Extension:Echo

The Echo extension provides an in-wiki notification system that can be used by other extensions. Thanks and Flow are two MediaWiki extensions that make use of Echo. See Notifications for a full description of what this extension does.

Configuration
In addition to setting default user preferences, you can also use the AddNewAccount hook to change user preferences on signup. That allows setting different user preferences going forward without affecting existing users.

See the release notes when upgrading.

Architecture
See the architecture section of the feature page.

Usage
There are occasionally specific users, typically bots, which perform maintenance tasks that should not generate notifications. To handle these cases, users can be globally blacklisted from the LocalSettings.php file (or InitialiseSettings.php in the case of WMF wikis):
 * Notification blacklist/whitelist

There is also an on-wiki blacklist that can be maintained by the wiki's community. The location of the global on-wiki blacklist defaults to MediaWiki:Echo-blacklist. Individual users can override the blacklist by creating a whitelist. The whitelist location defaults to Special:MyPage/Echo-whitelist. All on-wiki lists expect to receive one case-specific username per line with no special markup or prefixes. For example: GonzoBot CrazyGuy

One of the notification types that this extension allows is: "Notify me when someone links to my user page." It might not be obvious to some users, but this particular notification only works when the person linking to another user's page also signs ( ~ ) the post.
 * "Mention" option

After installation of the extension, a new tab "Notifications" is created in a user's Special:Preferences page. Under the section "Notify me about these events", in front of the "Mention" option, the hoverbox states: "Notify me when someone links to my user page." If an administrator feels, that the requirement for signing the post isn't obvious in this help text, it can be modified by changing the text in the Wiki's MediaWiki:Echo-pref-tooltip-mention page.

(Tested on MediaWiki v1.26.2 on March 15, 2016)

Terminology

 * notification - Any individual notice that is delivered by Echo
 * message - A notification about activity in a Flow discussion
 * alert - Any notification other than a message