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. :)