with thanks for even average contributions, making a "thank" worth even less. It's (sorry for the example, but it just matches perfectly) like "Likes" on facebook: A single like counts nothing, it's the comment with the most likes that counts, and this concept simply doesn't work for Wikipedia (at least I don't want Wikipedia to become a place where this concept works). --Patrick87 (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that any "Thanks" that is expecting a reply would be on the talk page. The advantage of sending it this way is that it is a ping, and no discussion is necessary. It is simply a tip of the hat, not a discussion needing a reply. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 18:38, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The correct solution, for people that want to say "you are welcome", is as follows. Originator: User#1 clicks thanks. Recipient: optionally, user#2 clicks thanks (i.e. "thank you for thanking me"). Goto ten. Please do not implement the "you are welcome" button... we already *have* that button, but it is labelled with the same text as the 'thank' button... ummm, for technical reasons, yeah, that's the ticket. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 11:59, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

+1 above. Need to be able to "thank a thank" with no recursive limit.~Technophant (talk) 16:41, 7 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was unaware this feature was being implemented, and this morning I just "thanked" two edits I was intending to "undo" by accident, since the buttons are now right next to each other. How do I retract these "thanks"? Chubbles (talk) 18:34, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You can't. Thanks are irreversible. This is discussed in the (undo | thank) section above. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:01, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, really? And where do I go to complain about that? I can't be the only person who's very uncomfortable with a function that has no checkstep and no possibility of undoing. I accidentally click on things all the time, but at least I can fix a screwup for everything else. Chubbles (talk) 07:58, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Same place as always, bugzilla. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:34, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Chubbles, this is something we're actively discussing and looking for ways to resolve, as you can see from the discussion two sections above this one. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:52, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just tested this. I expected some kind of confirmation or explanation. πr² (t • c) 18:53, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I thanked three times, when I was only going to undo edit... And now the user [maybe] thinks that he's contributors were good, or then he thinks that wtf I'm doing... --Stryn (talk) 19:33, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I too have thanked about three people that I was meaning to undo. I've turned off the feature but agree with what Stryn says - three people now probably think either I'm an idiot or they made correct edits. –anemoneprojectors– 13:08, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We're working on this problem now; update in a sec :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:13, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unreversible one-click actions are seriously bad user-interface design, particularly with the spread of sensitive touch-screens, but I don't think "Un-thank" is the answer, and I'm not sure how it could work - how long would the option stay open, would the Thank message be removed from the notification tab or followed by a withdrawal message, and what if the recipient has noticed it before it is withdrawn? Much better have an "Are you sure?" check with a second click. JohnCD (talk) 21:41, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Correction, unreversible *harmful* one-click actions are bad UI design. If this was a button called 'ban-hammer' then your argument would be correct. But it is a button for spreading wikiLove. What is the worst case scenario here? You click thank, instead of undo. The person -- or in some cases spambot -- that you "thank" does not care. Later, you or somebody else clicks the revert-button, and sooner or later, your or somebody else clicks the ban-hammer button. Does this hurt *your* reputation? No, the thank-button is not counted. Does this hurt the person-or-bot you thanked? No of course not. Does this hurt wikipedia? No. There is the argument that maybe-some-good-faith-beginner-will-see-the-thanks-message-and-get-confused. News flash: WP:NOCLUE. If they are a beginner, they are *guaranteed* to be confused about something, because wikipedia is so damn confusing. Instead of trying to *unthank* a good-faith beginner, since you are planning to ninja-revert them in your very next click, just re-interpret post-facto the retroactive meaning of your thanks. Instead of assuming it means "thanks for your fully-MOS-compliant impeccably-grammatical edit which I would not dare revert" you can instead assume that what you sent was "thanks for your good-faith effort and thanks for trying keep your chin up wikipedia is complicated so apologies but I will now be reverting you". Strongly oppose the ability to unthank. If anybody is so dead-set on retracting an accidental click of the thank-button, I invite them to personally visit the talkpage of the human they are unthanking, and explain in detail their rationale, keeping pillar four firmly in mind at all times, of course. Hint: bet there is never a case where that happens, in practice. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:13, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do we need more JS-only features that are confusing to users with JS disabled? It's confusing to those with JS enabled too, but that's a different story... πr² (t • c) 03:37, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. It is both silly and confusing to show a link that does nothing when JS is disabled. It isn't a big deal that it's a JS-only feature (it's hardly a core function), but it's plain sloppy to show a broken link to users who don't use JS.

I wouldn't have thought this to be too difficult to do without JS: The link target would go to somewhere like /w/index.php?title=Special:Thanks&oldid=REVISION&token=TOKEN, which would show a message like Your thanks have been sent to USERNAME.. It's a little clunkier than it is with JavaScript since it takes you away from the history page, but that's something I expect for not using JS. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:02, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Should a bug be filed? πr² (t • c) 23:55, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

 Done – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:10, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The project page says that thanks "are not publicly visible or counted up on the history page, diffs, or your contribution history." Could I ask that someone explain the rationale for deciding in favor of making this not publicly visible? Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:33, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess that it's to prevent gamification and the explicit forming of cliques. Also to prevent people citing "the number of thanks I received for this edit" in discussions.

As for not adding it to our contributions history, that would lead to WP:editcountitis problems. (Ie. in RFA, if someone has made 1,000 "thank" edits (months from now), does that count towards their votecount?)

Ie. This seems to be intended (in its current iteration) as an utterly informal method of expressing gratitude or agreement with an edit. If someone wanted to express that gratitude or agreement in a formal/recorded/"for-the-record" manner, they would give a barnstar, or reply to the comment, or post a comment on the user's talkpage, or etc. (Just my guesses). –Quiddity (talk) 18:57, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note that sent thanks are logged - what they mean is that we don't keep a tally of thanks received for each editor, or revision. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Er, thanks received are also logged for each editor, just not publicly per revision. — HHHIPPO 20:46, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, that's just weird :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Quiddity is correct, based on my conversations with Fabrice and others around the office about this feature. We want this to be a genuine person to person thank you, not an endorsement or a tool for "voting up" edits. They're logged like Oliver notes, but AFAIK, this is primarily so that the community can track down potential over-use or abuse of the feature (e.g. is the current rate limit enough?). Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just made the horribly-coded User:PiRSquared17/thanks.js, so that Special:BlankPage/thanks//Rschen7754 tells you who has thanked User:Rschen7754, and Special:BlankPage/thanks/Rschen7754 tells you about the people he has thanked. Special:BlankPage/thanks tells you stats about the last 500 thanks. I know it could be improved, it's just a proof-of-concept. πr² (t • c) 02:24, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Using that JS, Special:BlankPage/thanks/Rschen7754/Vogone tells you how many times he has thanked User:Vogone, etc. πr² (t • c) 02:24, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, it is not much different from using Special:Log/thanks. Except it gives you numbers, "count". πr² (t • c) 02:56, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no, our thanking shenanigans are over! :O --Rschen7754 02:59, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just received my first thanks. While I was pleased to get it, I was also mildly dismayed that I had not seen a way to send them. This page seems to imply that they should appear if I have my "Preferences | Appearance | Exclude me from feature experiments" unchecked (which is true). I have looked at several editor's editing history and recent changes. Should I see it?

Perhaps some other setting or gadget is interfering with it?

Here is a sample from Recent changes:

17:48:44  Gag Factor‎ (diff | hist) . . (-4)‎ . . Gene93k (talk | contribs | block) (unlinked Gwen Summers (deleted at AfD)) [rollback]

Here is a sample from Steven's editing history:

(del/undel) 2013-06-03T13:22:13 (diff | hist) . . (+29)‎ . . m Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Thanks ‎ (→‎Why is this not counted?)

Maybe I need to enable something else? —EncMstr (talk) 00:54, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Try it on history pages (action=history), convenient example - next to undo. πr² (t • c) 04:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah ha! It is there:

(cur | prev) 2013-06-03T21:17:35‎ PiRSquared17 (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (22,361 bytes) (+15)‎ . . (→‎Why don't I see "thanks" links?: clar.) (rollback: 2 edits | undo | thank)
(cur | prev) 2013-06-03T21:16:53‎ PiRSquared17 (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (22,346 bytes) (+436)‎ . . (→‎Why don't I see "thanks" links?: +) (undo | thank)

Thanks!  :-) —EncMstr (talk) 07:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can see the "thanks" links on some revision history pages but not on others. Any ideas why? Wormcast (talk) 16:20, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There should be a way to simply tic a box in preferences that disables this...or even better, a box to opt-IN. I'm not a programmer, so talk of importing lines into some js file are a little confusing, and I suspect that it would be for many other non-technical people as well.

Make this easier to get rid of please, and stop turning the project into Facebook. Tarc (talk) 12:41, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Er. There is a way to simply tick a box in preferences that disables this. See the section of the thanks page you were referring to re importing lines into some JS file. Our goal is not to turn Wikipedia into facebook, and for reference, we did actually think before implementing this. If you want to discuss your concerns in more detail, I'm happy to talk it through with you here, or set up a skype/google hangout call. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could you be a little more precise? I have long had the "experimental" box un-ticked, and at the moment I still see the "thanks" links. Tarc (talk) 14:07, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, this may be the source of the problem; the experimental box is "exclude me from feature experiments", so you have to have it ticked to be excluded (which seems somewhat backwards, but.) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:15, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, confusingly worded, but now that works fine. I'd thank your post, but I already turned it off. (irony) :) Tarc (talk) 14:30, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

From what I understand, flow of talk and information on Wikipedia is supposed to be public, rather than private. When I found out about this new feature, I thought it was a good idea, because I presumed that it would leave a small automatic message on the person's talk page, and then notify them (especially since it says "thanked" rather than "thanks"). I would be in favour of this. However, sending only a private message of thanks is not a notification, but an actual message. This would seem to be a change in the way Wikipedia normally functions. Has there been a consensus about this? If so, can you direct me to the discussion?—Anne Delong (talk) 13:24, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's a notification that the person appreciated your contribution. I would note that thanks sent are logged, as are thanks received, so the information is available in cases of abuse, and for the sake of transparency. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:38, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That helps. Why does it say "thanked", as if the thanking was posted somewhere already? In my opinion it is better if the positive feedback appears on the talk page being edited or the talk page of the article being edited. Then everyone can see the prevailing opinion/consensus. Because this notification is easier than actually writing a message, a person could leave a message on a talk page, have one person add a message of disagreement, and 50 people could send these notices to the second person, and none to the first, and the first person would have no idea that consensus had gone against him or her. Soon other types of these messages which are not notifications will be added and communication on the Wikipedia will no longer be open. It makes me very uncomfortable, as if people are talking behind my back. Again I ask, please direct me to the consensus discussion that I missed about adding this feature. —Anne Delong (talk) 15:21, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There wasn't a consensus discussion, Anne. Interface changes are developed by the WMF and then forced upon us. They tend to pay some attention to what we say, but they feel no obligation whatsoever to get our consent or approval.—Kww(talk) 15:30, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Anne, the intention is not for this feature to act as a consensus-deciding or representing piece of software, or as a way of denoting how supported a particular position is. It's not got that role, and I can't imagine a world in which it's used for that. It's simply a way of saying "hey, I liked that edit" easily. Maybe it was a copyedit that was particularly helpful, or the addition of some DAB-links, or something similarly small and useful. The vast majority of edits are not controversial, and any edit substantial enough to be controversial is unlikely to be engaged with using this feature anyway. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Anne's point is still quite valid, Okeyes. If I'm chastising an editor for a bad edit and that editor has received 100 "thank you"s for the very edit that I'm chastising him over, that's valuable information. It will provide valuable context for future discussion. It should be readily visible, not information that should require a search through a log. Bear in mind that we all have contexts for our discussions: since I am one of the few administrators that actually watches over the Disney Channel articles, I wind up in a lot of discussions with young children. Knowing that a nine-year-old is rejecting my warnings because he is being encouraged by a squad of seven-year-olds is important.—Kww(talk) 16:54, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Seven year olds who can handle diff links and history pages? I don't deny that this is a valid use case, I'm just arguing that it's an edge case. You could make the same argument that we should surface patrol actions in contributions to avoid people discussing negative elements of articles that have been 'reviewed' and thus declared okay. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Kww and Anne, I think the idea of keeping the thanks just between the giver and receiver is to avoid this feature supplanting normal decision making/consensus discussions (if they were displayed on a talk page, we'd have sort of an "up-vote" scenario for edits, something not good in contentious situations where discussion is key). Kww, in your scenario, I'd say the seven-year-old editors who are thanking your problem editor are irrelevant to any consensus process; they're going to have go to "on record" for their opinions to have any weight in a dispute. I'm not saying there isn't potential for abuse with this feature, there probably is some. The Interior (Talk) 17:23, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

They aren't really irrelevant. In terms of editor retention, trying to deal firmly but effectively with the children that edit here is actually pretty important. If they feel that they are being dealt with arbitrarily, they turn into vandals quite rapidly. Seven is the low edge, but I'm quite willing to bet that the majority of editors that I deal with on a daily basis are under 15. I know for a fact that most of the ones I rely on in terms of being able to deal with problem situations because of their maturity are still in high school.—Kww(talk) 17:32, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, Kww, just a clarification - didn't mean that the young editors were irrelevant (i agree that working diligently with them is important for the future of the project), just that their thanking our problem editor wouldn't strengthen his/her position in a dispute. The Interior (Talk) 18:23, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Interior is right on this; we're trying to avoid precisely this situation. I'd point out there's also nothing we can do about emails, either. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The best way to avoid the situation is to not implement the feature.—Kww(talk) 17:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Er. Strictly-speaking, yes, but the feature has a lot of positive benefits and fills a purpose (said benefits are going to be scientifically tested, so we will have data). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

All of this should have been covered in the consensus discussion leading up to the addition of this new feature. Can someone please point me to this discussion (3rd time asking - does it not exist?) Recently when I wanted to make a change to the Afc script I had to go through an Rfc, wait a month for comments, and then request closure. Don't the technical guys have to do the same thing, or are they free to just treat Wikipedia as a plaything? I'm sorry if I sound negative, but just because Kww used children as an example is not a fair reason to dismiss his point. I'm sure the page about a soap opera star that I was reviewing this morning wouldn't be any different. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:08, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why would there be any need for a consensus? A new feature was developed and enabled. No one has to use it. If it causes trouble, it can be switched off. The only way to know if it will work is to try it and see how it goes.

