Extension talk:Thanks

Early thoughts

My early thoughts:

• rate-limiting from the start seems smart as this feature seems like it might be easy to mis-use or abuse;
• extra care needs to be taken when dealing with revision IDs, as the user can sometimes not exist (if revision deletion/suppression was employed); and
• without any log of who's been thanked for a particular edit, it seems like some users may accidentally thank users multiple times for a particular edit.

Other than these minor points, the extension looks pretty good. I'm a little worried about UI clutter (we'll end up with edit/undo/thanks), but that's probably not a big deal. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:51, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

On the logging issue... I'm pretty sure that's by design actually. To avoid turning this in to a Like button, thanks are supposed to private user-user messaging. You'll of course see immediately whether you've already thanked the person, and can't do so twice. But getting a dozen unique thank yous for one edit doesn't sound like such a bad case... ;) On the clutter issue: in the initial idea phase I sent Fabrice et al screenshots of what it might look like to add an extra button for Twinkle/Monobook users, which I think is a common case where the clutter might be very bad. We should continue to think about ways to avoid that for users of power tools like TW, but I'm not sure what the solution is. The obvious one is to just turn it off for people with TW, but I hate to propose that considering how popular it is. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:35, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

"You'll of course see immediately whether you've already thanked the person, and can't do so twice." Hmm. I am sure I send 2 thanks to Kaldari (for the same edit, 1 from history, 1 from diff) but I don't see anything, no log, no contribution, not even a post-edit confirmation, nothing. And I can "thank" him for the same edit in the history again ...? Fishing for thanks, is he ;-) --Atlasowa (talk) 18:16, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

That would seem to be a bug, where the view on one is not updating after you thanked him for the same revision already. Let me ping Kaldari and see what he thinks. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:07, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

bug 46820 filed. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:06, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I now see [thanked] in the history and diff, after thanking. But I see no edit confirmation and i have no idea what i send or did, and i can't thank myself to see the effect/result of my "thanks".

See also bug 46690 and bug 47658. --Atlasowa (talk) 12:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

1 click to accept or reject pending change in the diff. When rejecting you can give an edit summary explanation, but not when accepting the good edit. How about an option for a quick "thanks" when accepting a good edit?

Please keep in mind, that this Thanks-Extension will be very, very useful and important for Wikis with flagged revisions like deWP (and ruWP, arWP, plWP, trWp ...).

Let me explain why: Currently with flagged revisions, the edits of newbies and IP-editors are hidden by standard, until reviewed by another "reviewer" Wikipedian (which is a bit frustrating by itself, BTW). The newbies/IPs don't get notified when their edit is accepted, and it is technically impossible for the reviewer to make an edit comment (like "thanks for the reference") when accepting the edit. So there is really NO positive feedback unless a reviewer writes manually on the new users discussion page or leaves a template (and there is far less huggling, templating etc. on deWP!). On the other side, if the newbie/IP edit is "rejected" or "reverted", the experienced Wikipedian should give a reason in the edit comment ("vandalism", "unsourced accusation", "not NPOV"), which is: negative feedback. So as a result, flagged revisions systematically produces negative feedback, but no positive feedback for newbie editors. That's why this Thanks-Extension will be very beneficial and important, by encouraging positive feedback for newbie editors. It would be even better, if the "thanks" would also include a note "Your edit is now reviewed and live/visible on Wikipedia", which could be added if "thanks" are send from the flagged revision diff (see diff screenshot). For example, options in the diff:

accept edit accept edit + thanks reject edit

instead of just:

Currently: "accept" or "reject edit". Rejecting asks for confirmation and edit comment

This is what the version history of articles on german WP looks like (see live example for yourself):

Article history in german WP, in red: Rollback without comment ("kommentarlos zurücksetzen" this can be for multiple versions); in green: revert with comment ("Rückgängig"). In small type is the flagging/review status: reviewed automatically by autoreviewer ("[automatisch gesichtet]") or reviewed by user:X ("[gesichtet von X]") or review pending ("[Markierung ausstehend]") if the edit has not yet been reviewed (not shown here)

A lot of buttons, most are destructive. Only the small type "[Markierung ausstehend]" (and the diff-link/"Vorherige") leads me to the diff where i can accept the unreviewed edit by the newbie editor (screenshot above), but cannot comment.

BTW, on a side note: "[Markierung ausstehend]" is really incomprehensible (for a german native speaker!), it should be "ungesichtet" or "noch ungesichtet" ("unreviewed" or "not yet reviewed") but it says something like "marking pending" or "mark to be made". It's a badly worded left over from 2009, when a phase 2 of flagged revisions was considered but never implemented (and probably never will be). Unfortunately, these imcomprehensible words are what a newbie/IP editor will find in the version history, if he investigates what happened to his edit (not yet reviewed).

