K. Peachey wrote:
People that are interested in the version will more than likely already know about [[Special:Version]], if they want the added onscreen [clutter] presence they could whip up a gadget or something to pull it from the API.
Any wiki wanting to use a site notice to display version information could presumably use the "{{CURRENTVERSION}}" magic word inside the page "MediaWiki:Sitenotice", of course. But I doubt many wiki communities really want this.
Version numbers, particularly with MediaWiki extensions, hot fixes, and Git branches, can be a bit tricky. I doubt many users would gain a lot by seeing "1.23wmf6 (d8475d3)" change to some other partial hash. I suppose you could truncate and users could see the difference between 1.23wmf6 and 1.23wmf7 more easily, but I think users are instead interested in what's actually changing that affects them.
We have "Tech/News" and the ambassadors mailing list and IRC and other communication avenues. Avoiding banner blindness is a real concern and the possible benefit seems small. My two cents. :-)
MZMcBride