Just about every wiki feature has attracted a group of naysayers—discussion about the then-pending rollback facility springs to mind. Amazingly, Wikipedia hasn't shriveled in a heap of dust like the most vocal opponents predicted. —EncMstr (talk) 18:20, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Anne, to quote the second reply you got to your question the first time you asked it, "There wasn't a consensus discussion". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And, no, the developers who maintain the site do not have to obey consensus when making technical changes. Again, this isn't a feature that can really be used as a substitute for consensus in discussions, and I can't imagine it being used for that. If you ever see someone citing the 'thanks' log as evidence their decision was a good one (and getting away with it!) let me know. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is just a reminder that we are not the owners of Wikipedia, Anne: WMF is. They don't have to ask us what we think, nor do they have to listen when we voluntarily tell them. When we explain why what they have done will make our tasks more difficult, they don't have to care.—Kww(talk) 19:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Kww, I do care. I'm not the owner of Wikipedia either, professionally or personally, and as someone who contributes quite a bit personally, this impacts me as much as it impacts you, iff it happens. We can't be building or killing features based on implausible use cases; it's totally inefficient and if we take the attitude of "something bad might maybe happen, kill it" we'd frankly take down MediaWiki as a whole. If and when it happens, let me know and I will kick people into gear on trying to work out a solution. But it seems highly improbable. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:38, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I guess I missed the reply to my question. I had an edit conflict and had to repost further down the page and forgot to look back. However, in reply to "you can just turn it off", I am not concerned about my own use of it, but the effect of others' use on me. But now I am disillusioned, because after working hard for months to learn Wikipedia's procedures it seems that they are a sham and only apply to certain people and I am one of them. I feel tricked. I thought that I was becoming a part of a community of equals. It's especially irksome to see my own project, which was supposed to help the functioning of the Afc, ignored for this back-patting. I have said more than enough now. —Anne Delong (talk) 19:43, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What project? What back-patting? If we've got a software project we're ignoring, by all means tell us about it. The community is a community of equals. The Foundation exists, to some degree, outside of the community. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not meant at a personal level, just as a true statement: you don't have to care. You don't even have to listen. It's a WMF site, and WMF can do with it what it wants.

Your definition of plausible is quite different from mine: editors will grasp at any pretext of support when arguing with someone that objects to an edit they have made. The idea that these "thank you" things won't be taken as positive reinforcement for bad edits can only be based on the notion that they aren't effective positive reinforcement, which makes them pointless. I certainly hope that you aren't maintaining that people won't be thanked for bad edits ... any experience with our ethnic conflict pages, pseudoscience pages, or fiction pages would render that notion a non-starter.—Kww(talk) 21:34, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's a couple of people here and elsewhere who need to realize the difference between listen and obey. If the WMF is not doing exactly as one editor (or even a majority of the editors who speak up) demands, that doesn't mean they're not listening, or they're not taking these arguments into account, or they don't care about us. It just means there are other considerations they also take into account. I'm not saying I always agree with their decisions, or that they do the best possible job in explaining them, but the claim that they don't listen or care is a conclusion that's not supported by the evidence at hand. — HHHIPPO 21:42, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"the information is available in cases of abuse, and for the sake of transparency" Available to whom? How? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:59, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Logged—Kww(talk) 22:15, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On a purely technical note, that log is incomplete: one has to hope that the "thanks" are not being given for abusive edits, because you cannot see what edit was the target of the thanks. That's a major hole, as I would certainly want to have a serious discussion with any editor that was thanking other editors for vandalism or personal attacks.—Kww(talk) 22:22, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's precisely the opposite. This section is about the possibility of people gaming the system by using it as a way of indicating consensus. By not listing the pertinent edit, it totally invalidates any attempt to do so. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe this will become Wikipedia's version of karma or 'likes'. πr² (t • c) 22:25, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@PiRSquared17: and @Kww: That's presumably exactly the reason that we do NOT have the edit associated with the "thanks" given either publicly on-wiki, or in logs. To prevent negative gamification. I.e. So that "thanks" doesn't get all the baggage of reddit's karma/upvotes and google's +1s and facebook's likes and etc. –Quiddity (talk) 22:50, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't we try the "wait and see" approach on all this. The Thank feature is brand new. We don't know how it will be used; we don't know how it will be abused. We don't know if seven-year-olds will use it to gang up on other editors. WMF's intentions seem good enough -- they want to improve the karma around here and promote a more positive and encouraging atmosphere for editors and especially new editors (I think), which WP desperately needs more of. The feature is not perfect, and it will need to be tweaked, reworked or perhaps even junked as time goes on. But right now, the feature just hasn't existed for long enough to know what needs to be fixed and what doesn't. In the meantime, let's not let perfection be the enemy of progress. Brycehughes (talk) 22:43, 4 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please give a specific time frame so I'll know how long I have to wait bring this up again. Also please say how I can tell when I am talking to an employee of the foundation and when to another volunteer editor. I have tried to be a conscientious member of the community, contributing in a positive way and working with others toward consensus, but I see this backchannel as the first small step away from the openness I depend on to give me confidence to contribute. Maybe lots of people are agreeing with Brycehughes right now and thanking him privately instead of posting here. Shall I check the log every few minutes to see? And will this be evident to those reading the discussion at a later date? This uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach can't be progress or good "karma". —Anne Delong (talk) 11:55, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An editor speaking with the authority of the WMF will have "(WMF)" in the signature.—Kww(talk) 13:57, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My attitude to it would be; bring it up again when there is evidence of this happening. Until then it's an edge case. And I would say that we have had (for many years now) the ability to email people through Wikipedia, the ability to obliterate edits made from the pages they were made on so that no editor can see what's happening....this is the Nth nail ;p. There is no such thing as absolute transparency. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Anne Delong, you might like to read WP:CONEXCEPT. That's the English Wikipedia's official policy on the point: the editorial community controls the encyclopedic content, and the developer community controls the software. This is supposed to be a mutually beneficial relationship, but it's not a matter of "where's the consensus discussion" or "who gave them permission". They're supposed to do their task, even when we have people predictably screaming because somebody just changed something on the website. It's a "tried-and-true axiom of the Web: People always hate when their favorite site is suddenly completely different. A lot of them threaten to quit....I've got news for you: You'll get over it soon enou0gh." Change is hard, and the more time you spend at a given website, the more painful any small change will be for you. Give yourself some time to get used to it. In a couple of months, you'll probably find that this change doesn't matter. (And read up on WP:VisualEditor now, because there are massive changes coming to the English Wikipedia this summer.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the pointer to WP:CONEXCEPT. It's amazing that I could work in this environment long enough to make 10,000 edits without understanding my limited position. Despite the above patronizing comments, I won't have any trouble with a new editor. I've been dealing with editors all my life; the first one I used was a punch card machine (not very forgiving - no undo function). I guess I knew I was wasting my time. Once X number of hours have been put into a project it will be defended at all costs. Now, just one more thing. How can I tell which changes come from WMF and which from other editors, so I will know when to bite my tongue? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:46, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In terms of edits to article content, the "WMF" in the signature or a reference to an OTRS ticket in the edit summary. When it's the arrangement of things on your screen or new things popping up on it, those are generally WMF software changes. Simple changes to text on your screen are usually just a local administrator: while you can't undo them directly, they are subject to consensus. Let me know if you see something that confuses you and I'll try to help you sort it out.—Kww(talk) 14:03, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Anne, I once believed it was simple enough, but after the watchlist debacle last year, I've changed my mind. I really don't know how you would always be able to tell who was responsible for a given change. I don't even know how to convince everyone that community-driven changes are actually community-driven, because despite incontrovertible evidence, some of them still seem to believe that even community-initiated, CENT-listed RFCs are just tools of the dev(il)s.

In theory, "styling" is handled locally, but "features" are not; I just don't know that this is always true, or how you would find out which category a borderline feature might fall into without asking or without reading every page in the Wikipedia: namespace. It's unfortunately complicated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree, Anne, "Once X number of hours have been put into a project it will be defended at all costs." This doesn't just cover software changes. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi everyone, thank you so much for all your good feedback about the Thanks feature!

We have reviewed all the comments from a variety of channels (this Thanks talk page, the Notifications talk page, the Village Pump and this Bugzilla ticket), and have started to discuss and prioritize feature requests, based on that feedback. To keep this discussion more focused, we will be posting responses and updates on this talk page, and link to it from the other pages.

Here are some of the requests we are now working on, listed in order of priority -- along with a few questions for you to help us focus on the key issues.

I. Thanks link
Over a dozen people have reported issues with the thanks link, which has caused some to accidentally click "thank" instead of "undo" on history and diff pages. This is our top priority, as it appears that the current placement next to undo is clearly problematic (as pointed out in this post).

To help us solve this issue quickly, we would be grateful if you could answer these questions, so we can pinpoint the problem and its solution more accurately:

• Q1. How many of you have accidentally clicked on 'thanks' instead of 'undo'? Did this happen only once, or are you doing this often?

• Q2. Where are you getting confused? Is the diff link fine and the history link problematic? Is it the other way around? Are both a problem?

• Q3. What solution would best address this issue for you? Could it be solved by adding more space or a divider between the links? or would this require a two-step confirmation process? or an 'unthank' button?

(Keep in mind that adding more space is easy, but adding a second confirmation step requires a bit more development -- while providing an 'unthank' function would be a significant effort, because we would need to introduce a delay function on the back-end to make that possible.)

Your answers will help us confirm the severity of the issue, as well as come up with a better solution. Right now, the proposed solution on this Bugzilla ticket seems promising and could be developed relatively quickly, as proposed by ypnypn9, who suggests that if you click "thank", you get a pop-up saying:

Thank <username> for this edit. (OK) (Cancel)

What do you think? This solution seems reasonable and practical to us, because it would both clarify what the link means, and provide a confirmation/undo option.

II. Different icon
A number of people have expressed concerns about the use of a heart icon for the Thanks notification, as outlined in this post -- and various alternatives have been proposed by participants. We have passed on these ideas to our design team for review and they are considering their options. This issue is a bit trickier, because we are trying to establish a general visual language that can work across applications, and there is already a precedent for using a heart for expressing gratitude, in the form of the WikiLove tool. We also note that using a heart to show your appreciation is now widely used across many top websites, so it is becoming a best practice as a result. That said, we are definitely looking into this issue and will respond with more concrete recommendations after we've heard back from our designers.

These are the first two issues we're focusing on right now, because they seemed to be the highest priority based on the number of comments we received so far. As more suggestions come in from your usage of the tool, we will continue to look for ways to optimize this feature based on community feedback.

III. First stats
For now, you might be interested in these first statistics about this feature: since we deployed it last Thursday, about 2,161 Thanks notifications have been triggered by over a thousand unique users. This represents an average of about 3% of total notifications events, which is comparable to the percentage of notifications for page reviews or user mentions, as shown on this metrics dashboard.

That's it for this update. We will post another update as soon as we've heard more from you on the questions above -- and had a chance to discuss your recommendations. In the meantime, I would like to express my gratitude to all the folks who gave us positive feedback about this experimental feature. And I love that many of you used the 'Thanks' tool to show your appreciation for our work -- which seemed very appropriate ;o) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

• The "pop-up confirmation" solution is my preference.

Changing the color might also be useful,

eg on diff pages: Latest revision as of 18:26, 5 June 2013 (edit) (undo) (thank)

eg on history pages: 18:26, 5 June 2013‎ Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk | contribs)‎ . . (50,586 bytes) (+5,168)‎‎ . . (→‎Thanks feature update: new section) (rollback: 1 edit | undo | thank)

I've almost accidentally clicked "thank" a few times, in both diff pages and history pages, because I'm used to the last bold blue link in that line being "undo". A visual hint would help avoid that, at least for sighted users without colorblindness (possibly a reduced font-size, in addition, for their sake).