To summarize:

1) This Thanks-Extension will be very useful and important for Wikis with flagged revisions, to counterbalance negative feedback.

2) Flagged revisions is messy and clutters the UI already, a Thanks-Extension should be integrated carefully, at best cleaning up old left overs ("[Markierung ausstehend]") and the workflow. Talk to the german WP, it's the biggest project with flagged revisions:

• de:Special:ValidationStatistics: 13.358 users with Reviewer rights
• ru:Special:ValidationStatistics: 1.462 users with Reviewer rights
• pl:Special:ValidationStatistics: 2.625 users with Reviewer rights
• ar:Special:ValidationStatistics: 536 users with Reviewer rights
• en:Special:ValidationStatistics, enabled on 447 articles only: 5.831 users with Reviewer rights.

3) Concentrate on thanks for new users. Old editors are wary of changes, sceptical of semi-automatic messages, and they have motivated themselves without this "thanks"-appreciation so far. Sudden Thanks-bombing may be as unpopular as wikilovebombing, let it start with newbies.

4) "Thanks" needs some sort of edit confirmation. --Atlasowa (talk) 12:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Notification of "thanks" with a heart icon like WikiLove? hm.

5) Do not use the heart symbol. It's too similar to WikiLove and too girlish. Let's have our own sign for "hey, good contribution, thanks!" Something that is short and can be typed (like "+1") Maybe a "plus star in brackets" like this: [+*] , as a designed icon [ ] or [ ] ? Maybe have Wikipedians contribute ideas, as in the Wikivoyage 2012 logo drive? --Atlasowa (talk) 12:50, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Similar idea, kind of

user:leyo and me have been thinking about a similar idea, "wikithanks" for IPs and newbies (especially for pending changes on deWP). You can read a little bit about the rationale on meta:Talk:Flagged_Revisions (at the end) and the proposed ideas here (german, sorry, I hope you can manage with googletranslate). The idea was to use a modified "WikiLove", based on an older WikiDank-template (sadly almost out of use), without echo. Let me know what you think? --Atlasowa (talk) 18:16, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Error Message

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

Thanks 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?

Icon screenshots update needed

@Fabrice Florin: Hi. We need updates for these 2 images

• commons:File:Notifications-Flyout-Screenshot-Thanks-Closeup-04-30-2013-1.png
• commons:File:Notifications-Thanks-Heart-Icon.png

which are used at

• w:Wikipedia:Notifications/Thanks
• Extension:Thanks

Thanks. :) Quiddity (talk) 18:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks compared to the Like button; allowing users to accompany thanks with an explanatory comment; etc.

Usually when I thank someone using this extension, I end up leaving a message on the user talk page anyway explaining exactly why I found their edit helpful. I would prefer that it give me the opportunity to accompany my thanks with a brief comment (e.g. 255 characters or less, so it could fit in logging.log_comment). I filed this as bugzilla:56373.

I also think it would be good to show how many people have given thanks for a particular edit. When you hover over it, it should show you what their comments were. I don't see a problem with it becoming like a Like button or Facebook comments, as long as it stays on the topic of expressing appreciation for the edit.

Actually, it's good for other users to see what people are giving thanks for, so they can know what behavior is useful to others, and emulate it. It serves much the same purpose as barnstars, except it's lower-key and less work. (I don't necessarily want to hand out, or receive, a new barnstar for every useful edit; it kinda cheapens the award and clutters up the place. Barnstars are more for a particularly useful contribution or for a pattern of useful behavior.) Leucosticte (talk) 12:12, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki version?

Is 1.22 actually needed for this extension to run? I installed it on 1.21.3, all fine no errors and Special:Version shows the extension in place, Echo was already working well on this install, but I don't see any "Thank" link in the recent changes :( --Steko (talk) 22:00, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Same here. According to Extension_talk:Echo#Does_not_work_with_1.22_36451, Echo now works with MediaWiki 1.22 though (haven't tried it myself).--Naersjoen (talk) 15:41, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

admin option

Is it possible to have an option for admins to thank a group of users? for example new users which made their first article (we can check if the article has interwiki+wikify+category+subsection+references it could be thanked)Yamaha5 (talk) 06:49, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

can't thank on fully protected pages

This is such a minor thing that I don't want to even bother bugzillaing it, but it's impossible for a non-sysop to thank someone for an edit made to a fully protected page. There are situations where this would be desired (such as when someone steps in and fully protects a ridiculous editwar and adds protection templates,) so if it's trivial to fix, it may be worth fixing eventually. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

