Template:Reply to/doc

In talk pages, allows alerting a local user by inserting a wikilink to his user page on this wiki, so that the user will be alerted by a notification when he visits this wiki.

This template is used to link one or more users' names, in the form "@Username:", to trigger a notification for user(s) you are replying to in a discussion. The notification will work successfully only if you sign your post in the same edit in which you use this template. If you make a mistake in placing this template or in signing, see w:Help:Fixing failed pings. It works on any talk page or Wiki namespace page.

You cannot directly type the "@" symbol to notify a user of your reply, you must use this template or manually create a wikilink to their user page (e.g. using the {{U}} template for convenience).
The "@" symbol is used by this template for display purposes only.

This template is particularly helpful in discussions that are not threaded, to indicate which user's comment is referenced. IP addresses are only notified if you post to their user talk page.

Usage

{{reply to|Username}} Message text. ~~~~

The edit that adds this template must meet the following requirement for notifications to work:

• The edit must add new lines of text, not just edit existing lines.
• The edit must be signed by adding ~~~~ to the end of the message.
  • If you have specified a custom signature, it must contain a plain wiki link ([[ ]]) to your user page, user talk page, or contributions page; it cannot be embedded in a template.
• The edit must either be entirely within an existing sections (it cannot have new section headers in the middle) or start a new section (starts with a new section header).
  • Only sections of level 2 and above count.
• If the number of detected to-be-pinged users exceeds 50, no notifications will be delivered.

See w:Wikipedia:Notifications and mw:Help:Echo#Technical details for more information.

It is not necessary to use this template to ping the user if you are already linking to the username from your post, neither is it necessary when posting on their own talk page.

Note: The OpenStreetMap Wiki does not support using the at sign in a reply to notify the user you are replying to, as many discussion boards do. While this wiki shows the results of using this template with an at sign, you must either use a template or directly link to the user's user page (e.g. [[User:Example|@Example]]) to ping them.

@Username Message text. ~~~~ DOES NOT WORK

See also

• {{@}}, aka {{No spam}} — to insert email addresses without insert text which is too easily parsable by content indexing bots, and then harvested by spambots.