Someone with additional buttons (twinkle, admin-buttons, etc) would need to check that the suggested changes don't interfere with the way those tools are currently displayed. HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 19:15, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Regarding 1: I don't think an undo functionality is necessary, but there needs to be a confirmation step. Don't increase any spacing, history pages are far too crowded already! --Patrick87 (talk) 19:58, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• 1) Mistakenly clicked thanks only once; 2) I was expecting a confirmation; 3) A confirmation and/or an unthank link would resolve the problem. Brycehughes (talk) 20:30, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• 1) Mistakenly thanked the wrong user (While I was trying to de-escalate an issue, I thanked him for a ccomment that was non-flattering) 2) No. 3) Unthank button is the best. I like the thank function, and I'd rather be able to thank people quick enough, and without hassles or anything. Its uncomfortable adjusting to it now, but having to use two clicks for a potentially long time is non helpful. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:20, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• I support the idea of a confirmation. I almost clicked 'thanks' rather than 'undo' on a diff page, and that's despite already knowing that misclicks were a problem. As for 'unthank', would it be simpler to unthank if the person hadn't already seen the notification, and if the recipient had already seen it, to generate an error message that says it's too late? I think that most of these misclicks would be undone within seconds, and most of us won't see the notification that quickly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  And now I've misclicked on a history page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:47, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Unthanking would be difficult, because our preferences allow email notifications for things like "thanks", which would be triggered instantaneously. That's at least partially what Fabrice meant, by having to introduce a timed-delay into the system to cope with unthanking. –Quiddity (talk) 00:16, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  But as Technical 13 pointed out on a related Bugzilla ticket, the system could delay the email a minute or two, to give people time to undo it. Ignatzmice•talk 03:40, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  That's actually pretty difficult from a backend engineering point of view, unfortunately; it is a possibility we'd discussed. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:29, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Re 1: A popup does seem like the best option (especially [maybe] if there was an option in the prefs to turn it off once people get used to whatever the new placement is). But that depends on how, exactly-it's implemented—some people will have popups disabled, and some will have JavaScript off. I dunno if there's any way to get popups in HTML... Ignatzmice•talk 03:40, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  If they've got JS disabled then they're not really going to be able to use Echo anyway. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:29, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Actually, Echo is about usable without JavaScript now. My main bug bear there is the loss of the "you have new messages" orange bar. I think you really mean we're not able to use Thanks. I can receive thanks without JavaScript, but am unable to send it unless I resort to the API. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:12, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Ooh, it's got more workable? Excellent :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I haven't mis-thanked, but I have been being very careful. I have been mis-thanked once. I don't think re-positioning is necessary, or extra space, provided a mis-click on "Thank" is not final. An "Are you sure?" or "Confirm?" pop-up is my preferred answer - seems to me more natural, and consistent with many other processes that require confirmation; also, I guess, easier to implement than an "Unthank". As I said on the other thread, I seriously dislike the pink heart, and that would be enough to stop me using the feature (which would be a pity). I guess there are two cultural divides here, young/old and US/Brit, and I am on the un-gushy side of both. Something based on a tick, or a smiley? JohnCD (talk) 16:51, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Dear Quiddity, Patrick87, Brycehughes, TheOriginalSoni, WhatamIdoing, Ignatz and JohnCD: thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions and evaluate our options for resolving this issue! Your responses are really helpful, and I am glad to see that a consensus seems to be emerging already. I would like to invite some of the folks who participated on other threads to also answer the three questions listed in the first section above (now labeled Q1, Q2 and Q3 for clarity). I hope you don't mind if I use the mention notifications to bring this thread to your attention: The DJ, Arxiloxos, AutomaticStrikeout, Acalamari, Tito Dutta, Kumioko, Theopolisme, Beeblebrox, Fylbecatulous, GiantSnowman, Hullaballoo Wolfowitz, Rjwilmsi, Technical 13, Clem Rutter, Amaury, Edokter, PartTimeGnome, Kww, and Atlasowa (sorry if I missed anyone). We are particularly interested in finding out if the issues you experienced a few days ago are still a problem for you (Q1), what is the main pain point for you (Q2), and which of the proposed solutions would seem most practical from your standpoint. Look forward to your responses, so we can start implementing a solution as soon as possible. Thanks again for all your constructive comments, which are invaluable to us! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I've mis-clicked 'thanks' instead of 'undo' far too many times :( GiantSnowman 18:32, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• (1) Yes, definitely the confirmation popup. It both clarifies what the link means, and provides a confirmation/undo option. Even after using (thank), this undo/thank combination confused me into believing I could undo the thank by (undo). ;-) The thank confirmation popup would be expected behaviour. In the diff I think (thank) should be more prominent. Users should be encouraged to send thanks from the diff, because they can see there what they are thanking for ;-) (2) Please don't use the pink heart icon. It's a bit too much and the wrong connotation. The Wikilove icon is widely disliked on german Wikipedia already, although WikiLove was never activated. The removal of the OBOD was noted critically, also the Facebook-style-notifications (and also the many WMF tracking cookies that mysteriously appeared in the last months on de-wiki). Please spare us at least the outcry about the pink bikeshed heart... ;-) Maybe consult the internationalization team about symbols? The smiley seems popular, the flower symbol is good too. --Atlasowa (talk) 18:36, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• About confirmation, yes, I want to see one after "thank"ing someone. When you first launched the feature, I was testing and expecting to get confirmation that your "thank" has been forwarded/given. Most probably User:Bgwhite got multiple "thanks" from me at that time. --Tito Dutta  (talk • contributions • email) 18:41, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings Fabrice and no problem for linking that way. I don't mind at all in fact I think that is the only good thing in the notifications change that is useful. But that's just me. As for the three questions I don't really have a strong opinion about the thanks function. It doesn't show up under my watchlist and I generally don't go to the trouble of digging through users contributions so I don't think I'll misclick too often. I do think its still possible though given the close proximity to the undo button. I don't really like the heart icon either but its already on the WikiLove app so we should keep things consistent IMO. If we change it in one location we should probably change it in both. I don't really have an opinion about the fixes either because as I mentioned I don't really think its needed and if it is we should just link it through the WikiLove app (which I don't really think is a big necessity either BTW). I hate to sound like a grump here but I still think that too much time and effort is being spent on nice to have stuff, creating and fixing things we don't need and didn't ask for that really don't fix or improve anything. I also find it annoying that there are so many other requests and improvements that have been asked for (some for years) and are still pending because time is being spent on stuff like this. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Happy editing. Kumioko (talk) 18:42, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Colouring/styling the thank link sounds good. Do not want a confirmation before, it's another click, would rather have a popup confirmation with an undo option that appears for some seconds after (like the edit saved confirmation). Rjwilmsi 19:42, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Building undo functionality is, from an engineering perspective, very difficult. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd even prefer a two click process to prevent (deliberate or undeliberate) "thank" flodding. When thanking authors becomes an "on-the-fly" task, what is it worth anymore? If I want tho thank an author, it probably should be worth clicking to times to me, shouldn't it? --Patrick87 (talk) 20:35, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Okay Fabrice, since you invited me by name I'll answer. I'm not sure how helpful you'll find this, since my issues are a bit different from those of most...

  1: I have never misclicked the "thank" link. The one time I clicked it was intentional. However, I have not had occasion to undo anything since the feature was introduced; I don't know if I would have misclicked had I been intending to undo anything.

  2: I was mildly confused when nothing happened upon clicking the link, though I quickly realised why. This was on a diff page, though I would have been equally confused on a history page.

  3: The ideal solution in my case would be to allow thanks to work without JavaScript. Rather than being a broken link, "thank" should target something like Special:Thanks/REVISIONID, which would ask me to confirm my thanks. Alternatively, simply hide the link if JS is disabled, to avoid page clutter and user confusion (this isn't a particularly important feature for me). I've logged bug 49161 for this.

  Of course, if I were able to use thanks I would then worry about accidental misclicks. My solution for non-JS users above includes a confirmation page that solves the problem. For JS users, a small confirmation pop-up could be displayed, allowing them to remain on the history or diff page. I don't think extra spacing or dividers would help, and would further clutter the page. I appreciate that an "undo thanks" feature would be Hard to implement; I don't think it reasonable to ask the developers to go to that much effort when a much easier solution (the confirmation step) is available. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:02, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I'll comment in the morning. I've got a 21 month old that is taking alll of my focus right now... Technical 13 (talk) 23:30, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • She fell asleep and I have a moment. I rarely use undo on the history page, so I haven't mis-clicked there. I occasionally will use it on diff pages, but haven't mis-clicked yet due to the fact that I've had no thank links as i've been working on User:Technical 13/Scripts/NoThanks.js (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) for other editors that just want to disable the thanks feature but didn't trust clicking the "exclude me from feature experiments" checkbox for fear of missing another experiment they may be interested in. Still not quite done with that script, I can't figure out why it seems to disable the ability for the page to know which li is selected... Anyways...
  • I've been thinking long and hard about this and personally if I had to click twice every time I wanted to thank someone, I wouldn't use the feature (I'd actually be an intensional user of my script). I think that despite it being a little more work, adding a short delay to the actual sending of the thank giving an opportunity to "un-thank" or "de-thank" is the way to go. I would bet that the statistical data would show that a lot less people accidentally click on it than intentionally click on it and forcing all of the intentional uses to have to click twice is an inconvenience in my opinion and discourages use.
  • As for the icon used... I've suggested a few things, and they have all had there flaws... I actually just had another idea today that I was busy with playing money with my daughter and thought hey, what if the icon was the localized symbol for money for the user? I'm sure that this will be shot down as difficult to implement, but I think it would be clear and cool if in the US users saw "$" or "¢" and in the UK or Europe "₤" (I think that is the Euro sign, if not, feel free to change it) and in China or Japan they would see the Yen or in France the symbol for the Frank... Not sure exactly what the specs for the icons are, but perhaps an animated gif or png that cycles through all of the symbols at a rate of one every other second would be cool... Otherwise it would be hard to know which symbol is right for the viewer (would have to guess based on timezone/offset probably).
  • Feature improvement idea... I would like to see the thank link also added to my Watchlist/Recent changes... That is where I would be most likely to use it a lot.
  • I'll be sure to come back and add some more thoughts and ideas later, time for bed for me as well. Technical 13 (talk) 01:34, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    FYI, France doesn't use the franc anymore, but the UK still uses the pound sterling. France uses the euro. The pound sign = £/₤, euro = €. πr² (t • c) 14:33, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks for that currency lesson... What's everyone think of this idea? "currency symbols" == good "thanks" icon? Technical 13 (talk) 14:52, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    We'd have to build up a global, accurate list of currency icons and automatically geolocate every user; this sounds non-trivial. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm aware of that and there would likely be some privacy concerns which is why I modified my suggestion to just be "an animated gif or png that cycles through all of the symbols at a rate of one every other second". Technical 13 (talk) 17:14, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    Given the number of currencies in the world and the shortness of the time the image would be displayed, it is improbable that any user would reliably get to see their currency. It's also probable they'd be unfamiliar with a lot of them. I can say with some certainty that we will never solve for a UI problem by introducing an animated gif. It's much like Regular Expressions. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1: I have accidentally "thanked" someone several times in the past few days. (Or at least I think I have; I have no idea what this looks like to the recipient.) Q2: I was not "confused". I was using a cell phone, and the combination of small links and big fingers makes it all too easy to activate a link you never meant to click on. Q3: Add a "verify" or "oops" step. There should always be some way to either verify or undo whatever you do. One-click-and-it-goes-live buttons are a tool of the devil. That's why I asked to have my rollback right deactivated; I was tired of having to undo and apologize for accidental rollbacks. Bottom line, my opinion: either add a "verify" step, or give us an option to disable the damn thing. Thanks. (BTW about those 2,161 uses of the Thanks button - that would be more meaningful if you knew how many of them were on purpose vs. accidental.) --MelanieN (talk) 12:56, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Q1 & Q2: I've only done this once: Here is the scene of the mishap: [1]. I follow the experimental edit log of 28bot and pick up what articles need attention there. I have to click on the history though to see the diff to discern what needs to be mended. I just knew this involved 'example images' (the bot uses a key code for errors). So when I got to the diff it was a simple revert of that and a botched image file, so I just merrily clicked on what was always "undo". Never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect it to have evolved into 'thank'! I surely just wished to be able to undo the thanks!! However, I am a fast learner (fool me once...), so now I know what's where however: for Q3: a simple <thank, (ok), (cancel) > routine would be lovely to give a gentle hint of do I really want to thank... It was painful only because I still had to revert and then place a gentle warning on the user page (Vandalism 0), which vexed me and surely confused the user. ツ Thanks! Fylbecatulous talk 20:10, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Recap

Hi folks, thanks for all your constructive responses. It's such a pleasure to collaborate productively with you guys to find a good solution to this 'Thanks link' issue together :) ...

To get a better sense of where our 'impromptu workgroup' stands on this issue, I compiled your responses on this spreadsheet. Here's a quick summary.

Q1. How often do you misclick?
Your responses suggest that accidental misclicking doesn't happen often for most of you:
a) Never 38%
b) Only a few times 38%
c) Often 23%
d) All the time 0%

Q2. Do you misclick more on the diff or history page?
There are too few responses to this question to suggest that misclicking happens more on one page than the other. For now, we'll assume the problem is the same on both pages.

Q3. Which solution do you recommend?
Your favorite solutions seem to be either the confirmation or undo options:
a) add a space or visual cue (e.g. colored link) 0%
b) add a confirmation step (e.g. pop-up) 54%
c) add an 'undo' option (e.g. 'unthank', countdown) 46%

Key findings
Here are my main take-aways from this feedback:

• about a fourth of respondents report misclicking often
• this seems serious enough to require a special solution
• adding more space or a visual cue doesn't seem sufficient
• over half of respondents prefer the confirmation panel option
• nearly half of respondents prefer the undo panel option
• some users think the confirmation option defeats the purpose of a one-click feature
• some users suggest a short delay for undo (a few folks have proposed a quick countdown)
• an undo option lets us optimize the UI for the primary use case (people who don't misclick)

We'll discuss our options with Kaldari, Vibha Bamba and our project team on Monday. Building a delay on the back-end is likely to require several days of development, which would slow down our work on other important goals for the Notifications project. Though it may be easier to build a delay on the front-end, as several people have proposed (if we don't mind that the thanks doesn't get sent if they close the window or hit the 'back' button). The two-step confirmation is easiest from a development standpoint, but it introduces an extra click (which seems to unfairly penalize the majority of users who don't misclick).

So a possible solution might be to simply show a quick countdown after you click on the thanks link, giving you 10 seconds or so to cancel, as so:

Quiddity (talk | contribs)‎ . . (50,586 bytes) (+5,168)‎‎ . . (→‎Thanks update) (undo | Sending thanks in 10 seconds - Cancel)

This countdown would be client-side, not server-side, and would start at 10 seconds, then 9, 8, 7, etc. -- ending up with the same 'thanked' message we now display. This idea of a short countdown was suggested by several community and team members, such as WhatamIdoing, Technical 13 and Jorm, to name but a few. It seems promising, if it could be done reliably on the front-end, without requiring special back-end functionality or delaying our other features. What do you think?

Either way, we'll get one of these solutions developed this week (e.g.: the confirmation popup or the short countdown, if feasible). But please understand that it may not be a perfect solution, if we want to meet all our other goals this month. Our approach with this experimental feature has been to keep it barebones initially, and incrementally improve it with small tweaks, based on community feedback, rather than try to figure it out all at once.

For that reason, we would like to first solve the Thanks link issue this week, then revisit the discussion about icons the following week, since it seems less urgent. We hope this approach works for you.

The good news is that more and more people are starting to use these Thanks notifications (which are now as frequent as Page Review notifications -- with 3,336 thanks sent in our first week). Also, more people are coming out to show their appreciation on this talk page -- and our team members are getting quite a few thanks notifications from you … which of course is music to our ears  :)

To me, this small experiment is a great example of the Wikipedia movement at its best, with all stakeholders working together to incrementally improve key features together, setting aside our diverse backgrounds and viewpoints to create a friendlier and more collaborative environment for all users. Thank you all for making this is possible! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Regarding the countdown: I think it's a really bad idea. As far as I understand you have to wait 10 seconds before you can close the window. At least for me (and I'm sure for many others, too) giving thanks on a talk page and then closing the windows would be a typical workflow. I open nearly every new page in a new tab, and close that tab as soon as my work is done there. I'm quite sure such a timeout feature will produce a new wave of unsatisfied editors

Furthermore I don't think that the people who "think the confirmation option defeats the purpose of a one-click feature" will be happy with a countdown either. I assume the countdown (instead of a simple confirmation step) is considered especially to make those people happy? The reason is simple: Those who do not have the time to click two times, will surely not have the time to wait 10 seconds.

Eventually I think a countdown will make the whole process very hard to understand, especially for beginners. Questions that will arise are: When is thanks given? As soon as I click the button? But why is there some countdown? Do I have to confirm before the countdown ends? What if I leave the page before countdown ends? Will my thanks simply be discarded?

