Echo (Notifications)

For the MediaWiki email notification feature, see Help page about watching pages by e-mail notification

If you want to get involved in helping notifications, please visit the portal page on MediaWiki.org.
See Help:Notifications for the user guide.

Overview for the project.

The Notifications project (also known as Echo) is a new initiative by the Wikimedia Foundation Growth Team intended to augment existing notifications systems such as the Watchlist system on Wikipedia and other sites using MediaWiki. Documentation for the extension and the project portal can be found at Echo (Notifications) on the MediaWiki site. It is still being developed and needs volunteers to help support and test it. Once you've had a chance to test Notifications, please take this quick survey, then join the discussion on this talk page on English Wikipedia.

Timeline

Notifications was first released on the English Wikipedia on 30 April 2013 and then Meta-Wiki on July 25 2013, after extensive testing on mediawiki.org, and has since been deployed on dozens more Wikipedias with many more planned releases. The initially deployed features included:

• Talk page messages: When a message is left on your user talk page. This replaces the former text in an orange bar stating "You have a new message from another user (last change)".
• Mentions: When your userpage is linked to, in a signed post, on a talk page or in the Project: namespace; {{U}}, {{ping}}, {{reply to}} and {{tiny ping}} (all of which simply create userpage links) also trigger notifications
• Page links: when a new link is made to a page you created;
• Page reviews: When a page you created is reviewed;
• Edit reverts: When your edits are reverted;
• Thanks system: A small "thank you" for an edit;
• User rights: When your user rights change.
• Topic subscriptions: When a new signed comment is added to a section you have subscribed to.

In October 2013, Notifications was released worldwide on about 800 different sites, including most of the remaining Wikipedia wikis and 'sister projects'. Fabrice Florin and Keegan Peterzell managed the community outreach for these final releases, while Benny Situ proceeded with the technical deployments. Community members generally find this tool helpful, across languages and world regions. Notifications are also available on mobile devices, and seem to be adding value on these platforms as well.

Thanks

See also: mw:Extension:Thanks

Thanks is an experimental feature of Notifications that lets editors send a private 'Thank you' notification to users who make useful edits — by clicking a small 'thank' link on their history or diff page. One can also navigate to the special page Special:Thanks and enter a revision ID number to send a notification to the user responsible for creating that specific revision.

The Wikimedia Foundation's Growth team developed this small feature to encourage productive contributions to MediaWiki projects. It was made available on MediaWiki.org, Meta-Wiki, and the English Wikipedia on May 30, 2013, shortly before the rest of Notifications came out.

For further info see...

• Notifications project portal on MediaWiki
• Feature requirements
• Release plan
• Other related documents about the feature
• Notifications on English Wikipedia
• Thanks system on English Wikipedia
• Once you've had a chance to test Notifications, please take this quick survey, then join the discussion on this talk page.
• Wikiafication