Help talk:Fixing failed pings

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@Fuhghettaboutit: While I understand your reasoning for adding a new section header I believe it makes the process too complicated for the average user. There are two general classes of talk pages. 1) High traffic - you can barely get a comment in without edit conflicts. 2) Everything else. As nearly all talk pages fall into #2 I don't care what it looks like for a minute or two while fixing up mistakes. Other than robots looking for failure to sign a message the odds are next to zero that someone will come along, see the bad version of a talk page message, and act on it.

New users to WP are also more likely to make the sort of syntax errors that result in a failed ping. I'd like to update this article to use a simplified method of fixing a message that does not create a new section and then removes it.

For example, if you made a mistake in the pings or mis-signed a thread comment then:

1. Click edit (using a side edit section link targeting just the thread involved is suggested)
2. Correct your message as needed.
3. Add a blank line at the bottom and then add a paragraph that has just the pings followed by your ~~~~ signature. (suggested edit summary: "fixing ping")
4. Save the edit and then click edit again for the section.
5. Remove the blank line and last paragraph you had added to do the pings. (suggested edit summary: "Completing ping fix")
6. Save that edit

--Marc Kupper|talk 01:00, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Marc Kupper: Done. I have reworked the page to provide both methods, placing the "simpler" method first. Thanks for coming by!--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:49, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The new possibility to ping someone from an edit summary makes it easier to fix a failed ping: Just correct the mistyped username(s) or missing signature (preferably doing this in a section edit, so there will be a section link by the edit summary), and "mention" the intended receiver(s) in the edit summary. If the failed ping wasn't made by you, you may also wish to ping the original pinger in the same summary.

Note: Pinging from the edit summary currently won't cause notifications for successful or failed mentions, see Phabricator:T187264. --Pipetricker (talk) 14:29, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pipetricker, DESiegel reports here that an edit summary mention didn't work for him. Are there any known issues? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:15, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Sdkb, I was the one who added the edit summary method onto the help page. It has been more than 5 months since you made this reply, I apologize as I only saw this message today. First I did a test. To test to see if this method works, I performed a test edit on User talk:PorkchopGMX with no ping, but added links to two of my alt accounts, User:PorkchopGMX872 and User:PorkchopGMX test, in the edit summary. I logged into both of those accounts. Here is what I got when logged in as PorkchopGMX872, and here is what I got when logged in as PorkchopGMX test. As you can see, both accounts were notified. So yes, this form of ping is working. However, as described at the Community Tech page for this type of ping, reverts won’t trigger the edit summary notification, they will just trigger the revert notification instead. On this edit you made with the edit summary pings, you were using Twinkle to revert to a previous version of the page, which is probably why DESiegel wasn’t notified. I hope this helps. Use {{re|PorkchopGMX}} to ping (Push to talk) 15:39, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]