So I think the only reasonable solution is the confirmation step, since (as you wrote) an undo option is not a real option since it would just need to much resources for only a small gain. --Patrick87 (talk) 19:57, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Patrick87, Fabrice mentioned it happening on the backend, which means to me that you will still be able to close the page right after clicking and move on and it will send right away. If you misclick, you will have 10 seconds to cancel unless you close the tab/page. Technical 13 (talk) 20:06, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Well, Fabrice said "This countdown would be client-side, not server-side". So the question is: Is thanks sent to the backend before or only after the countdown? I'm sure Fabrice will update us on this with the definite answer. --Patrick87 (talk) 20:17, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm guessing that by client-side it was meant with the use of cookies... Technical 13 (talk) 20:43, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I think our editors are smart enough to figure out that "Sending thanks in 10 seconds" means "Thanks will be sent in 10 seconds and has not yet been sent." WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Well, I am not... Is thanks sent to the server the second I click the link and if I close the page it is saved nonetheless? Or is it sent after 10 seconds if I do not click cancel? I think it is confusing (but maybe I'm just to deep into internals myself). --Patrick87 (talk) 20:12, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm with User:Patrick87 here. Unless you know, "Sending thanks in 10 seconds" could just as easily mean "Thanks are going to be sent, and that's the way it is." Heck, I've just been informed that I am now officially an editor, after editing WP for years, and there are ****loads of stuff that I see other WP-ans taking for granted all the time that are just black holes to me. I'm not complaining: I accept being a relative novice here and am eager to learn. But I've seen in a whole career that it's very easy for an experienced user of anything to assume that other users are as just as experienced as they are, or understand X because it seems to the experienced one that "even a child would understand it"... whether it is or not. --Thnidu (talk) 22:12, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• One question regarding the potential coonfirmation step: Will you implement it via a second page you have to visit (similar to when you use undo, were you reach a new page, too) or will it be handled with JavaScript without the need to leave the page (which would be the preferable option, but probably needs a non-JavaScript fallback). --Patrick87 (talk) 19:57, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• If the 10-second delay were truly annoying to some users, then perhaps "Sending thanks in 10 seconds - Cancel - Send immediately" would solve that problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Then we have replaced a simple two-click solution, taking maybe a second and familiar from many existing implementations, with a one-click-plus-distracting-ten-second-countdown-which-can-be-got-rid-of-by-a-second-click solution, which is more difficult to implement and is preferred by less than half the responders. I absolutely agree with Patrick87. JohnCD (talk) 21:16, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree. I think this is not expected behaviour and confusing (confirmation countdown for thanks...?). Let's compare with existing implementations:

I edit and click "save" -> I get a post-edit confirmation, floating for two seconds [2][3] (1 click + confirmation popup)

I click "undo" -> I get the diff with the undone version, to confirm and comment. (2 clicks)

I click "rollback" -> I get the confirmation of successful rollback [4] (1 click + confirmation page)

I click on the bookmark star -> i get a confirmation popup for a few seconds (1 click + confirmation popup)

I click on the WikiLovwe heart -> i get a dialog box that i can dismiss by clicking X or select options (2 clicks)

Shouldn't this "thank"ing be consistent with other behaviour on-site? I don't really see the benefit of the countdown-confirmation. It's a compromise between a 1-click and a 2-click solution? How many "thanks" do we expect to lose by asking users for a second click, -30%, -10%? Any experiences/ research? --Atlasowa (talk) 23:33, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks confirmation feature added

Per the feedback we received on the problems with the Thank links, we've added a confirmation step: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/67591/. The code still needs to be reviewed and merged, but it should go out some time in the next few weeks. Kaldari (talk) 04:34, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Kaldari. Let's try it out that way and see if it solves the problem. Given that there was some strong opposition to the countdown idea, the confirmation step may be a more practical solution. If it isn't, we can revisit after we've all had a chance to try it out. Much appreciated. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Kaldari and Fabrice! Thanks for all the great work, I love the thank action. My two cents: I found the first version (no confirmation) to be a more light-hearted and fun way to interact with other editors. The yes/no confirmation box gives undue weight to the action. heather walls (talk) 20:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fabrice Florin (WMF) & Kaldari I will withdraw my objections to the confirmation step if you can offer an option on Preferences → Notifications that will allow users to opt of of the confirmation. That sound doable and fair instead of implementing a delay? Technical 13 (talk) 21:01, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Technical 13: You and MZ seems to have diametrically opposing views on this. MZ didn't even want the confirmation step to be configurable per wiki,[5] while you would prefer that it be configurable per user. I guess we'll have to wait and see what other folks think to see if there is any kind of consensus on this. Kaldari (talk) 22:01, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need more experience with this before we figure out what tweaks, if any, need to be made. I haven't even managed to use the new version. Can we talk about this again in a few weeks, if anyone still wants to, rather than trying to change it every day? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've personally been opposed to the confirmation step from the start and apparently it seems to be a deal breaker for others as well since there has been a sudden increase in linkbacks to User:Technical 13/Scripts/NoThanks.js which had only two people using it before the confirmation step was added. Technical 13 (talk) 16:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Technical 13:: Thanks for your thoughtful suggestions for improving this feature! My recommendation is to wait a few days until more people have had a chance to try the feature, as WhatamIdoing suggests. I have noted a slight decrease in the volume of Thanks notifications on this dashboard since we deployed the confirmation step, but we won't know for several days if this trend holds. Personally, I would have preferred a more lightweight confirmation feature (e.g. a small flyout next to the Thanks link) -- or an undo feature; but either of these options would require a lot more development time than we can now devote to this project, according to Kaldari. So let's take it one step at a time, listen to what other users have to say, and determine our next steps in about a week, if that works for you. Does anyone else have feedback about this feature at this time? Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I like the new confirmation step implementation. The green/red buttons are especially helpful, and reminded me of this. It's simple and instant.

(I'd weakly prefer less bold color choices, perhaps something that fits with our predominantly pastel color choices at En:Wikipedia and commons (See Help:Using colours#Wikimedia colour schemes), but I'm not sure what the current practices/recommendations/aesthetics are at other languages/sisterprojects, beyond mw:Wikimedia Foundation Design/Color usage. Plus that's essentially an entirely unrelated topic. Sorry for tangenting!). –Quiddity (talk) 22:15, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We should see a decrease in the number of 'thanks' being sent, because there won't be any misclicks resulting in thanks sent. If my own experience is typical, then it might drop by a quarter.

As for the "sudden increase" in people opting out, going from two to seven is indeed a massive relative change, but it's still only 7 people out of 122,498 active editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fabrice Florin (WMF), according to Kaldari, there may be a way for there to be a user script to opt out of the confirmation step. I believe it should be in the feature's code directly, but I will be happy with a userscript. As long as I have a way to make the feature appear to be as lightweight as it can be. I'll add a note here and to the instructions for NoThanks on the "How to disable this feature" page. Technical 13 (talk) 11:46, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I loved the "thank" feature, until recently...
Now there is the "are you sure you want to thank editorx for this edit". Apparently there has been a fall in the number of thanking clicks after the feature was introduced. However, this may not be the prevention of mistakes but the deterrence effect of seeing a warning dialogue box. "Gosh, ought I really be thanking editorx for this???" I think we should lose it. There's not enough love in the world, and I'm quite mystified as to what could possibly be wrong with thanking someone, even if it was done by mistake. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 15:31, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What could possibly go wrong? For example: a newbie editor makes a personal attack. Mis-clicking on the "Undo" button, you hit the "Thank" button next to it. Now, either the newbie thinks his message was approved, or he thinks the thanks were sarcasm. You have to follow a "Don't do that again please" warning with "...and by the way, ignore my Thankyou message, I didn't mean it, it was a mistake!" It is likely that an edit you intended to undo is not one that you would want to thank for. JohnCD (talk) 15:46, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm not sure that the undo should be the first port of call in that case. Some form of talk page message is always more appropriate. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 15:59, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As I already wrote somewhere before: If your feeling to thank somebody is so weak that you won't even take the time to confirm your thanks and click a second button to do so, then the contribution probably wasn't worth being thanked in the first place.

Furthermore I don't think the thanks feature was installed long enough to talk about a decrease in thanking-numbers now that the confirmation step was introduced. Maybe after having learned about the feature people just stop to test it. --Patrick87 (talk) 15:55, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Before 'Thank', some editors habitually posted talk page messages of thanks for small edits – even though they may have done so after accumulating a certain number of 'reminders' on their watched pages. Now, I find there is a greater tendency of editors to do it for the small edits with the thank button – I certainly do so more freely. The warning dialogue is definitely a deterrent in such marginal cases. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 16:05, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• (edit conflict)Reading some of the original complaints, I'd say we should have a double visual cue to separate out the thank button. I have never misclicked, and I don't want an 'undo' button – I prefer low clutter on my edit screen. My suggestion is to perhaps firstly colour the undo button (red) and the thank button (green); then add two more nbsp between the two buttons. Whilst one may not be enough, having both should reduce the misclicking without deterring people who genuinely wish to render thanks. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 15:56, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support this change. I agree that the confirmation dialog box is overkill. I would think differentiating the links with colour should avoid accidental mis-clicks. —sroc (talk) 13:44, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for adding the confirmation step. I am now using the feature; I hated it when it was one-click-and-it's-live-whether-you-want-it-to-be-or-not. --MelanieN (talk) 00:44, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I also wanted to say thanks for the confirmation step, which really improves the feature.--SabreBD (talk) 14:14, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Without butting into this discussion too much, I would just like to point out a wonderful effect of this feature. WikiGnomes, who make a lot of small, by themselves unremarkable edits usually have very little communication. This feature makes it very easy for people to thank WikiGnomes for the wonderful work that they do. It completely removes the (relative) hassle of posting a talk page message. Thank you, WMF, for this cool feature. TheOneSean ^{[ U | T | C ]} 21:42, 6 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I completely agree. It's such a nice feeling that you get when you're thanked! ❤ Yutsi ^Talk/ Contributions ( 偉特 ) 12:41, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll add here as well. I got thanked yesterday by an editor who had just created an article. I happened to mark it reviewed with Page Curation and then added some complicated categories for the user... and I later received the little heart of appreciation. I have to admit this is nothing anyone would come to my talk page over or paste a Barnstar for; so it did give me the warm fuzzies feeling to have been noticed. So after all, I do believe this is a keeper. Fylbecatulous talk 20:30, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I used to spend most of my free time contributing to Wikipedia, but now I spend most of my free time contributing to StackExchange sites. On Wikipedia, it seems the only time anyone ever communicates with you is to complain about something you did wrong or to start an argument. All the contributions you make just go out into the void and you don't get much positive feedback about them. Are people reading them and benefiting from your work? Does anyone care? Is it all a waste of time? Then the arguments start and it leads to frustration and burn-out.

On StackExchange, people upvote your answers if they are correct and helpful, and downvote them if they're wrong or need work. You get far more upvotes than downvotes, accruing "reputation points" that, while ultimately useless, serve as a constant reminder that your contributions are being read and appreciated by lots of other people, which motivates you to keep contributing.

I hope this feature will help make editing Wikipedia a more positive experience, reminding users their work is appreciated. — Omegatron (talk) 04:37, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Like —EncMstr (talk) 18:03, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I will never use what to me is an I-love-you icon to express my thanks to anyone on Wikipedia. Yet, I do think the idea of the feature is good, allowing a "small form thanks" for edits that you would not otherwise express gratitude for through a dedicated talk page message, cookie or barnstar. A message from me, no matter how much it is automated or represents a symbol for the feature itself rather than making up a part of the message (which others *might* understand to be the case), is not going to have something attached delivering a meaning that I would not express myself or intend to convey. With the pink heart icon attached, the feature is closed to me.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:17, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Fuhghettaboutit:, do you have a suggestion for what to replace the heart with? It has been agreed at this point the heart is not desired or preferred, and the development team is open to replacement suggestions. Technical 13 (talk) 15:31, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A simple smiley face would be a neutral and universal symbol. No wink, no big grin, just a smile which would say "You did something that pleased me", the purpose of a "Thanks". Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 15:46, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. A simple smiley face has no unwanted overtones; seems perfect.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:19, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Walmart ruined the smiley face for me decades ago. How about a thumb up, an OK, +1, or an "agree"? —EncMstr (talk) 18:06, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See also Smiley copyright considerations below, which I have split into a sub-thread. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:04, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Then go with a stylized "THANKS", or "THX!" in a circle - the heart is ridiculous, as is the debate about the smiley. Tvoz/talk 18:15, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Smiley copyright considerations

True—however, it is also the copyright of Nicolas Loufrani and Wal-mart, both of whom are famously zealous when it comes to protecting their intellectual property rights and would doubtless love a chunk of the Wikimedia Foundation's pie. – iridescent 18:04, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I thought Forrest Gump invented it during a jog one day. ;-) As to whether it is copyrighted and this would provide a bar to its use, I would prefer more evidence that this posed a problem, as the smiley face is ubiquitous in every aspect of our global culture. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 18:17, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thumb up and +1 are even worse I assume. If we want this feature we shouldn't copy from Facebook or Google. OK and agree don't sound very honorable at all. I think the Smiley is not a valid trademark anyway after reading Smiley, so I thin we should be fine. --Patrick87 (talk) 18:24, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If it's not copyright, the people who pay The Smiley Company $167 million per year in licensing fees are probably feeling pretty foolish right now. It's ubiquitous because a hell of a lot of ubiquitous companies like Amazon licence it, not because it's some kind of community property. (This, BTW, is why you can't see smileys on phones running open-source software such as Android.) Whether or not something is a trademark has no impact on its copyright status. – iridescent 18:27, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Then the Smiley article is wrong. It's written there that "the judge declared that the smiley face was not a "distinctive" mark, and therefore could not be trademarked by anyone". --Patrick87 (talk) 18:33, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For the second time, trademarks have nothing to do with copyright. The Smiley Company is a major multinational, and there is no possibility that the WMF will pick a fight with it that they're certain to lose—certainly not this soon after the Wikivoyage logo debacle. – iridescent 20:10, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Copyright is the concern here, not trademarks. However, copyright is held in a specific work, not a general idea. No one can hold the copyright on all smileys, because anyone can draw another without copying or referring to an existing one. If there are copyright problems with any particular smiley image, use a different one. E.g. File:Face-smile.svg (from the Tango Desktop Project) is in the public domain.

