Template talk:Hidden ping

Template-protected edit request on 8 June 2018

There appears to be a leading space which is producing preformatted text in a dashed box :-( I removed the space in a sandbox and the new version works great. See [1] – Lionel^(talk) 07:29, 8 June 2018 (UTC) – Lionel^(talk) 07:29, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:09, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Merge with a visible ping template

I question the validity of this template and propose to merge it with a template that displays the usernames of pinged editors (or to rename it keeping a redirect and to alter it, so that non-substituted uses in main space don't break but simply reveal the names as well). This is not an official discussion yet, just an impression to gauge the opinion of this template's maintainer(s) on why this would be necessary or appropriate. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 20:46, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: Could you give your own reasons on why you think the template should be merged? I just recently discovered this and I was thinking that it could be useful in my homewiki, so I would like to know why you think the hidden ping is a bad idea. -kyykaarme (talk) 10:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Late to the discussion as I just became aware of the existence of this template about five minutes ago. Seems like an excellent tool for stealth canvassing, if that's your thing, which it shouldn't be. The use I saw of it wasn't that, but the potential for abuse seems pretty real. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:10, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Hmm I guess I didn't read the documentation that well, because I didn't realize that the usernames are invisible when the template is used. I thought they'd be visible and just without the links to userpages. I also don't remember anymore why I thought that it would be a useful option to the normal ping. -kyykaarme (talk) 09:16, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Seems to me like quite a bad tool for stealth canvassing. Either you've got to announce "hidden pinging people [for this reason]" and then it's the same kettle of fish as any other pings (someone can look in the edit window to see who you pinged if they want to check potential canvassing) or someone notices—either in the edit window or someone pinged says "how was I pinged by this?"—and it's much clearer that your action was made in bad faith than any other form of canvassing. — Bilorv (talk) 18:38, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

​​​There are two good uses of this template that I can think of. Firstly, it decreases clutter on talkpages when notifying previous participants in a discussion (like in this discussion). (And I do announce "notifying previous participants".) The second is something I do more often: I make a general comment in e.g. a RM discussion that is also a reply to another user's previous comment. I don't want to personalize my own comment, but I want to notify the user I've replied to (see next paragraph).

Although, it ​"seems like an excellent tool for stealth canvassing", editors who know what stealth canvassing likely also know how to view the talkpage source if such canvassing is suspected. Doing this would be far less work than investigating other methods of stealth canvassing. —  AjaxSmack  15:58, 3 May 2022 (UTC)