Sitenotice would be an exaggeration. Google and Facebook and millions of other sites update their software, probably even more frequently than we do, and without any big notifications to all users every week.
People who consider themselves capable of testing new features should just sign up to this mailing list. If the traffic here is too high or the content too technical, I strongly recommend the wikitech-ambassadords, which was started precisely with this in mind and is doing the job pretty well : https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors
My dream scenario would be to do deployments similarly to the way Mozilla and Google release versions of their browsers - beta and release. Logged-in users who opt in would be connected to a newer version of MediaWiki that will be deployed to everybody the following week. Same URL, same account, same preferences, same content - just different software. Currently with the beta labs we don't have the same account and the same content, so it's not as useful for crowd-sourcing the testing.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2013/12/5 Alex Brollo alex.brollo@gmail.com
Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out.
A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of Wikilove.
Alex _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l