In any case, I'm sure the WMF will run any idea we suggest past their legal team before putting it live. They pay people to worry about this type of thing. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:22, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright? Really? No typical smiley reaches the threshold of originality. I did draw "moon faces" when is was three or four years old and did not even now what a smiley was! If copyright (and not trademark) is your concern I don't think there is anything to worry about. But as PartTimeGnome said, there are professionals whose job is to give a legal statement on questions like this, so if we want a smiley, we shouldn't really care about copyright at this point. If it's not possible to have one somebody at WMF will tell us soon enough. --Patrick87 (talk) 23:36, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to have a problem here with people assuming "can't be trademarked in the United States of America" means "can't be trademarked". For basic infrastructure like this, the WMF needs something that cannot be trademarked in every single place on the entire planet, not just something that's okay in the US. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:01, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The servers are in the US, so, so far as I know, only US law applies for this kind of issue.—Kww(talk) 17:13, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that most of the other Wikipedias additionally enforce the laws that affect the majority of their users, e.g., Japanese law for the Japanese Wikipedia. Also, Mediawiki (the software) is used by thousands of non-WMF websites around the world, so whatever they seem to choose logos that will work for everyone rather than logos that only work for US sites. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please tell me that the image isn't hardcoded into Mediawiki, and that each wiki can choose a culturally appropriate symbol. I don't like a lot of things involved with this feature, but they must have gotten that one right. This discussion should be about the appropriate choice for English Wikipedia. Comments about appropriate defaults for international distribution are a Meta issue.—Kww(talk) 18:19, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why shouldn't we find something that works for everyone? Having the interface be the same across all WMF projects is a desirable goal. You've also made edits at Commons and the Dutch and German Wikipedias. Why shouldn't you get the same basic look and feel at each of them? Do you think that you personally would benefit from having each of them pick different icons for everything? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, I don't think there is a universal symbol that works for everyone. In any event, it shouldn't be hardcoded. The default should be reasonable, but each wiki should be able to customize it.—Kww(talk) 19:43, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If the "smiley" is copyrighted, then is the MoodBar legal? πr² (t • c) 21:17, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Same question for the smiley in the Article Feedback Tool 5. I see no evidence here that there is a legal problem with the smiley. --Atlasowa (talk) 21:11, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not knowing about the discussion here, I started a similar discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Suggestion about the icon. If there are, in fact, issues about copyright, it's my impression that one can make images similar to, but not identical to, the copyrighted image and use them without violating copyright (note: I'm no lawyer, and I might be wrong). I know that Commons has Commons:Category:Smilies, so there should be some properly-licensed images there. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:32, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's the take-away line from all of the above comments: "I'm no lawyer, and I might be wrong". Let's everyone stop making snap judgements on legal issues that they're unqualified to make and let WMF decide what can/can't be done. Any alternate suggestions I'm sure will be appreciated and taken on board if the top preference is unworkable. —sroc (talk) 13:53, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I might be right, too. :-( --Tryptofish (talk) 18:01, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, that was a general comment, not directed specifically at you, Tryptofish. 8^> —sroc (talk) 10:00, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's OK, I understand, no worries! And, by the way, I also like the idea, floated above, of using a logo based on "Thanks" or an abbreviated spelling of it. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:07, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes I'd like to express thanks for a group of edits — for example, when none of them is individually a big deal, but together they're really helpful. Any chance that we could get the chance to issue a single Thanks feature notice for a group of edits? I'm not clear how such a thing would be accomplished from a technical point of view. Nyttend (talk) 19:47, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I just thanked you for a whole range of edits, some obviously not yours. How did that look? I viewed the range as a diff, then thanked from there. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 19:50, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I got a single notice, which referred only to my first message in this thread. When I clicked the "your edit" link, I was sent to this diff. Now let's wait for input from someone else who was in that range. Nyttend (talk) 19:53, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I did a little test too... Then I thought about it, and said hey, if the thanks are going out to multiple people within a range, all of those should register in the Special:Log/thanks so I checked http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=thanks&user=Dennis+Brown&page=&year=&month=-1&tagfilter= and it appears to only send the thanks to the editor of the first edit in the history block. Maybe Okeyes (WMF) or Fabrice Florin (WMF) can shed some light on this? Technical 13 (talk) 20:08, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• To the first editor in the range? It's the last editor's name that you're looking at in the diff. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• In the test I did the first and last were the same user... There where however multiple users in the middle. Technical 13 (talk) 20:45, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I assume that the button is specific to that one edit, like the undo button, even when viewing a range. I'm about to go out of town or I would play with my alt accounts and see more. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 20:28, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

However, it's possible to undo a range of edits — view a multi-edit diff (example) and you're given an undo link, which will undo all the edits in the group if possible. I wasn't meaning to ask about multiple thanks for different people; if you make a single contribution to a good group effort, I'd say you should get a normal thanks for your edit. I meant to ask about a situation in which the same person was making all of the edits; it would seem a little silly to leave separate thanks for each of the edits, since the recipient would get a pile of them. Enabling a single click to thank lots of people doesn't seem good, since (1) separate thanks for each of them won't bury anyone under a pile of thanks notices, and (2) this would potentially be a good way of thanks-bombing, thus damaging the value of any individual gesture. Nyttend (talk) 20:34, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Arguably Thanks is designed for situations in which we have a single edit that is not, on its own, a big deal, but helpful. If a group of edits are together a big deal, and all sourced from one user, I'd suggest a personalised message or barnstar would be more appropriate. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:23, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  But if you give us a hammer, every situation starts to look like a nail ;-) Your point makes a lot of sense, however, and a barnstar is indeed likely a better solution for a series of edits. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 21:54, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Understood, and I already left the personalised message. Thanks for the explanation; perhaps you could put something to that effect in this page? Nyttend (talk) 01:21, 10 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm geting an error message "Warning: Missing argument 3 for ThanksHooks::onBeforeCreateEchoEvent() in /var/www/html/w/extensions/Thanks/Thanks.hooks.php on line 122 "

• MediaWiki 1.21.1
• PHP 5.3.3
• MySQL 5.5.28

Echo is installed property (1.21 latest stable) and declared in LocalSettings.php before Thanks

Thank is showing up in Special:Version (as version 1.0.0)

Does anyone have a suggestion as to what could be causing this error?

I ran /maintenance/update.php again, just to be sure, rearranged LocalSettings.php by putting both at the bottom, no change. Should I try running 1.20 version of Echo? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ckoerner (talk • contribs) 20:56, 14 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have the same problem, and no one have responded to this error since it's bin added --78.72.179.109 (talk) 07:39, 31 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks requires the 1.22 version of Echo. I've updated mw:Extension:Thanks to reflect that. Legoktm (talk) 20:25, 3 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How come there's no way to thank IPs? (just a few minutes ago I wanted to thank an IP for removing some useless cruft off an article, but I didn't see the button) ^King Jakob _C2 00:02, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Where's the point in thanking anonymous editors? First of all IPs of many (if not most) ISPs are not static, so the probability the IP editor will ever receive your thanks is very low. Even if an editor edits with a static IP he purposely decided to edit anonymously – therefore accepting or intending not to be contactable by other editors. --Patrick87 (talk) 00:08, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Primarily because thank you messages are delivered via the new notifications system, which IPs don't get. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:53, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I miss thanking IPs too! I remember hearing somewhere that there is a 30 minute window after the IP edit for trying to communicate with IPs, meaning: ~30 min with a reasonable chance that the IP does see this/the OBOD. Does anyone know the source of this 30min claim, maybe User:Steven (WMF)? Or was this just on german WP (btw, most german IP are dynamic and change every 24h)? I agree that newbies and IP editors need the positive feeedback too (they get more than enough negative feedback by reverts), this is especially important for WP languages with pending changes (german, arabic, russian, polish,...). I'd be really thankful if someone can give me a link for this 30min recommendation! --Atlasowa (talk) 07:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• It would be nice to be able to thank IPs. It might help recruit more editors. In the meantime, there are templates that can be used to express appreciation for IPs. --BDD (talk) 17:11, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• I add to this request. Seriously, this is what we should be doing instead of this: appreciating actual contributors. Keφr 09:45, 19 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Someone tried to thank-button me. I deserved it. I am owed a thanks! <narrows eyes> And I'm here to collect. <draws katana> <slashs wildly> <yells wansui> Seriously, you make a button which gives good editors like Anne Delong a nervous this-is-a-caste-system feeling in the pit of her stomach, and you prevent anons from being thanked? Scroll to bottom of this stats-page; we are retention-flatlined.[6]

  Strongly suggest that the following workaround be implemented: if the editor is logged in when thanked, they get the notification-dingus. If the editor is not logged in when thanked, they get a talkpage message, which in turn triggers the orange bar. This has two benefits: first, it allows folks to give anons some thanks, which is crucial to WP:RETENTION. Second, if the anon is doing well and getting a lot of orange-bar-thankyou-messages, it encourages them to create a uid and register. HTH.

  p.s. Not-so-coincidentally third, it makes this place feel (if not actually be) less like a caste-system, with Chuck Norris at the top, may he live ten thousand years. p.p.s. The talkpage message should say, and I quote,     "Thanks :-)"    ...it must not be garish template-spam, because the assumption must be that anons are just regulars who forgot to login. Actually, that's a fourth benefit, it helps regulars notice if they accidentally are revealing their IP, because they forgot to login. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:48, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I had just raised this at Wiktionary. Talk-page thanks not as good as a more attention-grabbing notice such as the message notification system for registered users. Couldn't something similar be done while the user is logged in? For this to work it would be necessary that the notification be timely, which in turn means that the thanks button must be available from Special:RecentChanges, the watchlists, and any similar page used for patrolling. DCDuring (talk) 19:40, 26 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I miss thanking IPs too! Some IPs are nice, really. Maybe some day will grow up and get an username... But until then, why not thank them? Aren't IPs human? Hafspajen (talk) 22:40, 18 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wait a minute, you are affraid that they will start thank-vandalizing. Hafspajen (talk) 22:55, 18 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That would be a hazard, of a different proposal. The proposal here, is for Hafspajen to be able to click 'thank' for an edit made by an anon, which would then place the plaintext "Thanks :-)" message on the anon's talkpage. In other words, anon makes a useful edit, registered pseudonym thanks the anon.

  What you are talking about is the reverse scenario, where the registered pseudonym makes an edit, and the anon clicks the 'thank' button a million times, so as to annoy the registered editor. Having seen not one, but two cases of registered editors abusing the thank-button to snarkily annoy their content-opponents, I guess I'd be willing to keep anons from being able to see the thank-button.

  Still, by that logic, anons should not be able to see the edit-button, right? So I support both types of thanking, pseudonym-to-anon, and also anon-to-pseudonym, but methinks the pseudonym-to-anon thanks is far more important for editor-retention. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:48, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Support I've had at least one red-named editor announce that they were going to join the project "full time" after I thanked them. Extending thanks to IPs could be a great recruitment tool. Brycehughes (talk) 21:38, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Me too – Not all IPs are transients. I was just disappointed to discover that I can't thank 174.141.182.82 for cleaning up my recent typing error (although I just realized I can simply leave a note of thanks on their Talk page instead). —BarrelProof (talk) 05:53, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It would be helpful if instead of "this edit" the confirmation box gave the edit summary of the edit. This will help insure someone is not thanking the "wrong" edit (as I just did). --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:32, 18 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This suggestion was implemented, I see the editor name now, a real improvement. But, "Are you sure you want to thank ThaddeusB for this edit?" - this sounds like the software is second-guessing me (Really sure? This bloke? Deserving to be thanked?), not a neutral confirmation OK. It is difficult and probably too early to tell, but it seems that "thanks" notifications have fallen from ~400 thanks daily to ~250 thanks daily (since around June 11). I partially blame this on the formulated confirmation text ;-) which should be improved. Why can't we just take the Thanks notification, as seen by the receiver, and turn it around: You thank Mary Dunlap for this edit on Tamalpais Valley "Does anyone have references about Coyote Ridge?" - OK / Cancel ? --Atlasowa (talk) 13:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please consider once again: Those numbers are not overly important. We should not aim to get as much thanks as possible but the thanks should be as appropriate as possible (this might also justify a drop in thanks).

I concur however that the wording is a little negative. Your suggestion sounds fine (I'd even cut out the "You" in the beginning, though). --Patrick87 (talk) 14:30, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For quite some time before this, I had been hoping for some sort of "edit upvoting" feature, for the simple reason that there had been no real way to react to a good edit. This is awesome. I started using it immediately after its release, and I finally found the WP namespace page at which I can, well, thank you for it.  — TORTOISEWRATH 21:56, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I like it because it gives me a way to thank someone who reverts a vandalism. Not worth a trip to their talk page, but worth an "attaboy", and that's what this feature gives us. Also a quiet way of offering support to someone who makes a tough-but-IMO-correct call in closing a discussion. --MelanieN (talk) 17:53, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've enjoyed thanking people since this feature has been available, but I'd like to point out a way it could be better. After pressing the "thank" button, it says "Are you sure you want to thank for this edit?" and the options are "OK" and "cancel". Neither of those answers answer the question. "Yes" and "no" would make more sense. Thanks, SchreiberBike talk 00:48, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I was actually just about to bring this up then saw that you had beaten me to it. "Yes" and "Cancel" may also work. ~XapApp(Talk·Contribs) 09:02, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not wild about the little pink heart on the notification - I'd much prefer a miniature "original barnstar" image - but all in all, this is probably the best little new feature since unified accounts. Hope it stays around. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department: Please take a number} 21:20, 12 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's been updated! I like the replacement design and color. –Quiddity (talk) 18:50, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. This feature is a really nice, simple idea to allow people to occasionally remind other editors of why they put in so much of their spare time. I absolutely think that Wikipedia is a magnificent (though hugely imperfect) resource and that editing it for the better is extremely worthwhile, but it can become easy to forget that sometimes after so many hours of anonymous, unrecognised effort. Just one thank you every month or so is enough to help keep me motivated to do what I know's worth doing :D BreakfastJr (talk) 12:22, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

 – Template:Bug is fixed, and the patch to hide thanks from the logs has been merged and will likely go live next week

I like this feature and I use it. But I find it annoying that every time someone receives a "thank" notice, it gets listed under their logs. When I click on "view logs" for a person (specifically "view logs for this page" on the revision history of their userpage), I am looking for stuff about them that matters - things like blocks and userrights. Now the first thing I see is a long string of "so-and-so thanked so-and-so". This must be satisfying for the developers - it means people are using this function - but to us users it is clutter, unnecessary trivia that gets in the way of what we wanted to see. Would it be possible to make "view thanks log" an optional button instead of including them all in the general log by default? Thanks (no joke intended). --MelanieN (talk) 13:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I think there are two potential solutions:

1. We add the "Thanks" feature to the list of elements that are not included by default. (It says at the top of Special:Log, "This is a combined display of all logs except the patrol and review logs:")
2. (both to solve this, and potentially other elements that can overwhelm the log of individuals) is something like the "Invert selection" checkbox that appears in the Special:Contributions pages. Then we could set it to "Thanks" + "Invert", to see everything except "Thanks" entries.

I'm not sure what repercussions the first would have, nor how complicated the second would be to code.

