User:Andrewa/Unwanted notifications

In that all pages belong to the whole project, any user may edit this one. But it's generally more helpful (and polite) to discuss the proposed change on its talk page first.

Archived discussions

• Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 55#Unwanted notifications from foreign-language editions fo wikipedia an early unanswered request, 23 May 2017
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 162#Local accounts attached without a visit (and welcomed without an edit) 07:26, 13 December 2017
• Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 57#Rogue bot or what on other language wikipedias I raise it and get some unsatisfactory responses, 19:19, 13 December 2017

Examples

• q:it:Discussioni utente:Andrewa ... User talk page created and welcome message issued (ridiculously) in Italian Wikiquote for a user who has never edited there, and notification thereby (validly) generated and received on English Wikipedia by a user who speaks absolutely no Italian. A welcome email (also in Italian) was also received.
  • However the user page q:it:utente:Andrewa which at first glance appears to exist bears a footnote in Italian that translates What you see on this page has been copied from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Andrewa which is accurate, and there is no edit or page history tab, only ones that translate See on meta.wikimedia.org and Add local description, with the former linking to the valid page at meta and the latter to the create page dialogue. So it's not all bad.
  • This edit then triggered yet another notification from it.wikiquote You just made your first edit. Which is true. But it's mostly still bad.

Workarounds

These may save you from spending time reinventing the wheel. They don't completely address the problems but may allow you to prevent some misunderstandings.

Helpful

Meta:User:Andrewa/global.js is a copy of a section of Meta:User:Whatamidoing_(WMF)/global.js, and uses Javascript to set the language of the buttons and dialogues I receive in a strange language wiki to English. This allows me to at least check article histories, list my own contributions (mostly to verify that there aren't any) etc..

meta:user:andrewa displays on wikis I have never edited, and warns others of this fact. Interwiki Wikilinks don't in general work there (they do on the meta page but not when the page is copied) but the URL link to my talk page does.

Meta:Special:CentralAuth allows you to list the WMF wikis on which the software has (rightly or wrongly) detected your activity (or anyone else's). Useful for testing whether the above is working for you.

Under investigation

Meta:Special:Preferences should enable users to at least set the language of the buttons and dialogues they receive in a strange language wiki, without needing to set up a Javascript page, but the Display settings link there doesn't seem to work.