This is worth filing a bug about. You should be able to do that. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:19, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Including an example. I just tried at en:Main Page and the "thank" button worked fine. –Quiddity (talk) 19:02, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the slow reply, I don't check mediawiki.org all too often. I'll put a bugzilla up about it tomorrow with reproducible steps, although Tucoxn has the example this came from posted here. (I had my girlfriend try it with her non-sysop account, and she ran in to the same issue.) Would put it up today, but I'm swamped with edu stuff. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:36, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

@Kevin Gorman: works for me, it seems. Can you give a diff where it wouldn't work? πr² (t • c) 18:50, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

IPs

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T63022

Why can't I thank IPs? ~ DanielTom (talk) 22:26, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

bugzilla:61022. πr² (t • c) 18:48, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that this is an important feature in order to motivate IP users to continue contributing. How much longer do we have to wait for it? --Leyo 23:21, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Dependency Errors

On both my 1.23.0 and brand new 1.23.3 installs Echo is missing mediawiki.ui.anchor, and Thanks is missing jquery.confirmable and seems to ignore my $wgThanksConfirmationRequired = false; setting. it all seems to work ok if I comment out these two dependencies --Fbstj (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

jquery.confirmable is new to MediaWiki 1.24; the version of this extension for MediaWiki 1.23 should not require it. I think you may have downloaded the development version by accident. wctaiwan (talk) 06:47, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Yeah I didn't quite grasp how to pair up using the branches from the git repository with my version of medaiwiki. I've fixed it now, so thanks for your comment :D --Fbstj (talk) 09:16, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Full page thanks

How hard would it be to add to this a 'thanks' button on the article view which when clicked thanks all people involved in the current version of the article. So like a link/button on the left of the title, or replacing the watch star, which when clicked generates a blame of the current page and then thanks each of the most recent revisions of anyone in that blame?

I want this to encourage user-interaction, if there is a 'like' button then the people that edit the page are more likely to come back knowing their edits are appreciated by so many readers --Fbstj (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Possibility for an IP to thank an user

Why not ? --92.156.98.207 14:07, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, I think the opposite is more important (see #IPs). --Leyo 13:08, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Just wondering if I could re-use it

Would it be possible to mod this extension so that admins can privately give warnings to users for bad edits? Krett12 (talk) 14:59, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank for logs

Is it possible to implement a Thanks button for log actions? --Freddy2001 (talk) 15:39, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for creating the page?

I'm missing this link in the very first Dif for creating the page. It should be easier to thank somebody for the courageous act of creating a new page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Manorainjan (talk • contribs) 24 July 2016

How about an optional text message (probably with an upper limit) too while `Thank`-ing ?

I just feel that we should have a personal message option too with the 'thank feature'. When the user clicks on the 'Thank' button, it should show up an optional input box to send a message too to the 'thank'-ed user. Thoughts ? 01tonythomas (talk) 05:57, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Limit

It needs configurable limits. It is abused on some (Wikimedia) wikis by LTA users. --wargo (talk) 19:01, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

I see the standard pinglimiter is in place, so $wgRateLimits applies. If the rate limits fail, that's a bug. --Nemo 20:06, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Error: thank action failed

I installed Thanks and Echo and ran the DB update, but when I try to thank someone I get the error:

 Thank action failed (error code: http). Please try again. 

I wasn't able to find anything online on this error, /var/log/httpd/error_log doesn't have anything, anyone know how I might be able to troubleshoot? My site is using SSL with Let's Encrypt. Also if I need to go to the helpdesk instead of here please let me know. Thanks! Djkcel (talk) 13:31, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Undo/revert thanks

I can find no way to take back/revert/undo a "thanks" that was clicked by accident. Random (and unintentional) acts of kindness are all well and good, but there needs to be an option to undo.

If there is a way to undo, I would appreciate someone telling me how. I am unable to find anything in the documentation and going to the Special:Log/thanks of the page in question just lets me edit the tags, but not remove the thanks.

--Hgkuper (talk) 12:15, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

There is a related task, so it was discussed in Phabricator, but it is not yet implemented. FellTiger (talk) 20:38, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T71636

Error while thanking a user for an edit.

I installed Extension:Thanks , but when I tried to thank a user in my wiki for a rivison to an article, this error appeared-->

[ab483df2c97b19cad31449d4] /wiki/index.php/Special:Thanks/140 TypeError from line 1223 of C:\wamp64\www\wiki\extensions\Echo\includes\DiscussionParser.php: Argument 1 passed to EchoDiscussionParser::getEditExcerpt() must be an instance of MediaWiki\Revision\RevisionRecord, instance of Revision given, called in C:\wamp64\www\wiki\extensions\Thanks\includes\ApiCoreThank.php on line 50

Backtrace:

1. 0 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\extensions\Thanks\includes\ApiCoreThank.php(50): EchoDiscussionParser::getEditExcerpt(Revision, LanguageEn)
2. 1 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\api\ApiMain.php(1570): ApiCoreThank->execute()
3. 2 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\api\ApiMain.php(500): ApiMain->executeAction()
4. 3 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\extensions\Thanks\includes\SpecialThanks.php(166): ApiMain->execute()
5. 4 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\htmlform\HTMLForm.php(665): SpecialThanks->onSubmit(array, OOUIHTMLForm)
6. 5 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\htmlform\HTMLForm.php(557): HTMLForm->trySubmit()
7. 6 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\htmlform\HTMLForm.php(572): HTMLForm->tryAuthorizedSubmit()
8. 7 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\specialpage\FormSpecialPage.php(184): HTMLForm->show()
9. 8 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\specialpage\SpecialPage.php(569): FormSpecialPage->execute(string)
10. 9 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\specialpage\SpecialPageFactory.php(568): SpecialPage->run(string)
11. 10 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\MediaWiki.php(288): MediaWiki\Special\SpecialPageFactory->executePath(Title, RequestContext)
12. 11 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\MediaWiki.php(860): MediaWiki->performRequest()
13. 12 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\includes\MediaWiki.php(517): MediaWiki->main()
14. 13 C:\wamp64\www\wiki\index.php(42): MediaWiki->run()
15. 14 {main}

--Falcopragati (talk) 10:43, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks publicly visible when logging disabled?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257251

Is it possible to retrieve information about thanking when logging is disabled? FellTiger (talk) 10:52, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

The function to count Thanks.

Please add a function to count Thanks.

--UEDAMI (talk) 13:10, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Need this feature too, thank you! Gokouruki (talk) 14:24, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks！I'm waiting in anticipation.--UEDAMI (talk) 10:48, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Is it likely that this feature will be added much later? --UEDAMI (talk) 12:13, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Add tags to identify thanks sent by users on the Android app

I am working on apps-android-commons issue #3560. This issue is to denote thanks that came from the Android app in the thanks log using tags or a note on the log entry. The mobile site implements this by adding tags to thanks sent from it, but I think it hits a different endpoint than the one the Android app does. Is there an existing endpoint that I can use to accomplish the same thing from the Android app? --Rebeccachild (talk) 9:35, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Please add a thanks button to recent changes log

Would love to send thanks from recent changes instead of having to go into the dif. Especially for page creations. Sunmarsh (talk) 16:31, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90404 Ammarpad (talk) 05:41, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

How a thanks log with edits/actions thanked for could look like

As described on the page, the thanks log only records who thanked who at what time, not what was thanked for. If there was an option for wiki masters to enable logging which edit, log entry, or flow post was thanked for, it could look like this:

• 08:12, 17 December 2024 Example1 thanked Example2 for edit 123456 on Example page.
• 08:11, 17 December 2024 Example1 thanked Example2 for logged action 123456.

The former entry would not only be shown on Special:Log?user=Example1 and Special:Log?page=User:Example2, but preferrably also on Special:Log?page=Example_page.

This is no proposal, just food for thought on a feature our school's intranet MediaWiki could make use of.

Weserbürger (talk) 01:31, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Idea: Tips from Thanks

Let's say I could set my monthly budget for $10 per month. Then perhaps I could divide those funds among those who I've thanked most for that month, on a proportional or semi-proportional basis. (semi-proportional could create a curve whereby the folks at the bottom of the curve get more than proportional, and very-thanked people get a little bit less than proportional, to redistribute funds downwardly to less pervasive editors who nonetheless are still important to the project.

Thoughts? Mapmaker345 (talk) 15:05, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks disappear after a while from the revision history

Hello, thank you for this great extension! I've been using it for some years now on my wikis. The extension works: the editor I thank gets a notification and the thanks are logged in Special:Log/thanks. However, after a while, "thanked" disappears from the revision history, and instead it shows the "thank" link as if I would never have thanked. I don't have this issue on Wikimedia wikis. Can this be a cookie-related problem? Any help is more than appreciated! Thanks, cheers and all the best! Till Kraemer (talk) 16:09, 18 January 2024 (UTC)