Hi Sage,
Thanks so much for your kind words and good observations!
See my comments inline below.
Look forward to testing this new tool with you on En-wiki in a couple weeks!
Fabrice
On Mar 26, 2013, at 2:04 PM, Sage Ross wrote:
Very exciting new features!
Here are the first things that jump out:
It'd be nice if the notifications differentiated between editing an existing page and starting a new one. The diff view for a contribution with no previous edit is a little confusing.
Good point, duly noted.
Also, I think it would be good if the email notifications were delayed and aggregated for Echo thanks. Flickr does this nicely with the way they send notif emails about comments on your photos: instead of an email immediately, the system waits a bit, and if there are more comments in short order, you get one email about multiple comments/faves.
Yes, we agree with your general recommendation, even though ours is slightly different than Flickr for this first release.
We now offer two ways to delay notifications:
1) Bundling The 'Bundling' feature will enable users to only receive a single notification instead of many notifications about related events, so they are not overloaded with too much information. Bundling aims to address one of the key challenges for this product: how to make sure that we inform people without spamming them. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications)/Feature_requirements#Bund...
Note that we bundle differently on the web than on email. On the web, notifications are immediately bundled in the flyout. On email, we send the first notification right away, but then wait four hours to send the next 'bundled' notification. This approach could be changed in future releases, based on community feedback, but that's what's going to be deployed in our first release. That said, I like your recommendation to wait a few minutes to send the notification, in case more activity happens right away -- and we will take this recommendation in consideration for the next release :)
2) Email digests. The goal of email digests is to group notifications into daily or weekly updates, so that: • users can get fewer emails sent to them, by getting regular updates instead. • users can get an activity summary of what is happening on the site, even if they don't have time to go there. • Wikipedia can stay in touch with users and engage them remotely, bringing them back to the site more often. • users can select which events to check and take immediate action on the most important ones (HTML only). http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications)/Feature_requirements#Bund...
Note, however, that you cannot test email digests on en-wiki, they only work on prototype: http://ee-prototype.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page
Looking forward to seeing this on en.wiki!
-Sage
On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 4:37 PM, Fabrice Florin fflorin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello everyone,
We just deployed two cool new Echo notifications on MediaWiki.org, for your testing pleasure: • Thanks • User rights
Here are more details on these features, along with a quick project update.
- Today's new features
The Thanks feature lets you send a 'Thank you' notification to users who make constructive edits, to give them positive feedback. To use it, simply click on the 'Thank' link on any article history page (or diff page), for an edit by a logged in user (next to 'Undo'). This sends a private notification to the user who made that edit. We created this simple notification to invite new users to participate more often, by providing them with positive feedback during their first steps on Wikipedia. Currently, new users mostly receive negative responses like edit reversions or confusing template messages -- and this feature aims to reward constructive edits with 'micro-gratitude', to lead new users towards a 'happy path' of productive contributions. Read more about this feature here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements#Thank_you_notificati...
The User rights notification is sent when your user rights have changed -- whether you are being granted a new right, or whether someone removes a user right you used to have. This new feature was requested by power users in the English Wikipedia community, who wanted a way to find out quickly about these important changes to their accounts. (Email me if you would like help to test this feature.) Read more here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements#User_rights
To test Echo and these new features, follow the tips on this testing page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications)/Testing
If you experience any issues with either feature, please email us -- or file a bug here on Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions&...
- Next features
Our next Echo deployment on MediaWiki.org will be this Thursday, March 28th, when we aim to release these features, if all goes well: • 'Get Started' notification (from the E3 team) • Bundling • JobQueue • HTML Email
Learn more on our feature requirements page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Feature_requirements
- English Wikipedia Release
We are aiming for a first limited release on the English Wikipedia in early April, if all goes well. The tentative date right now is the week of April 8th, when Aaron's new version of JobQueue for Redis is expected to be deployed on en-wiki (we hope to test it first on MediaWiki next week).
For Echo's first English Wikipedia release, our main focus will be on supporting new users, who will have both web and email notifications enabled by default. Current users will only have web notifications turned on by default, but will be able to opt-in to get email notifications as well. These goals may be adjusted to reduce the number of users who initially get access to the tool, if needed for technical reasons.
You can track our progress with this first release on this project timeline: https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq_75_5y5sKWdF9...
We'll send another Echo project update next Thursday.In the meantime, let us know what you think of the tool -- either via email on this list, or on this Echo testing talk page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Echo_(Notifications)/Testing
Onward!
Fabrice, Kaldari, Benny, Luke, Vibha and the Echo team
Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Editor Engagement Wikimedia Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
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Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Editor Engagement Wikimedia Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
Donate to keep Wikipedia free: https://donate.wikimedia.org/