Hi all.
I'm including some thoughts on Echo below.
- *it* *doesn't* *scale* (constantly seeing a "(3)" or new emails pop up if
you're active in ~6 discussions is a pain)
- _nothing_ on-wiki ever warrants an urgent reaction ever
- distracting, especially as I'm getting more active with talking
- this last point caused me to switch it off entirely everywhere
- I'm reading an article to get more information and this piece of software
drags me back into editing while I'm merely reading something and intend to
return to the watchlist in the evening
- Echo a consequence of newcomers being insufficiently communicated to (i.e.
too few helpers involved talking with newcomers at big wikis, let's automate
that - NO! THAT's STUPID! have it semi-automated -- the entire wiki software
should be centered around a big edit box and a less prominent, but comfortable,
box for leaving custom messages to articles and users talk pages)
- Echo is a consequence of a watchlist page which many people find
insufficiently informative, intuitive, or easy to control.
- special:watchlist and special:notifications overlap in functionality
- the 'notifications' tab lacks a 'watchlist' column so that I can choose where
events go (email, echo's nagging, or watchlist passively)
- the extra term ('notifications') is clutter
- please consider improving usability of the watchlist and integrating any echo
fields into it
- and make watchlist easier to manage
- integrate these two tools together
- echo is really conceptually merely a new channel where to pipe watchlist items
- simplicity is the key to success
svetlana
--
(original rant attached for reference)
Dunno. I'm pissed by Echo.
Hundreds of hours of time wasted looking at a reply at a talk page or at an
edit someone thanked me for.
Which are not urgent at all. Yet the software notified me of them real-time.
Echo is a consequence of newcomers being insufficiently communicated to (i.e.
too few helpers involved talking with newcomers at big wikis).
Also, a consequence of a watchlist page which many people find insufficiently
informative, intuitive, or easy to control.
----
looking at Echo's 'thanks' notifications for a few months before figuring out
that it's possible to disable that
like I'm reading a page about electrons on-wiki and doing something of interest
to me, it pops up with its number [1]
I have to go and watch it despite knowing it clearly that _nothing_ on-wiki
ever needs an urgent reaction
about couple minutes on that daily.. clearly doesn't encourage me to talk more
with people
if you sum that up, it's a few tens or hundreds of hours of time wasted this
year
I'm supposed to concentrate and all those notifications are distracting -- I
know where I am, I don't need them
I became remotely active at mediawiki or meta and started getting these
notifications non-stop. Frick off. This doesn't scale.
does this explain the source of trouble? :-)
----
well, I ticked off everything 'web', this set it to 0 for now, but I wouldn't
like to see it at all since it's bearing no extra information
and people who are not sitting in a cave will find that *it* *simply* *doesn't*
*scale*
anyone active in ~6 discussions will find it a source of nag
----
I wouldn't like it to go forward really -- improve the watchlist instead and
make it more useable please :)
spending time on a means to thank a user via software, or to ask him a
'mention' at a discussion, doesn't look very productive to me -- this all can
be put into watchlist nicely
it doesn't need to be an extension, it needs to be an improvement in the core
what to do with watchlist -- web notify thru echo, or email, or nothing and
just have me peek at it in the evening
extra concept 'echo', 'notification' is extra clutter
nobody needs it, both these lists should be configurable in one tab of prefs
add a 'watchlist' column to the 'notifications' tab -- so that I can tell
whether I'd like to see thanks piped over to my watchlist
etc
I can see simplicity as a path to success
reword things a little, name it 'watchlist notifications', make it more
flexible and make it pipe things over to a single special page instead of 2
special pages
this special page should remain as compact as a watchlist is -- the design of
the current 'special:notifications' page is not at all good on a 600x800 screen
managing watchlist is hard, fixing that is long overdue
I'd _really_ like to see echo and watchlist back together in a simple intuitive
system
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
