Help:Notifications/Mention

The Mentions notification is an alert provided by Extension:Echo that occurs when your username is mentioned by someone else, with a link on any talk page (other than yours). This notification is already turned on by default on every Wikimedia user page, if you want to turn off your mention notification, you can do so in your preferences.

How it works

Mentions sends a notification to users mentioned in discussions using the notifications tool (formerly known as Echo) . This feature is often referred to as "pinging" and it works in two ways - It is either a user mentions you, or you mention a user. Note: You cannot mention yourself. Linking to a user's page in a signed message, either directly or through a template, will trigger a mention notification for them. Notifications are only sent to logged-in users, i.e. mentioning anonymous users (IPs) is not possible.

Mentions on a talk page

File:Notifications - Mention on a page - January 2016.png

File:Notifications alert badge - 1 alert.svg ⧼echo-notification-alert-text-only⧽ — Received when someone mentions you on a talk page.

When you are mentioned on a talk page, you will receive an alert with the following information:

Who mentioned you, where, and about what.
Link to the page, or to the message on Flow you are mentioned in.
Link to the user who mentioned you and the diff where you are mentioned.

How to mention another editor and trigger a notification

If you want to mention another editor and trigger this notification for them, you need to:

Link to their username - you can link it directly like in [[User:Username]] or you can use mention templates if they exist on your wiki (many use the {{Ping }} or {{Reply to }} templates).
Sign your comment with ~~~ or ~~~~. Notifications will not be sent if your signature is embedded in a template, or has no link to your user page or user talk page.
Do not alter any text outside of your own comment.
Do not exceed the limit on the number of mentions (50 on Wikimedia's wikis).

Specific and additional technical details are at Manual:Echo .

Mentions in edit summary

File:Notifications - ping from summary - March 2018.png

File:Notifications alert badge - 1 alert.svg ⧼echo-notification-alert-text-only⧽ — Received when someone links to your user page in an edit summary.

When you are mentioned in an edit summary, you will receive an alert with the following information:

Who mentioned you, where, and the edit summary.
Link to the change in question.
Link to the user who mentioned you.

How to mention a user in an edit summary

To mention a user in an edit summary, just link to their user page, using the normal wikitext syntax: [[User:Username]]. All the usual link styles work, like [[User:Username|some text]] or [[User:Username|]]. If you want to leave a link in the summary without notifying a user, prefix the username with :, like this: [[:User:Username]].

Note: No more than 5 users can be mentioned in an edit summary and mention templates don't work in edit summaries.

Failed mentions

File:Notifications - Failed Mention - August 2016.png

File:Notifications alert badge - 1 alert.svg ⧼echo-notification-alert-text-only⧽ — Received when your mention to other user was not sent.

The Mentions notification has certain limitations that will cause an attempt to mention a user to fail. This happens when you try to mention an anonymous user or a user that does not exist, or when you exceed the limit of mentioned users in a a single edit which is 50 on WMF wikis. When any of the above mentioned occurs, you will receive an alert with the following information:

Who you tried to mention, and the reason why mention was not sent.
Link to the page you tried to mention on.

Successful mentions

File:Notifications - Successful Mention - August 2016.png

File:Notifications alert badge - 1 alert.svg ⧼echo-notification-alert-text-only⧽ — Received when your mention has been sent to other user.

You also have the ability to mention any Wikimedia user on a page. When your mention has been sent to other user successfully, you will receive an alert with following information:

Who you mentioned.
Link to the page you mentioned the user on.

Additional notes

A module written in Lua can be used with "mention" templates .
When a user is muted , the muted user will still receive a successful mention notification, if they've enabled that preference.