Any devs have advice? –Quiddity (talk) 18:59, 21 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that it was put in to the logs in order to help the community monitor the feature just after launch, particularly since it was a somewhat experimental idea. If people looking at logs often find it annoying/noisy, I'm sure a request to remove it from logs would be considered. (Ping Oliver and Fabrice) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:31, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Such a request seems reasonable to me, although I'm not currently actively involved in Echo. I'll poke Fabrice in meatspace when he's back from lunch. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi MelanieN, thanks for pointing out this issue. I have pinged Kaldari, my partner in crime for this thanks feature, to see what he thinks about removing thanks as a 'default' element for log display, from a developer's perspective. From a product perspective, I would be open to this idea, as long as it doesn't impact the community's ability to audit potential abuse of this feature. Though I am not aware of any abuse now, the log is the only method that would allow us to track such behavior. It's also helpful to be able to contact users of this feature, for research purposes. Note that Thanks is holding steady now, with a couple hundred notifications sent every day, or about 2% of total notification volume on the English Wikipedia. So this steady usage -- and the generally positive feedback we've heard so far -- suggest that this experimental feature is helpful to most users, and we are therefore inclined to keep it as a permanent feature, if this trend continues. Thanks as well to Okeyes (WMF) and Steven Walling (WMF) for pinging me about this post -- I find this Mention notification feature very helpful as well, and also view it as a 'keeper'. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hey MelanieN! Originally the thanks feature didn't have any logging, but several people in the en.wiki community asked for it to be added. The developers (me) have never supported logging thanks and would be happy to get rid of it. If you can drum up some support for removing the logging feature (perhaps on the Village Pump), I would definitely be open to axing it. Cheers! Kaldari (talk) 02:52, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Kaldari and Fabrice. (Yes, Fabrice, I like the Mention notification too.) I'm not asking you to stop logging it when someone sends a Thanks; I can see how that could be useful in a lot of ways. I'm just asking that Thanks be removed from the default display of an individual user's logs, and made optional to view. Is that possible? (Would it really have to go to Village Pump, or can you just do it? After all, you never asked the community about putting it in; why the need to ask before taking it out?) --MelanieN (talk) 05:45, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification MelanieN. I think what you are asking for is a change in the functionality of the Special:Log page, not a change in the functionality of the Thanks notification. By default, the logs are set to display "All public logs". Since thank actions are publicly logged, they are considered part of this group. If you have any ideas for making the log interface more flexible, I would suggest proposing them on Bugzilla or the technical village pump. Such a change would probably not be handled by the Notifications development team, however. Kaldari (talk) 06:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Per Quiddity above, the default is "This is a combined display of all logs except the patrol and review logs:" so clearly there is a way to change the default not to display some of the logs. This isn't exactly a bug, so you think I should take it to Village Pump? --MelanieN (talk) 14:51, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have listed the question at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Can we remove "thanks" logs from the userlog default display?. Thanks for everyone's input. --MelanieN (talk) 00:04, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Okeyes! An update on this request: I posted it at Village Pump, where it was seconded by three other people (there's a mixed metaphor), but they said it needed to go to Bugzilla. Someone filled out a Bugzilla ticket (I would have had no clue how to do that); it is here, item # 52118. It was assigned to Alex Monk, whose only comment to date has been "Not core", whatever that means. I gather that one of your roles at WMF is community liaison, as in helping the editors understand the tech people and vice versa; can you give me any clue where this request stands? Approved, disapproved, put on indefinite hold, in process, not yet looked at, etc.? Thanks much. --MelanieN (talk) 23:59, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Will be worked on"; not core just means that it's for a plugin (Echo) rather than part of MediaWiki's default code. Alex Monk is (if I'm wrong, I may be about to offend him!) User:Krenair; hopefully this will ping him and he can provide more details :). If not, I'll follow it up later. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:14, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi MelanieN, yes, I assigned that ticket to myself when I uploaded a patch for it. The "Not core" comment was about the choice of Product (a field in Bugzilla) set by the reporter - Echo and Thanks are MediaWiki Extensions, not MediaWiki itself. The patch's status is awaiting review by another person capable of approving code (in this case that's likely going to be a Foundation Staff developer who is working on Echo/Thanks). --Krenair ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:50, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update. --MelanieN (talk) 02:20, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I see a lot of emotion about the pink heart icon: not rage, not directed at other discussants, but people who see it as a "love" symbol that is much more serious than the simple "thanks" we're trying to convey here. And these people's reactions should not be waved aside.

Would it be practicable to allow a user to choose an icon for this purpose, to be displayed to them as user without affecting anyone else's view? ISTM (though IANAL) that this would avoid many of the issues that I've seen raised here:

• the "♥ = love" issue
• the needs of colorblind users (#Comments, first bullet, User:Fabrice Florin (WMF) and User:Quiddity)
• the variable risks of confusion when different users may have different sets of symbols on their pages (same place, Quiddity).

The simplest way to do this would be to provide a closed set of icons that a user could choose from. There would of course still have to be a default, possibly the pink heart; but the option and the link for it should be prominent, at least until the user uses it or indicates "I'm OK with the default".

--Thnidu (talk) 22:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The icon was changed shortly before. It's now some type of smiley. Actually some very strange type of smiley, though . Actually I liked the old icon set (despite the heart icon, which was controversial) like shown in File:Notifications-Flyout-Screenshot-Closeup-04-30-2013.png much more than the strange "speech ballon" icons used now, but the heart problem should be solved after all. --Patrick87 (talk) 22:40, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Thnidu. Sadly, giving users the option to choose their thanks icon is not a practical solution from our standpoint, as it introduces more usability issues than it solves. As Patrick87 points out, we have now replaced the heart icon for Thanks with a new icon that combines the smiley face proposed by some community members with our talk 'cartoon bubble' icon, as shown in the thumbnail to the right. We hope that these new icons will resolve the controversy over the use of a pink heart icon, which was making some users uncomfortable. Our design and product teams are comfortable with this solution, and we hope you will too. These new icons will deploy on the English Wikipedia on Thursday, July 25th. Thanks to everyone who helped us reach this reasonable and practical solution! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:33, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Fabrice Florin (WMF): Thanks, Fabrice. I think the new icon is just fine. It combines iconic symbols for talk and I'm pleased, and it doesn't have the unwanted connotations of love like the heart graphic (or any others AFAICT). I hope most other users will agree.
    Just after adding the above I saw a pink heart icon (ca-wikilove) in the header of a user talk page to thank the user. Should that have been changed as well? (HTML below) --Thnidu (talk) 15:27, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

     <li id="ca-wikilove" class="icon">
        <span><a title="Post a message for this user showing your appreciation" href="#"> … </a></span>
      </li>

@Thnidu: That other heart icon is unrelated to the Thanks Notification. It's part of the WP:Wikilove extension. –Quiddity (talk) 18:54, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Quiddity: OK, thanks for the info. --Thnidu (talk) 11:32, 26 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be quite interesting to be able to rank which diffs had recieved most 'thanks' over a certain time period. I understand it is not very easily done with the database structure used today but I hope this could be improved. It could really bring forward some nice stories. --Ainali (talk) 21:11, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's actually impossible based on what's currently logged. As you can see in Special:Logs/thanks, the database knows who thanked who and when. It does not record the oldid or page_id.. This is partially by design. We enabled this logging of thanks to make sure the community had a window into thanking actions early on, but otherwise we don't want thanks to become a public aggregate metric that is used like a public "up vote" or +1 for edits. Rather, we want it to be a genuine, person-to-person message of gratitude. There have actually been some calls to turn off public logging of thanks, because it is not very actionable and can increase the noise factor of the logs. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:58, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

... and those calls to stop the "thanks" notifications from cluttering up our public logs resulted in this [7] Bugzilla ticket, which I guess is somewhere in process or discussion. --MelanieN (talk) 03:04, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, there's a patch awaiting review. I poked at it and we'll see if we can get some movement on it sooner rather than later. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:16, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The database seem to know this, since the message includes to the thanked user includes a link to the diff. Perhaps you need to do some clever joins on tables, but I would be surprised if it would be impossible to retrieve the information. --Ainali (talk) 19:38, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It would be great if we could get the "thank user" link from our watchlist, or the user's contribs. (Also maybe on a diff view screen). Going and finding the correct entry in the page history can sometimes be cumbersome, especially if you are already sitting on a link to the edit from some other view. Gaijin42 (talk) 15:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just thanked you from the diff, so it works. The (thank) button is very small though, I'm not surprised that you missed it. It should be more prominent there (as i already wrote months ago). --Atlasowa (talk) 13:09, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, this is being tracked in Template:Bug. I agree that more locations, especially contribs and watchlist, would be nice. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:14, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I support investigating this proposal further, as our research so far suggests that the Thanks tool appears useful for both new and experienced users, which supports the idea that we make it available in more locations (see latest findings here). To that end, I recommend we consider design solutions that might provide this valuable tool in ways that minimize clutter on these pages. These pages could use some design love anyway, and we may be able to improve them in the process. :) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Gaijin42, User:Steven (WMF), User:Fabrice Florin (WMF): please count me as +1 for this idea; I was going to start a new thread about it but I'll just comment here. I'd dearly love to see the thank button enabled on watchlist, contributions, as well as (as an opt-in/opt-out tool?) added to every talk page signature. I often ask questions and people provide helpful answer to them, it's a bit cumbersome to track them in in history to thank them. One (two) click way to do so would be a great improvement compared to current ways (search on history, or reply with echo or on their talk page). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:18, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hey everyone,

So earlier this week, we noticed that we messed up, and we removed the preference to hide the 'thank' button without proper preparation and notice. Once again, apologies for having to make people bring this up on the Village Pump.

The current state is that the preference which provided opt-out for the feature is shared with many others, and is being slowly deprecated as part of code cleanup work. It was originally created so users could opt out of Vector experiments, back in 2009. In the future, features will either have their own unique opt-out preferences (like Notifications do), or they will be opt-in via a beta (like VisualEditor).

In other words, if we want to have a preference for hiding 'thank' we'll need to build a new one. Since Thanks is no longer really experimental – it's been here for several months – this is a good time to examine whether we really need this preference. Kww and others pointed this out to me on the Village Pump.

After reading the few comments about this on the Village Pump, we've decided for now not to create a new preference to hide the 'thank' link. It was genuinely an accident that this preference was removed, but here's our thinking on the matter:

• It's been several days since this happened, but there have been very few comments on the matter. Mostly it seems like people didn't notice the change or care?
• 9,616 English Wikipedians have used Thanks since it was launched. Almost all of the people who have heavily used Thanks are very experienced editors (we looked at people who have sent thanks 30+ times), so it seems pretty popular among both new and expert Wikipedians.
• A little over 700 accounts have the opt-out preference enabled and have edited at least once since the Thanks feature was enabled. That means the number of people who have used the opt-out preference is equal to about 7% of the people who have sent Thanks.

To put it more plainly, the number of active editors who chose to hide the 'thank' button is very small compared to the number of active editors who use the feature. Every preference we add creates additional complexity in our Preferences interface, and should be considered really useful for a significant number of all Wikipedians. If you personally don't like a feature, you can still use personal CSS and JS to hide it.

If you don't want receive Thanks notifications, you can also still turn it off in your notifications preferences. While we don't want anyone to get notifications that might annoy them, it seems to us that it causes little annoyance to most people to have the thanks button visible, just like it's not a big deal to see an undo button. The choice to use thanks or not is still, of course, completely yours.

Many, er... thanks, and have a good weekend. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:29, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Steven Walling (WMF). I agree with your thoughtful observations on this topic. Removing Thanks from its 'experimental status' seems to be the right decision, based on the mounting evidence that this tool is useful. Besides the new findings cited above, I will add that since we deployed this tool on the English Wikipedia in May 2013, about 39,000 thanks notifications have been triggered, which represents about 2% of total notifications sent during that period. This pattern seems quite steady now, and you can track this notification on this metrics dashboard, under 'notifications by category'. So far, community response to this feature has generally been favorable: users who have commented about this tool seem to appreciate this quick way to show appreciation for productive edits, which encourages better collaborations on Wikipedia (learn more in this recent report). Overall, it appears that we are on the right track with this feature, and I look forward to seeing it evolve and add more value for our users over time. To be continued ... :) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Multiple people have said that 'thank' is more annoying and less useful on History pages. I filed Template:Bug to track this request. What do people think? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:13, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Given the Thanks feature's apparent usefulness, it seems counter-productive to remove it from article history, where this positive feedback tool complements the negative 'undo' function effectively. Our research so far shows that the Thanks tool appears useful for both new and experienced users (see post above), which suggests that we continue to keep it where it is.

In fact, some users recommend that we add Thanks in more locations (e.g. Watchlist, Contributions or Recent Changes), which is an idea that also seems worth considering. See also Template:Bug on this topic. What do you think? Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It really only seems useful on a diff page. There's no way to tell what an edit did from the history page: one has to view the diff listing to see that the edit is one worthy of gratitude before pressing the button. That means that placing it in these other locations is either useless or error-prone.—Kww(talk) 01:09, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Steven (WMF) and Kww: There are at least 2 ways to know which-diff-is-which on an history page:

1. If it's a talkpage, and I've just read that Alice has made a good comment at 04:44, then I can easily find that on a history page.

2. Navigation popups. (disclaimer: I use popups)

I'm in favour of retaining it in History pages (that's where I primarily use it) and on diff pages. I'd weakly support adding it elsewhere, but...

I'm still in favour of altering its visual appearance. Either reducing the size, or changing the color, of the text. See Example above at #Comments. HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 03:20, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your pop-up example doesn't convince me: why should tools be optimized for people that use gadgets? The talk page one is valid, but I would argue that time-stamp memorizers are a small portion of the pool of editors. Normal flow is click change in history, verify that it's the one you mean, then click back to go the history again, then hit the thank button. Putting it on the page with the diff would optimize that flow and unclutter the history.—Kww(talk) 03:58, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I like the proposed User:Equazcion/DynaThank idea too (See screenshot there, and WP:VPT thread). –Quiddity (talk) 21:15, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Update: hey guys. Per the comments from community members and Fabrice on the bug, I've closed it. I did a quick bit of analysis this morning, and it turns out we know the following sources for thanks notifications on the Web:

• 12,867 came from diffs
• 30,088 came from history
• 477 came from diffs on the mobile site

It looks to me that history is actually the most popular page for thanking people, so removing it from there would not be helping people who use this feature. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:09, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for this interesting analysis, User:Steven (WMF)!

Do you have comparable numbers for "undo"-actions (reverts) from the diff or the history page? I'm wondering at the small percentage of actions from the diff: If an editor thanks or reverts, he has to see the contribution, which would be in the diff - do users go (back?) to the history for clicking?

