Hi guys,
Thanks so much for your kind words -- and kudos to everyone who helped with this release!
Reports so far seem quite favorable on both German and Italian sites.
Here's Erica Litrenta's update about the Italian Wikipedia response so far:
"Everything looks quiet after all, there's one user who does not manage to see properly the top part of the page on mobile, but he'll report about this later, he said. A WM IT board member espressed concern over the visibility of messages in talk page now that the big bar is gone. Someone provided the code/gadget option to still have a sort of big orange bar, so nostalgic people will be fine. "
Here's Denis Barthel's update about the German Wikipedia response so far:
"Echo is explored and played around with by the community since this afternoon and receives an interested and slightly benevolent response. … “Thanks” of course causes some surprising reminders that “Wikipedia is not Facebook” and the fact that one receives notifications when bots mention your name is found a bit irritating, but no one is really upset or hostile and the moanings dwindle through the exploration of Echo’s configurational possibilities.
Some community members really appreciate the possibility of saying thanks and obviously hope, that it could give Wikipedia a more positive turn in general. I have to admit, that I personally think so too. Thanks for the deployment from me to all of you who took care of it."
And here's se4598's report from a German Wikipedia community volunteer's perspective:
"Some discussions about pinging on our vandalism-report page by bots, which are now blacklisted, but also post on user pages. Discussions about the public! Thanks-log. Question, about a information that echo is (in a reduced function) also for anons. Mostly the responses are positive, also about Thanks."
Lastly, Tilman Bayer just shared this link to this positive media coverage about Thanks from Heise Online: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Danke-statt-Like-Wikipedia-wird-sozia... (the writer, Torsten Kleinz, has been covering Wikipedia frequently for about a decade)
I am delighted to hear that overall response is favorable and that there are no serious issues from our German or Italian communities. I am particularly happy to hear the favorable responses about Thanks, which a number of German and Italian users had told us would not be well received.
Most importantly, I am glad that our careful approach with the pre-announcement and advance outreach to address community concerns seems to be working. It's processes like these that can build stronger relations across our movement.
Thanks to everyone for your good updates, which are much appreciated!
Last but not least, many thanks to Dario for somehow finding the time in his busy schedule to whip out some dashboards to track notifications on both sites. Way to go, DarTar!
Onward!
Fabrice
On Nov 21, 2013, at 11:33 AM, Dario Taraborelli wrote:
I added echo dashboards for itwiki and dewiki here:
http://ee-dashboard.wmflabs.org/dashboards/dewiki-features http://ee-dashboard.wmflabs.org/dashboards/itwiki-features
Dario
On Nov 21, 2013, at 2:37 AM, Nicole Ebber nicole.ebber@wikimedia.de wrote:
Thanks, Fabrice and everyone else involved, for your work!
I have already tested thanking people and being thanked – it's fantastic.
Cheers from Berlin, Nicole
On 21 November 2013 07:11, Vishnu T visdaviva@gmail.com wrote:
Great news!
Congratulations to everyone who were behind this.
Cheers from India. Vishnu
On Nov 20, 2013, at 8:47 PM, Steven Walling wrote:
This is wonderful news. Many thanks to all who made it happen.
-- Steven Walling, Product Manager https://wikimediafoundation.org/
On 21 November 2013 06:46, Fabrice Florin fflorin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi folks,
I'm happy to report that we just released Notifications on the German and Italian Wikipedias today!
This is an important milestone for all of us, because it marks the successful completion of Echo's first release, now that Notifications have been deployed on over 800 different sites worldwide. (1)
This final release on German and Italian wikis was pushed back so that their communities could discuss and better prepare for this new tool. They now have both Echo and Thanks extensions enabled -- and development has started for a special FlaggedRevs notification, which will give more positive feedback for user contributions on the German Wikipedia.
If you are active in either community, we invite you to check that Notifications work for you (be sure to enable all notifications in your preferences before you test). We also encourage you to participate in the discussions on these sites, if you are fluent in German or Italian. (2) (3)
I would like to give special thanks to Denis Barthel, Jan Eissfeldt and Erica Litrenta for spearheading this final outreach, as well as to community members se4598, TMg and Nemo -- and to developers Benny Situ, Kunal Mehta and Bartosz Dziewoński for all your fine work in improving this tool and bringing it to your communities!
Going forward, any new features or notifications will be developed by the teams and communities that need them. We are really happy to have provided this much-needed platform for supporting more productive collaborations on our sites.
It's been a true pleasure working with each of you on this project. I look forward to seeing it grow over time, as I switch my focus to developing new multimedia tools (4) for our users. :)
Regards as ever,
Fabrice
(1) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo/Release_Plan_2013
(2) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilfe_Diskussion:Echo
(3) https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussioni_Wikipedia:Notifiche
(4) http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia
Fabrice Florin Product Manager Wikimedia Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
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