Hi. There is a serious problem in talk page subscriptions. Large enough to turn off the mechanism for all the users until the fix, probably. I can't create a phab ticket, because there is no way to list reproductions steps. Is this a good place here to describe the problem? Thank you.
Topic on Talk:Talk pages project/Notifications/Flow
Yes, please let us know. What's the problem?
The problem is that the tool ignores Special:TopicSubscriptions. I get notifications for random topics on random pages. For example, if I have page A topic B subscribed, I get all the time notifications for some unsubscribed topics C, D, E, F,... about a new post there, while the posts listed are not from the same topic. For example, for
Topic C new post C1 Topic D new post D1 Topic E new post E1
I get a triple notification about posts C1, D1, E1, all of them in topic D. If I do not mark it as read, and later the page will look like
Topic F new post F1
the notification will be now about posts C1, D1, E1, F1, all of them in topic F. Another example, I all the time get notifications about removed topics, when I am not subscribed for the topic, its page is not in my Watchlist, and the topic was created three days ago, when I opened the page last time three months ago. It looks like all the notifications are send to me instead somebody else, and mine are send to somebody, too. But, for some subscribed topics I get exactly what is expected. The list in Special:TopicSubscriptions looks fine.
Are you having any other problems with your Notifications list? (For example, is the number of notifications frequently wrong, so it says 1 unread message but there are zero?)
Is "unsubscribed topic C" (located on the Page A, posted after the ==B== section) a ==Level 2== or a ===Level 3=== section? What does ?action=info say about lint errors on Page A?
No I didn't see anything like this.
Well, taking one such a page for example. All the topics are level 2 there. There is one missing end tag (i) and 21 obsolete tags.
(Doing this found a bug in Linter itself.)
Can you give specific examples of the affected pages and topics? We haven't heard of this happening to anyone else.
If you don't want to discuss them publicly, please do it in a new "security issue": https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/75/
I can look in the database for your subscriptions and notifications once I know what I'm looking for, and try to figure out what is happening.
This is a page for example: he:wikipedia:דלפק ייעוץ. A lot of topics there.
I've subscribed to the one called "REVISIONMONTH name?" I haven't had a subscription notification at hewiki for about 6 weeks, and never on that page, so it should be pretty obvious if I get notifications for other sections.
I can see why it happens. You can stop receiving these notifications by unsubscribing here: https://he.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=XXX&action=dtunsubscribe&commentname=h-פלוני_שכתב_ללא_חתימה-2000-01-09T22:00:00.000Z (this link might also work for other people experiencing the problem).
This happens because the "unsigned" template תבנית:לא_חתם generates a fake invisible username and timestamp when none is provided (using this sub-template: תבנית:לא_חתם/חותם). This is a clever hack to make reply tool work, but it causes topic subscriptions to get confused, because we track which topic you're subscribed to by the username and timestamp of the oldest comment (see details here: Extension:DiscussionTools/How it works#Tracking topics).
As a result, if you subscribe to any topic where the first comment was signed using that template without providing a username and timestamp, you will be subscribed to every such topic.
I don't see a good way to fix it in our code, but I'll think about it. For now, I suggest removing the feature from the template.
The problem is that this fix is not just for this tool, and removing it will cause more problems. Does it use the substituted transclusion of the wikicode of the signature, or the parsed result?
Your answer might be in Extension:DiscussionTools/How it works.
Thanks, I'll check it out. Meanwhile, I'm continuing to get notifications about archived topics on pages I do not watch and did not open for years. And yesterday I saw somd page first time in my life, with all the topics marked as being watched. The page is not watched, and none of these topics is on Special:TopicSubscriptions.
You can stop receiving these notifications by unsubscribing here: https://he.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=XXX&action=dtunsubscribe&commentname=h-פלוני_שכתב_ללא_חתימה-2000-01-09T22:00:00.000Z (this link might also work for other people experiencing the problem).
Why? It's completely different pages.
Because of a technical decision we made long ago, where we don't check the page on which you subscribed, since that made it easier to keep the notifications working when the topic is moved to a different page.
I see. Very well, thanks. I did this. Let's see in the next few days if it helped and all the problems were solved. I'll be back.
Well, I'm back. It's still very problematic, but the problems come from anonyms indeed. Thank you. I think this topic should be resolved now.