Hi, this is an update on the work we in the Collaboration team are
doing. Our focus is on cross-wiki notifications and other back-end
improvements to that system.
Our long-term goals are to make various improvements to the Notification system.
Notifications are at the core of many different on-wiki activities.
Making notifications easy to find and use can help those processes. We
are focusing our immediate plans on supporting cross-wiki
notifications. These will help editors stay informed about the changes
they care about on every Wikimedia project on which they work. This is
especially important for the editors who work on more than one wiki.
Examples include if you upload to Commons, curate on Wikidata, or edit
in two or more languages.
The team has spent the last few weeks researching the existing and
proposed features. This has included examining existing tools such as
Crosswatch. We've been considering the problems of:
* technical performance (scaling the requests across 800+ wikis),
* user preferences (both existing and desired),
* user interface design possibilities (how it should work),
* how to release an initial, user-testable version for feedback and
improvement, and
* how to measure the impact of the project (reducing the time it takes
to process a notification).
We are also doing user research via 1-on-1 interviews. In these we ask
active editors about their current notification usage and pain-points.
Using a prototype we are evolving, we get feedback on directions to
take the design.
== Details and further reading ==
You can read more about the technical details at:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Cross-wiki_notifications
.
Some of the new backend improvements to Echo:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107823 ("Rewrite
EchoNotificationFormatter") and linked tasks.
User preference options are:
*
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T117670 ("Define Cross-wiki
Notifications settings")
User interface design possibilities cover several questions. For
example, how should cross-wiki notifications look within the pop-up?
How and when should we add enhancements to the Special:Notifications
page to filter things? We are drafting and discussing these in:
*
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114357 (Clarifications to the
currently confusing "primary/secondary" link, and proposed future
enhancements)
*
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114356 (Bundled notifications)
*
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T115264 (Controlling notification
'volume' based on the type or location)
*
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T115845 (Clearer use of the
notification badges (coloured number in personal toolbar))
*
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T115316 (Better organization of
the Special:Notifications page)
Note: Most of these are not part of the cross-wiki notifications
feature. We won't for sure roll all these out together with the main
change.
We started user research at
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114086
and it continues at
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116741 . (Note:
You can sign-up as a volunteer at
https://wikimedia.org/research .)
A user-testable release is still just in planning. We decided on a
Beta Feature on each wiki as the most scalable and least confusing of
all the do-able options. Read our plans in
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114237 ("Present cross-wiki
notifications as a beta feature to users"). This will help users to
try the feature anytime, disabling it if it interferes with their work
in some context, and easily suggest how the tool could be improved.
There is no system for users having or setting cross-wiki preferences.
Waiting to building this would take a long time. For now, we plan to
let you enable the Beta Feature at each wiki on which you want to test
it. This will let you have a small-scale Beta Feature that you can all
try out. We will be able to discover bugs, edge-cases, iterate more,
and get even more feedback. Later, when we know what features you
need, we can build such a cross-wiki preferences system (including the
task linked above).
Whilst you wait, we would love to hear your feedback on the above.
What comments, what design ideas, and what technical concerns do you
have? Please tell us on the linked tasks if you can.
I'll send further updates, when the planned Beta Feature is about to be ready.
On behalf of the Collaboration team, thank you to everyone who has
given your help already.
--
Nick Wilson / Quiddity