IMHO, the "thank"-link should be much more visible in the diff (this is the third time I'm writing this :-), because that's were you see the edit that you're thanking for. In the screenshot you can see how big buttons are used in diffs with flagged revisions, for comparison. --Atlasowa (talk) 10:57, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a quick way to acknowledge a 'Thank', without having to start a thread on the thanking editor's talk page (which somewhat negates the whole thrust of this feature being a quick and simple way of thanking)? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 11:00, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't anything like that, but I know what you mean. I think it was left out to avoid interface-clutter, and to avoid feature-bloat, and to avoid making anyone feel obliged to return every single thank you (as if it were an "acknowledgement" button) which I know I'd fall prey to! Instead, I think of it as a pay-it-forward type system. It's spreading good karma outwards, rather than just bouncing it back. :) –Quiddity (talk) 06:44, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. That's how I have been viewing it, and haven't responded to anybody sending a 'Thank'. However I've still felt a little guilty, wondering if other editors have expected a response and saw the lack of one as rudeness. And then I looked at the project page and read "You are encouraged to respond to the person who thanked you — to leave a message or ask a question, for example." Hence my question here. Maybe that line should be changed, if people generally don't expect a response? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:52, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh! Yes, I agree that should be changed or removed. I've had a go, but if you can improve the wording go for it. –Quiddity (talk) 04:48, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Related idea... what if you could get a reply notification that your thanks was received? It would be not difficult at all to send you a notification like "Your thank you to User was received." when someone sees your thanks. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:41, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A related idea was suggested at Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Archive 5#Proposal - Notifications delivered, regarding the difficulty in knowing whether a "Mention" had been sent (a) successfully and (b) to someone who hadn't opted-out of the Mentions-Notifications feature altogether - the difficulty (if I understand WhatamIdoing's comment correctly) is that it would potentially be a privacy problem, if we could track when someone was reading the site, or how they had their preferences configured (eg, an instant "message received" would indicate that the user had email-notifications enabled). I'm not sure how much of a problem that would be, or whether the benefits (particularly for Mentions) would outweigh the drawbacks. –Quiddity (talk) 01:53, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This all seems rather unnecessary. Your thanks was received? Your ping was received? I think we should just use the feature and assume that it worked. In the case of a thanks, it's not vital to know that the person looked at it; if the thank-you note was THAT important to you, you should have put it on their talk page; this is for a casual offhand "thanks". In the case of a ping, if you were expecting the person to show up and say something, and they didn't, you could follow up, but most of the time your ping is acknowledged by the person actually showing up at the discussion. I don't think any acknowledgement of receipt of these features is needed. Just MHO. --MelanieN (talk) 18:09, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with MelanieN. If an editor feels obligated to say "you are welcome" then they should simply find some edit the sender-of-the-thanks made, and thank them back. This is entirely optional. As a side benefit, people that are worried about thanking each other in endless loops, will henceforth be stuck in a trap of their own making! This will cut down on discussions about how to say "you are welcome" (and even worse... discussions about how to 'unthank' somebody).

  The implementation of the thank-button-feature is supposed to help make it easier to spread wikiLove. That is a good thing. Helpful for the encyclopedia anyone can edit. That said, adding auto-reverse-notifications-that-your-thanks-notification-was-received-by-the-recipient-foo, ability to unthank-aka-unfriend, dedicated you-are-welcome button, ... why, that sounds quite like facebook. WP:NOTHERE applies, methinks. Draw the line in the sand, and do not turn mediawiki into microsoft exchange server, or wikipedia into myspace. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:00, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This feature is really nice. But I'd like to thank some of the bots too because I really appreciate their help with pointing out disambiguation problems and mangled references. Their developers need thanks too :) but the option of thanking the bot is not available (for me anyway, am I missing something in preferences?). Would you-all consider adding this? Novickas (talk) 14:20, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's what the wikilove button is for! Or a simple talkpage message. :) (I would guess that since some bot-owners don't log into the separate accounts (as they're run via the api), hence they'd never see a thank-notification, hence it is disabled for accounts with the bot-flag.) –Quiddity (talk) 06:51, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation - Novickas (talk) 13:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See also bugzilla:48892. Legoktm (talk) 17:44, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've played around with my css to remove thanks, but the pipe preceding it is still there, and I have a feeling with my rudimentary knowledge, I would remove all pipes on the page if I attempted to add something to hide that in my css. What, if anything, can I add to remove that pipe? - Purplewowies (talk) 00:08, 6 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are you just trying to turn the feature off? What is the motivation which prompted your CSS question? p.s. Try stackoverflow rather than wikipedia talkpages for faster response... or we have the computers section of WP:RD... plus sometimes folks at WP:TEAHOUSE can field techie-questions. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I searched all through preferences and couldn't find a way to turn it off, and I read the things on this page and couldn't find anything, so I fed its message name into my CSS with a display none on it, which left extraneous pipes and parentheses around it. 'Course, I have been missing tons of stuff right in front of my face in prefs and everywhere lately... which may be an indication I'm focusing on too much stuff... - Purplewowies (talk) 06:58, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'm having the problem mentioned here: Wikipedia_talk:Notifications/Thanks#How to turn off this feature because the feature is no longer experimental. I'm using the same workaround as there. Honestly, I posted here because it was the most specific, but my next route would be WP:HD or more likely, WP:VPT, where help desk folks will usually direct you for things like this. I would have gone into something like IRC or the like to ask, but it wasn't an emergency and didn't need fast response, and plus, my computer usually refuses to load those things nowadays, particularly in this browser specifically. - Purplewowies (talk) 07:09, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, talkpage stalkers... Purplewowies is having trouble turning off this feature, now that it is live. Is there still a way to turn it off? Or is it now un-turn-off-able, officially? If so, I'm happy to help them debug their CSS to handle the wiley vertical-pipe-glyph. But obviously, that is wasted effort if there is still a way to simply turn off the 'thanks' links from a setting somewheres. For obvious reasons, I don't have such a setting myself. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:49, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Purplewowies: I thought someone had figured out the magic of removing the pipe, but I can't find the thread. You might find that User:Equazcion/DynaThank would suit your needs (before/after screenshot and details are there) - it removes the clutter, but retains the option of using the feature. There is no official way to turn off the links, so CSS is the only other option (Essentially it was in Beta-mode, and now isn't any longer). Thanks for the nudge 74.192.84.101 :) –Quiddity (talk) 00:40, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Maybe ((User:Technical 13/Scripts/NoThanks.js)) is what you are looking for? That should be the stable version, I had more features and improvements, but haven't had the time to implement them yet. As it stands, it just removes the links (and pipes) IIRC. Technical 13 (talk) 00:45, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all. I've put DynaThank on my js page, and I think it suits my needs quite nicely for the time being (NoThanks looks nice/promising, but I like what DynaThank is doing at present :P). - Purplewowies (talk) 02:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible to "thank" an edit twice. I suspect that this is done inadvertently, because the thanker has no way of finding out which edits they've already sent a "thank" for. Here are some sent by one particular user to me. There is no way that anybody can tell from that list which edits they were for, but from my notifications, I can tell that those of 19:32, 24 November 2013 and 15:13, 25 November 2013 were both for this edit (the other four were for different edits to the same article).

So: can I request that either (i) a diff link be added to the log; or (ii) a flag be set against an edit so that should an attempt be made to thank a second time, the user be informed. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:15, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've re-opened the old bug for this (which I'd previously submitted following this bugreport in July, Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Archive 4#Thanked twice). Thanks for the report. :) –Quiddity (talk) 18:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

7severn7 has thanked me a third time (08:43, 26 November 2013) for the same edit. I think I'll send a message back. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:29, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:OMG! Got curious, searched your edit-history... Best. Edit. Evah. (!!!) You can so totally add my personal thanks to the top of your thank-dogpile, Redrose, I mean, wowserooskie, you know?  :-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:47, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't suppose your name is Moon Unit Zappa? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:23, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How about displaying information (on pages that allow thanking) that a given edit has been thanked for previously? It could note how many times, with an expandable list of by whom and when. Some people could also enjoy enabling a thanks tracker gadget of some sorts, so they could display a list of thanks they received on their userpage, just like they do with barnstars and such. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again Prokonsul, your request is specifically discussed above. Here is the the money-quote, for the sake of convenience.

We want this to be a genuine person to person thank you, not an endorsement or a tool for "voting up" edits. They're logged like Oliver notes, but AFAIK, this is primarily so that the community can track down potential over-use or abuse of the feature (e.g. is the current rate limit enough?). Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

In other words, this is not intended to be Yet Another Hat Collecting Exercise that is even easier to abuse than barnstars... nor is it supposed to be a vote-system which substitutes for seeking consensus on the talkpage... and although it is logged, it is intended to be a relatively silent tip-of-the-hat from one person to another. It's like waving your hand out the window, to the person who just let you turn into the throroughfare. You don't have time to send them a personal note. You likely don't even know them. But you appreciated their kind gesture, and in return, waved your thanks.

  They appreciated your thanks, but it's not like they're gonna take a picture with their cellphone of you waving, and then post that imagefile on their userpage, to prove what an awesome driver they are. Right? If you are trying to get to your seat in the opera theater or the sports arena, and you have to squeeze by the other already-seated folks along the way, you just whisper thanks as you pass, or maybe just smile. Nobody personally remembers that, later on... in detail. But it *does* indubitably improve the general level of WP:NICE in the opera community and/or the football community, or whatever.

  Hopefully the analogy is clear now. We already have talkpage-messages, if you want to thank somebody the old-fashioned way. (And for bohts and anons that is still the *only* way to do so.) We already have barnstars, if you want to thank somebody with a kitten dressed as a ninja hurling barnstar-shaped shurikens just for the fun of it, or because you are considering running for arbcom next year, or whatever. What we were lacking was a low-investment low-fidelity easy-come-easy-go mechanism for waving from the window, or smiling as we squeeze past, or the wiki-metaphorical-equivalent thereof.

  TLDR.... There is no built-in way to display thank-counts, neither in the page-history of articles, nor on the user-pages of editors. This behavior is by design, because this is not about collecting gratitude in a tub. Hope this helps clarify. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:44, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to download thank activity en masse? I'm interested in using it in some ongoing research and I like to bother WMF as little as possible. Andrew³²⁷ 10:06, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How about…?

• http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20131104/enwiki-20131104-pages-logging.xml.gz
• mw:API:Logevents

Keφr 17:40, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Andrew³²⁷ 06:10, 27 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are blocked users able to thank people? -- John Reaves 01:34, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@John Reaves: Nope (confirmed by dev). –Quiddity (talk) 22:22, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Have there been discussions to expand the functionality to allow thanks for deletions? When I've requested a page be deleted, it would be nice to send a notification to thank the admin who deleted it. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:30, 31 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

+1, I came here wanting to ask the exact same thing! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:37, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@GoingBatty and Mike Peel: I think bugzilla:58485 and bugzilla:50867 cover this. (Note: There aren't any staff devs assigned to creating new features for Thanks at the moment, so it will appear at volunteer-speed if/when that feature is created.) HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 04:56, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like editors are unable to thank someone for an edit that was later protected. After a cursory review, I can't find why this option is not available. Thanks (in advance)! - tucoxn\^talk 21:31, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Tucoxn: Hi. There was a similar comment at mw:Extension talk:Thanks#can't thank on fully protected pages, but we need more details, or steps to replicate. For example, I'm able to 'thank' for edits to Main page, which is fully protected (I'm not an admin). Which page/diffs specifically, are you unable to 'thank' for? Thanks! –Quiddity (talk) 21:50, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Quiddity: Thanks. It looks like I wanted to thank User:Kevin Gorman for this page, User:Kevin Gorman/Wiki-PR Work, and couldn't thank him for any edit he made there because the page is protected. I'm an experienced editor and my account has the reviewer flag but it doesn't look like that matters. I can't edit the page either. - tucoxn\^talk 22:22, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) @Tucoxn: Weird! I can click the 'thank' links in both the history page and at individual diffs (except for the first 2 diffs, which were revisiondeleted).

Is it just those first 2 edits that you mean? If so, that's bugzilla:54100 (Only allow Thanks for public revisions).

If it's all the edits, then: Do the 'thank' links appear properly, but simply not function? Or do they not appear at all? –Quiddity (talk) 22:43, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, weird that you could thank me for that Quiddity. I had my girlfriend try on her account with a very similar permission set and she was unable to do the same thing. Per my reply on mw.org, I'll try to get a bugzilla with reproducible steps up tomorrow. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:38, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Kevin Gorman: I was testing, per above (which we edit-conflicted on). I just have "reviewer" and "rollback" flags, but that shouldn't matter. –Quiddity (talk) 22:45, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Testing on her account, the thank links appeared, but just didn't function. I'll reconfirm later today when she gets off work. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:08, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The "thanks" weren't showing up at all on the history page but it seems to be working for me now. Thanks for the page, Kevin! - tucoxn\^talk 03:42, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• If it helps any, I was able to thank all but the first two on that page which had no thank links because they were revdel. — ((U|Technical 13)) ^{(t • e • c)} 03:58, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks is the only component in the notifications that doesn't link to the edit that is the focus of the message. Instead, it links to the userpage of the editor that is thanking you. While this is certainly a good link to have, I would like to also have a link to the edit that I am being thanked over. Occasionally I will thank someone for one specific edit in a chain of edits that they made to a single page, and I want people to see exactly which edit I am thanking them for. This would also be useful when thanking someone for an edit to a noticeboard page, as in that case it's not clear which thread someone is being thanked for an edit in. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The diff is linked on Special:Notifications, but I agree it would be nice to have the same in the flyout. — HHHIPPO 20:47, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I did code-review on a patch that does just this yesterday afternoon. MatmaRex then +2'd it and it's in the repository, waiting on deployment.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 20:49, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's already there; it's the "View edit", visible in that screenshot just to the right of "3 hours ago". --Redrose64 (talk) 21:00, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh wow. I've opened notifications at least 50 times (30 or so times for Thanks messages) and never noticed that. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:30, 6 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's easily missed, see also de:Hilfe Diskussion:Echo/Danke#Anregung and de:Hilfe Diskussion:Echo#Danke, wofür? But for a revert (negative feedback) you get a big fat diff-link. But no edit comment to explain the revert? It's like an open invitation to edit-war. --Atlasowa (talk) 17:03, 6 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I feel that I should point out that the link colour is a shade of grey, specifically #6D6D6D   and so is exactly the same as the plain text colour used within the nominations box; and so it is not obvious that "View edit" is a link. In other parts of Wikipedia, links are blue - of various shades depending upon whether they are internal or external, unvisited or visited. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:47, 6 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at Special:Notifications i now see in 1 thank notification 2 (!) blue links to the same diff ("your edit" and "view changes" - btw why "changes"? it's 1 diff for 1 edit). --Atlasowa (talk) 17:11, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please, please also care about Bug 52510 - Echo should provide notifications about your revision being approved or rejected on wikis with FlaggedRevs enabled? There is a fix waiting for approval since November 2013. The bugreport is from August 2013 and all WP with FlaggedRevs could have sent hundreds of positive feedback notifications per day to newbies, for months! In the meantime, we're automatically sending hundreds of negative revert notifications to them. WMF knows perfectly how bad this is, but obviouly WMF doesn't really care. Editor retention, my ass. --Atlasowa (talk) 16:37, 6 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And one more thing: If you are male and you mention another user on a talk page, this user gets a "mention"-notification. If you are a female user and mention another user, nothing happens, no notification. Too bad if you're a woman/Benutzerin: you will be ignored. Talk about gender gap. This issue is known since at least December 3. --Atlasowa (talk) 17:49, 6 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IS there any way to remove thanks? A admin would? If a person wanted. SamuelDay1 (talk) 12:54, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Notifications/Thanks#How to turn off this feature? --Atlasowa (talk) 16:50, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No.. I gave "thanks" to a wrong person, and realized later. Such thanks can be removed? If not by self, through admin? That was the question. SamuelDay1 (talk) 19:09, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• No, there is no way to "undo" sending a thanks at this time. There has been a lot of discussion about adding such a feature, and I believe there is some development planned for it. Even if/when it does become possible, it will only be a short window of opportunity where you will get to undo the action yourself. — ((U|Technical 13)) ^{(t • e • c)} 20:48, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I really hope there was some solution, so thank could disappear. But thanks for informing. SamuelDay1 18:09, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I see the "thanks" links on the history for this page, but I don't see them on, say, the Tamale history page. A lot of information on how to fix this seems to be out of date.

