Hi.
Next week's software update will include the first steps of some significant updates to the notifications (Echo) system. We need your feedback, to plan the next steps.
There's going to be a change to the icon that opens the flyout, (the list of items etc). There will be two icons: one for alerts and one for messages.[1] You can see an example at [2]. The first flyout ("alerts") will still contain most of the notifications. The second flyout ("messages") will contain notifications about your new usertalk-page messages (and flow messages on the wikis that are using it).
This change is based on long-term feedback, that editors would like a clearer indication than just a "red number", of what type of notification is waiting for them. (See phab:T58476 and linked tasks[3].) A number of options were suggested, and this is the first step towards that.
We'd appreciate further feedback on this change: What other notification types should be moved into the "messages" section? The list of existing notification types includes: usertalk messages, thanks, mentions, page-links, page-reviews, edit-reverts, system messages. There are more types being discussed.
Please help us work towards improvements, by discussing at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Sobaaiky57zs7py7.
Side-note: Work has also begun on cross-wiki notifications (phab:T67661[4]).
Much thanks, Quiddity
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108190 [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Echo_notifications_split_icons.png [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T58476 [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T67661