Sitenotice would be an exaggeration. Google and Facebook and millions of
other sites update their software, probably even more frequently than we
do, and without any big notifications to all users every week.
People who consider themselves capable of testing new features should just
sign up to this mailing list. If the traffic here is too high or the
content too technical, I strongly recommend the wikitech-ambassadords,
which was started precisely with this in mind and is doing the job pretty
well :
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors
My dream scenario would be to do deployments similarly to the way Mozilla
and Google release versions of their browsers - beta and release. Logged-in
users who opt in would be connected to a newer version of MediaWiki that
will be deployed to everybody the following week. Same URL, same account,
same preferences, same content - just different software. Currently with
the beta labs we don't have the same account and the same content, so it's
not as useful for crowd-sourcing the testing.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2013/12/5 Alex Brollo <alex.brollo(a)gmail.com>
Users are very confused and worried any time a new
version of wiki software
is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out.
A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing
the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to
discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are
largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly
visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of
Wikilove.
Alex
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