I do use the Monobook skin, so I can easily tell if I'm logged in. But if it's appearing on some pages, surely it isn't Vector only. — trlkly 22:29, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Trlkly: Thanks links don't appear in normal history pages for: Anons, Bots, or Your own edits. Hence the first 'thank' link you'd see at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tamale&action=history would be for MrBill3. –Quiddity (talk) 02:03, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see. I didn't expect it to be disabled for anons. I'd like to be able to thank the ones that do good work, which might even encourage them to register. Also, thanks for pinging me!— trlkly 17:06, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Trlkly: There is a bug-ticket (bugzilla:61022) for extending Thank to work for anons, but it would either require Echo/Notifications for anons (they don't get Echo at all, currently. However, that's being looked at via bugzilla:56828), or changing the way Thank links work for anon users (perhaps just starting a new usertalkpage thread? but that would be drastically different from the current Thank). There was also this wikitech-l thread in May about the technical and privacy issues. TL;DR - it is being thought about, and at least 1 developer is poking at the issue. HTH. :) –Quiddity (talk) 01:38, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Any news on the progress of implementing an "ignore thanks from" feature? It's absolutely necessary. I'm starting to receive occasional sarcastic "thanks" from someone who has my talk page on their watchlist and it's a pain in the arse. — Scott • talk 19:57, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

...and pages to. I get a dozen thanks per day for my edits on the main page. — Edokter (talk) — 20:17, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Scott: I don't see anybody thanking you more than once in a day. I also don't see you being thanked more than once a day by different users since 21 April. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:07, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Of course you don't, because I didn't say that. — Scott • talk 21:12, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I like this feature very much. Who first had the idea of it? --Ephraim33 (talk) 13:47, 22 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't know about who had the idea, but its creator seems to be User:Kaldari, so we can thank him in the meantime and he'll let us know if there's someone else who should get credit for this :) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:50, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've just found this page, so it seems a useful place to repeat a couple of points I've raised elsewhere about Thanks and mobiles.

1. The "thank" button is large, bottom right, and there is no confirmation stage: you half-drop your phone and grab it, or your scrolling finger droops because you're tired, and you've thanked the random person whose edit you were looking at. No way out of it. There's a Bugzilla bug about this, Template:Bug, but it's been dismissed by one commentator as "not a big issue". I think it's a huge issue. There's also no way to opt out of Thanks, on mobile.
2. If I click on an editor's name, in mobile, I am shown a strange little profile page: it shows me what page they last edited and when; what image they last uploaded and when; who most recently Thanked them; and then some more useful stuff like when they joined, how many edits and uploads they've done, and links to their user page and talk page. I thought Thanking was supposed to be a private matter (not absolutely confidential as there are public logs, but not splashed around). To have it included on the profile page for a person seems out of keeping with the philosophy of the Thanks notifications.

PamD 08:21, 14 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@PamD:

For 1) I've filed bugzilla:69636 to cover this, and I see Maryana is discussing it in the thread at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback#Just_wondering

For 2) That's a Mobilefrontend thing, so best discussed primarily with them. That section of the profile page did previously include the exact page that the Thank occurred on (bugzilla:56818) so at least that's fixed! I would guess that it's mostly a placeholder, until they have time to get some better metadata in there. E.g. I'd love to see a small version of the pie chart or the monthly graphs, from supercount, used there. But again, you'll have to ask them (probably at mw:Extension talk:MobileFrontend)

HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:33, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not wild about the inline confirmation. I liked the modal dialog better. But I can live with the inline one, only there's one thing that's really irritating: The confirmation question doesn't "stick" to the parentheses. This means that when you thank someone in diff mode, you see this:

Revision as of 00:00, 01 September 2014 (edit) (undo) (
           Send thanks for this edit? Yes No)
               Username (talk | contribs) 

It would be better if the entire word, including punctuation, wrapped like this:

Revision as of 00:00, 01 September 2014 (edit) (undo)
          (Send thanks for this edit? Yes No)
               Username (talk | contribs)

I know this is a minor nitpick, but it annoys me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:16, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It might be worth noting that AFAICS this only happens if a sidebar is open in the browser; no issues otherwise. --Elitre (talk) 14:38, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is strange. But the whole change to the thank-confirmation-feature is strange. The point of the confirmation step was to save people from embarrassing missclicks on thanks in a link-crowded page (page history with "undo" "rollback" etc.) - and now the thank-confirmation opens up/reveals into this same crowded space!? Why is that? How is that better for usability? Why was a change needed? This doesn't seem to be a community request but just some superfluous design fiddling. What Wikipedians actually asked for was to make the mobile-thanks-feature consistent with the desktop-thanks-feature by giving it the same confirmation step. Because there is a huge green thanks-button on mobile that people push accidentally, and, just as on desktop, the thank-notification cannot be reverted/taken back, in contrast to most other activities on Wikipedia. But that bugzilla request for mobile thanks is just ignored. --Atlasowa (talk) 07:21, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For reference:

Template:Bugzilla

Template:Bugzilla - sensible request for stats on "lost" thanks, unanswered.

Template:Bugzilla - Thank notification on mobile doesn't ask for confirmation: accident-prone

de:Wikipedia:Verbesserungsvorschläge/Archiv/2014/Mai#Bedanken in der mobilen Version --Atlasowa (talk) 07:58, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I too am a bit confuddled from this change: I have found myself almost missing the good will I mean to communicate. What about a user-option that allows users to turn on/off the "Thanks" confirmation with a default on option? Right now we are doing something which is designed for a very limited number of people who are misclicking, instead of experienced users who, during the vast majority of time, are not.Sadads (talk) 15:35, 26 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support a preference, even defaulted to on for "thanks confirmation" would be much welcome--if anyone has any handy user scripts for this could even be a gadget... — xaosflux ^Talk 18:33, 26 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support preference setting with default for "on" so that confirmation can be turned off. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:57, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Now even more confirmation

Today the confirmation sends a user to another page to super-confirm the thanks. Where is the documentation on this change? Why is thanking being treated as something which requires more confirmation than any other contribution to Wikipedia? I would like a way to do one-click thanking. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:49, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't send me to another page at all. Clicking "(thank)" triggers some javascript which squirts in some extra text "(Send thanks for this edit? Yes No)"; clicking "Yes" alters it again, to "(thanked)". --Redrose64 (talk) 16:24, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Bluerasberry: Re: Thanks: Getting a "1-click Thank" along with a "Thank-undo" feature is the eventual goal (bugzilla:69636, currently asking for a time-limited window wherein we can cancel a Thank, probably 30 seconds). The Confirmation-step is just a temporary measure, until a developer has time to do that; It's necessary because "Thank" appears directly next to (undo|rollback) and accidentally Thanking someone that we meant to Revert is very aggravating/embarrassing.

Re: the New confirmation style: That was implemented in https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/92315 and it should be an improvement because it puts the confirmation step closer to the actual link (versus the confirmation dialog-box/modal which appeared in the center of the window). Editors who are using no-JS previously got sent to another page and still do. I assume that you do use JavaScript as you hadn't encountered that before, therefor I guess that you possibly clicked "Thank" before the javascript had finished loading (which will also take us JS-users to the no-JS confirmation page).

If you want to completely disable the confirmation-step (or rather, automagically click "Yes" as soon as it appears), add this to your common.js:

$( function () { $( '.mw-thanks-thank-link' ).on( 'click', function () { $( this ).next( '.jquery-confirmable-interface' ).find( '.jquery-confirmable-button-yes' ).click(); } ) } );

Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:12, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing this up, Bluerasberry, and thank you for telling us you're working on it, Quiddity! I don't want to 'mess' with my script, though. I had already raised the point on the corresponding German Wikipedia page. We should really find a way all out feedback and all your information is gathered in a more central location... Thank you again, --Gnom (talk) 13:11, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gnom Quiddity (WMF) I also do not want to manipulate my script but would be satisfied with an expected delivery date on whatever the long-term solution is. I am happy to wait for a solution, but I would be less comfortable if I thought no one was addressing the problem and there was no expected time for resolution. I also do not mind delays in addressing the issue, but please continue to communicate what is happening and when projects are scheduled to be done. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:59, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think the THANK system works fine for article space, where most pages don't have tons of activity. However, talk pages, help pages, and the ref desk often get dozens of edits within a few hours, and thanking someone for a post that is a few days old is rather tedious. I just did this recently, and it took me about 5 minutes to scroll through the history and check diffs to thank the right post! Is there any way that a thank option could be added to signatures, or some other way to make it easier to thank editors in high activity contexts? Perhaps I'm missing some useful trick to get from a specific post to the appropriate diff/thank option. Thanks for any suggestions, SemanticMantis (talk) 16:51, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Eventually (some time in the future...) mw:Flow will sort of fix that, in that it features a Thanks link right below each post. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Any thought of adding this functionality to RevDel and/or oversight actions? Especially when those are handled quickly and quietly, I sometimes would like a way to extend some appreciate to the admin handling the action without drawing attention that a talk page post might garner. Ravensfire (talk) 19:33, 7 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oversight is supposed to be confidential. The Oversight team typically send out two emails: one to say that they've received your request, the other (which might be several hours later) to say that they've acted on your req, or explaining why they won't be. You could answer that second mail if you really feel the need to thank them. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:34, 7 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Understandable - thanks for the response. Ravensfire (talk) 20:38, 7 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I receive a surprising number of "thank" notifications from people for reverting their vandalistic or otherwise undesirable edits. Could be they have all had an attack of conscience and want to say thanks for correcting their misdeeds; but I think it's more likely that many actually meant to undo my reversion. Of course it's good when it's me that gets the thanks :-) but not so good if vandals are getting thanked by editors who meant to undo the vandalism.

This is quite a plausible mistake, because in the revision history page "undo" and "thank" are sharing a bracket, separated only by a thin partition, as

(Undo | Thank)

It might help somewhat if there were two separate brackets, something like

(Undo) • (Thank)

Do others agree and could this change be implemented?: Noyster (talk), 11:41, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If vandals are indeed misclicking on that—and confirming to send—then leave it as it is. It is diverting stupid "criminals" from restoring their misdeeds. Maybe "undo" should be made smaller to make it even harder to click on? —EncMstr (talk) 18:10, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is because of their proximity that the "(Send thanks for this edit? Yes No)" option was added, see #Inline confirmation above. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:01, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for replies. @EncMstr: Honest, upright citizens may make this mistake, as well as vandals; and there are probably more good-faith uses of Undo than vandals returning to counter-revert. @Redrose64: Yes there is a confirmation stage, but anyone clicking vaguely within a bracket is all too likely to go on to click Yes without looking at what they are saying Yes to. It seems that the Thanks process is going to be revamped sometime, and when this happens I would rather see a clearly-distinguished Thanks button than an extra confirmation stage: Noyster (talk), 16:23, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I receive lots of "thanks" from vandals as well. Not sure if it's genuine or not, but it doesn't really bother me, it's only a notification. I quite like the function in itself, any idea how the process may be revamped? Orphan Wiki 15:43, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There was a case a few days ago when a newly-registered account with (I think) zero actual edits was thanking other people's edits by the hundred. They were indef blocked within an hour or two, for being disruptive - vandalism wouldn't have stuck, because no page damage had occurred. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:31, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is possible it's genuine. I've thanked people for explaining why they've reverted on of my changes (e.g. if I've added an inappropriate see also or disambiguation) T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 04:23, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I know that some of you are interested in the question of whether and how much to log related to Thanks. There is a discussion specifically about whether to hide the log at the German Wikipedia (only) at phab:T90483 that some of you might want to read. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Let's discuss whether it should be possible to thank yourself(!) I believe the option should be available, followed by the prompt "Are you sure you wish to thank yourself?" Enabling users this option would show that it works, and then they might be more inclined to try it on others.– Gilliam (talk) 05:56, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've had some incredibly belittling and insulting comments directed my way in recent months and would let it get to me at times. Then I thought to myself; "self, perhaps it really isn't you that has an editing problem, perhaps it is in the personality makeup of the person who directing discouraging remarks your way, perhaps they mightest be the problem..."

So recently I've been checking up on how often another editor who I perceive to be quite 'grim' has been thanked for their edits...just as I suspected. Crabby, critical editors do not get thanked. I am more easily able to ignore criticism from a disruptive, critical editor once I know their 'work' is not widely regarded. I recently found one editor with over 60,000 edits with not even one thank you. Fortunately, I don't think they know it - or wouldn't they think something isn't right?

  Bfpage |leave a message  23:34, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The confirmation message now says "(Send public thanks for this edit? Yes No)" How "public", and why? Has the message or method of delivery changed? The aim, according to the project page, is to send "simple, personal messages of gratitude, rather than a public endorsement of edits". This new text contradicts that. Andrew Dalby 10:03, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From the introduction of this feature, it's been possible to see who has been thanked by a given user, and who has thanked a given user. But I know of no way to find out what the thank was actually for. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:37, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]