Open questions:
- Where do we store subscriptions?
- Do we need to prepare for features like expiring subscriptions?
Expecting to have:
- Database table to store subscriptions
- Service to manage and query subscriptions
- One notification type
Description
Description
Details
Details
Customize query in gerrit
Event Timeline
Comment Actions
The version 0.1 for this feature, we are planning to notify watchers when a message is added or removed from a group that they are tracking via Echo notification. The feature will initially be enabled on translatewiki.net.
Database design
Table name: translate_message_group_subscriptions
Columns:
- tmgs_group - VARBINARY(200) NOT NULL
- tmgs_user_id - INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL
- tmgs_subscribed_on - VARBINARY(14) NOT NULL
Primary key: Composite primary key: tmgs_group, tmgs_user_id
Service
We will add a new MessageGroupSubscriptionService that will provide the following functionality:
- Save subscription for user
- Remove subscription for user
- Remove all subscription for user
- Fetch all subscription for a user
- Check if user is subscribed to a group
- Get all subscribers for a group
- Remove all subscriptions for a group
- To be used when a group is deleted
All or most of these functionalities will be available via an API that the front end will interface.
Implementation details for v0.1
The MessageIndex can be used to determine if a new message has been added under a group. When this happens, one job per group can be dropped in the queue that has information about all the messages that were added or removed.
Comment Actions
What will this be used for? I see little value in being able to know when the user subscribed to the given group. The watchlist table doesn’t store either the date when the user added the page to the watchlist (the wl_notificationtimestamp column stores something else, and it’s necessary for the “updated since your last visit” markers and the notification emails to work).
- Remove all subscriptions for a group
- To be used when a group is deleted
I hope a notification will be sent if a subscribed group is deleted, won’t it?
Comment Actions
I have updated the title to better match the updated scope for this task. The front-end/back-end split wasn't the best way to split it.
The goal is just to create minimum implementation so that we can store subscriptions, manipulate them manually using the service and send a notification (preferably automatically, but manually triggered is okay too).
On top of this we can build an UI and more features in further tasks based on designs and user feedback.
Comment Actions
Change 986865 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Add table to store user message group subscriptions
Comment Actions
Change 986866 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Tux: Display button to subscribe to message group
Comment Actions
Change 986867 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Add API to allow users to subscribe to message groups
Comment Actions
Change 986868 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Tux: Allow users to unsubscribe from message groups
Comment Actions
Change 991475 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Add TranslateEnableMessageGroupSubscription configuration
Comment Actions
Change 991530 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Do not allow users to watch dynamic message groups
Comment Actions
Change 991737 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Create base to send notifications when messages are added / removed
Comment Actions
Change 1007472 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] WIP: Add echo notification for message group subscription
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1007472
Comment Actions
I'm wondering how best to structure the notifications sent to the user.
Currently the plan is to send each user subscribed to a message group, a notification whenever a change is made to the message group.
The problem with this approach is that this might result in large volume of notifications to be sent out. For example, when translatewiki imports messages from repositories, there might be multiple message groups that may have changes. If a user is subscribed to one or more of these groups they would get one notification for each group that's been updated.
I'm thinking of mitigating this problem by looking at bundling the notifications as described here: T114356: Notifications panel: Easily explore bundled notifications
Following this scenario the notification message would look something like this:
OpenStreetMaps was updated: 3 new messages, 0 old messages.
Clicking on the notification would redirect the user to Special:Translate with OpenStreetMaps selected.
An alternate approach would be to send one notification to the user for all the groups that they are subscribed to.
This notification message in this case would look something like this:
The messages in the following projects were updated: OpenStreetMaps, Kiwix and Wikidata Locator.
Clicking on this could redirect the user to Special:Translate with Recent additions selected.
The drawback of this approach is that finer details are lost.
I'm leaning towards the first approach including the bundling of the notifications so that it's not too noisy.
Comment Actions
I would also lean on notification bundling (or deduplication) as the preferred approach. I would also suggest to start just with "Group XYZ has new things to translate" without bundling or additional info to get this feature out for testing and do the improvements as follow-ups.
Comment Actions
A drawback of bundling is that it doesn’t happen when the notifications are delivered by email. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to get separate emails about separate groups, though (it can help e.g. if one uses emails as a todo list or uses filters to put mails about different message groups in different folders).
Comment Actions
Change 1011445 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] MessageGroupSubscription: Add logging
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1011445
Comment Actions
Users can watch message groups. In the first release of this feature, user will receive notifications whenever there are new or deleted messages in the message groups that they are watching.
Some screenshots from my desktop machine:
Watching a message group from Special:Translate
Bundled design notification
Notification on the Special:Notifications page
Comment Actions
Change #1007472 abandoned by Abijeet Patro:
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Add Echo notification to be sent on messages addition or removal
Reason:
Squashed with I7a9246dce8fe8386abac8b7840a546627957c639
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1007472
Comment Actions
Change #986865 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Add table to store user message group subscriptions
Comment Actions
Change #986866 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Tux: Display button to subscribe to message group
Comment Actions
Change #986867 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Add API to allow users to subscribe to message groups
Comment Actions
Change #986868 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Tux: Allow users to unsubscribe from message groups
Comment Actions
Change #991475 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Add TranslateEnableMessageGroupSubscription configuration
Comment Actions
Change #991530 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Do not allow users to watch dynamic message groups
Comment Actions
Change #1021508 had a related patch set uploaded (by Abijeet Patro; author: Abijeet Patro):
[translatewiki@master] Enable message group subscriptions
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1021508
Comment Actions
Change #991737 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] Send notification for message groups when a message is added/removed
Comment Actions
Change #1011445 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/Translate@master] MessageGroupSubscription: Add logging
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1011445
Comment Actions
Change #1021508 merged by jenkins-bot:
[translatewiki@master] Enable message group subscriptions
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1021508
Comment Actions
The feature is enabled on translatewiki.net to gather feedback. Feedback can be provided here, or on the support page on translatewiki.net
Leaving this task open for a couple of more days to gather feedback or to report any issues that users might find.
Comment Actions
A few days may not be enough, since in order to test this, notifications need to actually arrive.
Comment Actions
They have already started to arrive, right? What this task intended to do is in place, and I'll create follow up tasks for any improvements suggested or bugs found under the parent task.
Comment Actions
For those who watched the right message groups. For example, I’ve been watching Translate since Sunday, but I haven’t got a single notification about it yet – Translate development isn’t that quick. (Hopefully I’ll get one when I4d33982b21bf1ba5da33a0d5eeebe4811607f15f is finished and merged.)
Comment Actions
Received notification for Translate. Any other issues found can be filed as separate bug reports.