Hi design folks,
2013/6/21 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org
In case you haven't seen, User:Rillke on Commons has implemented a (default-on!) gadget that makes it possible to subscribe to notifications of different types, e.g. policy changes, new features, etc. These are shown as watchlist banners and upon login.
Here's a screenshot of the "subscription" interface: http://i.imgur.com/gdImENz.png
IMO that type of gadget lends supports to the notion of shooting for a subscription model to be ultimately integrated with Echo so that users can get standard read-once notifications about things they care about while keeping the core UI clutter-free.
Following up on this : the documentation is at [1]
On top of the topic feature mentioned by Erik, Rillke's watchlist notices are loaded with other cool features, like built-in i18n, scheduling, geotargeting (!), filtering per usergroup/browser/OS/language
And Rillke put together a kick-ass wizard to create such notices [2] - the best way to walk into the above mentioned features.
(and the wizard itself is i18n using the Translate extension ^__^)
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Watchlist_messages [2] < https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Watchlist_messages/Wiza...
Hope that helps,