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.
1. 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:
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:
If you experience any issues with either feature, please email us -- or file a bug here on Bugzilla:
2. 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
3. English Wikipedia ReleaseWe 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_5y5sKWdF9xOUZJSGFMN2pTVHhaTEdNa3ltLVE#gid=0
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: