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At 20:03, 10 April 2023 UTC, the MediaWikia message delivery bot posted Tech News: 2023-15 at the Village Pump (tech). I posted a reply because I was confused about some details, and other editors responded with information so useful, that I decided to subscribe to that thread on that page. (Would have been around 05:24, 11 April 2023 UTC, although I don't remember exactly.) Further posts were exchanged, although I don't think they're relevant here.

At about 16:44, 12 April 2023 Jonesey95 (who has not, as yet, posted in the thread I subscribed to) decided to delete their copy of the Tech News: 2023-15 from their Talk page. At about that time, I received a notification:

Topic "Tech News: 2023-15" was archived or removed from User talk: Jonesey95. You might no longer receive notifications about this topic.

I never subscribed or even edited anything on Jonesey's Talk page. Since then, I have received about 6 more notifications from assorted users' Talk pages as their Tech News articles have been archived. I also got a flurry of 5 notifications as some vandal played in the Tech news section on User talk:InvalidOS. These are not generally pages to which I have subscribed nor have on my watchlist, so I certainly don't expect to be notified when something happens on their pages.

Is a topic subscription (somehow) connected to the entire mass posting? Or (just about as bad) is it based on exact title match? For example, if I subscribe to a thread like "Your revert" or "April 2023", will I get notifications for all edits to all threads wiki-wide with that section heading? This seems to be (at least somewhat) different from the situation described at T290803; should I add my experience there, or start a new phab ticket? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 15:28, 16 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@JohnFromPinckney Yes, the subscription is connected to the entire mass posting; not based on a title match, but on the author and time of the initial message (in this case, MediaWiki message delivery at 20:03, 10 April 2023). You'd also get a notification if someone commented in any of the discussions copied to different pages.

This is mostly the intended behavior, as it allows (non-mass-posted) discussions to still notify you about new comments after they are archived, moved to a different page, or re-titled. It has the unfortunate behavior with mass-posted messages, but it seems unavoidable in the current system. :/ Matma Rex talk 19:01, 17 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

JohnFromPinckney, I would file a new bug report / feature request. You will not be the only person to experience this undesirable behavior. Just spitballing here, but maybe the system could use a more fine-grained time stamp for tracking subscriptions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks, colleagues. I have opened my first phab ticket, T334906, although I expect the thing to do now is just know not to subscribe to mass-posted topics. :-P — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 06:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There are advantages to the current system, as it preserves subscriptions if a section is moved or duplicated to another talk page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 18 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The Editing team is currently running an A/B test for the group of changes described at mw:Talk pages project/Usability. If you already have the Beta Feature enabled, it's all the information about when the last comment was posted and how many comments are in each section.

Given the prior feedback, etc., I think it's safe to assume that the metrics will be met for the test, so I'm thinking ahead to the deployment. (Obviously, nothing actually happens until my assumption is proven correct, and if my assumption is wrong, then we can scrap all of this thinking.)

The first thing to say is: If you're interested in metrics and such, please see mw:Talk pages project/Usability/Analysis. Peter put a lot of thought into that, so I hope that at least a couple of you will read it and tell him what you think. If you have ideas for improvements, there is still time for some kinds of changes (e.g., additional analysis on existing data).

The second thing to say is: I don't like changing how pages look, and I especially don't like big changes to the appearance. The devs tell me that it's technologically possible to split this up into several small-to-medium-sized changes, and I'm recommending that we do this. This would mean spreading out the changes in three groups, over the space of, say, three weeks (or maybe two months).

Finally, the most important thing to say is: If you don't like it, you can turn it off in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. And while it's obvious that this needs to be posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), how else would you recommend advertising this fact? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:03, 18 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

At least in my browser, with my settings, the [edit], Subscribe, and Reply links are still three different sizes and two different boldnesses on this very page, and they do not align vertically with each other or with the text around them (Reply and Subscribe are still slightly superscripted). It looks suboptimal. This may be T324807 or T330952. If "move fast and break things" is what you're going for, then full steam ahead, but if it were my project, I would want to fix those cosmetic quirks before even a test deployment. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:40, 18 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The section [edit] link is not meant to be aligned with the Subscribe button. Buttons are "misaligned" to make room for the button (the white space around it, which is not visible, but we don't really want it to look like Reply just to make it obvious why it doesn't align vertically).

I believe the designer was going to make the Subscribe button bold as a result of your comments. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:27, 18 May 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I just had to fix the code produced by the tool after I replied at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 July 9 § Swipe left.

1. The tool inserted a blank line between my reply and a previous one, producing a WP:LISTGAP.
2. My comment was indented twice instead of once, which is wrong because I replied to the original post, not the preceding !vote.
3. The double indent was prodcuced using :*, not **, inappropriately changing list type.

Paradoctor (talk) 06:43, 10 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Please don't have the tool scroll down to "recovered changes" when I'm trying to view a diff, I'm definitely not writing a reply from a diff page. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 09:15, 27 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Similar issue: please don't have the tool scroll down after the discussion is closed. There's no option to delete my reply draft at that point, so it scrolls down every time I open the talk page, and then later whenever I open the relevant archive. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:39, 6 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Thebiguglyalien That seems like a bug. I filed T345986, but I'm not sure if this is the same problem as you're seeing, as I could only reproduce it in the mobile version. Can you share some more details about which discussion in particular is exhibiting the problem for you? (In the worst case, the draft will expire after 30 days…) Matma Rex talk 23:33, 9 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Matma Rex, yes, that is the problem that I'm having. It is negligible on desktop in the sense that the "Loading..." disappears quickly, but the problem is that when it's lower in the page, it will scroll me all the way down so I can watch the "Loading..." disappear. It's the mildest of inconveniences, but there's no way to prevent it from my end once the discussion is closed. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:55, 9 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Theleekycauldron I think that might be just you, people can and probably do write replies from diff pages, e.g. after clicking on the diff links from their watchlist (although I can't prove it unless someone volunteers to admit it). By the way, I'm not sure if it fits your workflow, but if you want to see only the diffs on diff pages, you can set "Do not show page content below diffs" in Special:Preferences → Appearance → Diffs (I've used this option for years). Matma Rex talk 23:29, 9 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

...on a hatted conversation (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Is nonce an appropriate edit descriptor?), opening the page (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard) keeps auto-scrolling you down to the section but there is no way to recover or reject the changes. Clearing the cache didn't help. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:34, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Previously reported as T345986. Matma Rex talk 14:42, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]