On 10/29/2013 12:26 PM, Dan Garry wrote:
Hi Romaine,
Thanks for bringing this up.
On the one hand, the WMF often gets accused of failing to communicate properly and consistently with the Wikimedia community. On the other hand, when consistent communication is attempted though things like these notices, some people can get frustrated and tune out.
This is a general issue, not in any way limited to Wikimedia. It's important to tell people relevant information, but not to flood them so they tune out or get annoyed.
There is no magic answer, it is just a question of carefully thinking, "Is this important enough to be at the top of everyone's screen?" before approving a CentralNotice. I don't think anyone is saying never use them.
If there were more easy-to-use opt-in notification mechanisms (e.g. Flow is considering (long-term) implementing newsletters), that would also help.
Reducing use of emergency notices (what Nemo mentioned) and allowing cross-wiki hiding (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16821) will of course go a ways towards reducing feelings of overload.
Matt Flaschen