Hi all. I'm including some thoughts on Echo below. - *it* *doesn't* *scale* (constantly seeing a "(3)" or new emails pop up if you're active in ~6 discussions is a pain) - _nothing_ on-wiki ever warrants an urgent reaction ever - distracting, especially as I'm getting more active with talking - this last point caused me to switch it off entirely everywhere - I'm reading an article to get more information and this piece of software drags me back into editing while I'm merely reading something and intend to return to the watchlist in the evening - Echo a consequence of newcomers being insufficiently communicated to (i.e. too few helpers involved talking with newcomers at big wikis, let's automate that - NO! THAT's STUPID! have it semi-automated -- the entire wiki software should be centered around a big edit box and a less prominent, but comfortable, box for leaving custom messages to articles and users talk pages) - Echo is a consequence of a watchlist page which many people find insufficiently informative, intuitive, or easy to control. - special:watchlist and special:notifications overlap in functionality - the 'notifications' tab lacks a 'watchlist' column so that I can choose where events go (email, echo's nagging, or watchlist passively) - the extra term ('notifications') is clutter - please consider improving usability of the watchlist and integrating any echo fields into it - and make watchlist easier to manage - integrate these two tools together - echo is really conceptually merely a new channel where to pipe watchlist items - simplicity is the key to success svetlana -- (original rant attached for reference) Dunno. I'm pissed by Echo. Hundreds of hours of time wasted looking at a reply at a talk page or at an edit someone thanked me for. Which are not urgent at all. Yet the software notified me of them real-time. Echo is a consequence of newcomers being insufficiently communicated to (i.e. too few helpers involved talking with newcomers at big wikis). Also, a consequence of a watchlist page which many people find insufficiently informative, intuitive, or easy to control. ---- looking at Echo's 'thanks' notifications for a few months before figuring out that it's possible to disable that like I'm reading a page about electrons on-wiki and doing something of interest to me, it pops up with its number [1] I have to go and watch it despite knowing it clearly that _nothing_ on-wiki ever needs an urgent reaction about couple minutes on that daily.. clearly doesn't encourage me to talk more with people if you sum that up, it's a few tens or hundreds of hours of time wasted this year I'm supposed to concentrate and all those notifications are distracting -- I know where I am, I don't need them I became remotely active at mediawiki or meta and started getting these notifications non-stop. Frick off. This doesn't scale. does this explain the source of trouble? :-) ---- well, I ticked off everything 'web', this set it to 0 for now, but I wouldn't like to see it at all since it's bearing no extra information and people who are not sitting in a cave will find that *it* *simply* *doesn't* *scale* anyone active in ~6 discussions will find it a source of nag ---- I wouldn't like it to go forward really -- improve the watchlist instead and make it more useable please :) spending time on a means to thank a user via software, or to ask him a 'mention' at a discussion, doesn't look very productive to me -- this all can be put into watchlist nicely it doesn't need to be an extension, it needs to be an improvement in the core what to do with watchlist -- web notify thru echo, or email, or nothing and just have me peek at it in the evening extra concept 'echo', 'notification' is extra clutter nobody needs it, both these lists should be configurable in one tab of prefs add a 'watchlist' column to the 'notifications' tab -- so that I can tell whether I'd like to see thanks piped over to my watchlist etc I can see simplicity as a path to success reword things a little, name it 'watchlist notifications', make it more flexible and make it pipe things over to a single special page instead of 2 special pages this special page should remain as compact as a watchlist is -- the design of the current 'special:notifications' page is not at all good on a 600x800 screen managing watchlist is hard, fixing that is long overdue I'd _really_ like to see echo and watchlist back together in a simple intuitive system