 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Attempting to fix a failed ping in a later edit by adding your signature or fixing a botched username will not work. Instead, reference the user by adding [[User:Example]] to an edit summary, or use one of the methods described below. |
Pinging another user through the notifications system is done by linking their user page when editing any talk page or page in the Wikipedia namespace, and successfully signing your post, in the same saved edit.
This can be done by copying and pasting the markup from the user's signature, e.g., [[User:Name|Name]], or by placing various templates for this purpose, such as {{U}} which links just the user's name, or, for prefixing "@Username:" before your post, you might use the template {{Reply to}}, commonly placed with its template shortcuts: {{Ping}} or {{Yo}}.
If you forget to sign your post, fail to sign properly (e.g., you accidentally place five tildes instead of the requisite four [~~~~], resulting in only a timestamp), or fail to successfully link the intended pingee's user page in the same edit, they will not receive a ping. Many users try to fix this in the next or a later edit by adding the signature they forgot, fixing their botched signature, or by fixing the user name link. This does not work – because any change must be parsed as an addition of new lines of text, not a change to existing lines.
Therefore, to fix the problem, you will have to add a new line, this time successfully linking the user's user page and signing your post. There are various suggested methods to do so, depending on if the page is high-traffic or not.
If not high-traffic (i.e., there is little chance of having or causing an edit conflict): edit the page → skip a line using a carriage return → add the person's linked username followed by your signature → save the page, and then immediately undo your edit, manually or by a revert from the page history. You might use the following back-to-back edit summaries when doing this operation: 1) Fixing ping; 2) Completing ping fix.
Alternatively, for high-traffic pages subject to edit conflicts: copy and then paste the existing section header below the thread → add the person's linked username followed by your signature below the duplicated section header → save the page → likewise immediately undo your edit. In this way, an edit conflict is unlikely to occur, and when the software informs the user of your mention, it will still link to the correct section of the page because the section header you placed and then removed was identical to the one under which you originally posted.
Instead of repairing the failed in-text ping, an easy workaround, for pinging up to five editors, is to simply mention them in an edit summary while you edit the page involved (by linking to their user page, e.g., User:Example). The edit you invoke to leave such an edit summary can be used to make cosmetic fixes to the botched or missing signature or username mention that resulted in the failed ping (as noted, these repairs will not fix the ping) or to make some other minor change. Be aware that notifications generated using this method will not link the user to the specific section of the page involved, and that you will not be notified as to whether the ping was successful or not.