Notifications/Release Plan 2013

Here is our proposed 2013 release plan for the Notifications project (code-named 'Echo') and related tools.

In 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation's Editor Engagement team developed and released this new notification system on the English Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki and MediaWiki.org, where we encourage you to try it out.

To learn more about Notifications, read this FAQ page, this project hub and/or Testing page.

Feature development has now ended for this project and we are now working on these next milestones:
 * release final features (HTML Email notifications and improved notification structure)
 * release Notifications on a half-dozen non-english Wikipedias in August (e.g. French, Polish)
 * support the Notifications tool through bug fixes on all pilot sites, as needed
 * discuss more releases on other sites, based on the results of the first pilots
 * incrementally release Notifications on most MediaWiki sites in autumn 2013

Timeline
Here is a first tentative timeline for upcoming releases of Notifications in the second half of 2013.

Phase 1: First pilots

 * Aug. 20th: First set of non-english pilot sites:
 * Polish Wikipedia (confirmed)
 * Portuguese Wikipedia? (outreach started)
 * Spanish Wikipedia? (outreach started)

Phase 2: Next pilots

 * Sep. 17: Second set of sites under consideration:
 * English Wikivoyage (outreach started)
 * Italian Wikipedia (outreach started)
 * Hungarian Wikipedia (restart earlier conversation)
 * Swedish Wikipedia (restart earlier conversation)

Phase 3: More projects

 * Fall 2013: Third set of sites under consideration:
 * Dutch Wikipedia (no outreach yet)
 * German Wikipedia (outreach started)
 * Hebrew Wikipedia (first right-to-left language, no outreach yet)
 * More sites TBD

Note that we will support these pilots with initial releases and bug fixes, but are not planning to develop any new notification features this year.

Projects interested in adding Notifications to their sites should review the "Checklist" section below and contact us to discuss a release date.

Checklist
Here is a checklist of actions to consider for any release of Notifications on a new Wikipedia or MediaWiki site:

Contact us about this release
 * Contact our product manager Fabrice Florin (fflorin-at-wikimedia-org) to discuss your interest in releasing this tool on your project (e-mail is preferred as a communication channel).
 * We recommend that you identify an english-speaking community representative to act as a liaison with our team (and provide us with their e-mail address)

Discuss this release with your community
 * We recommend that you start an online conversation to discuss this tool with your community
 * Make your community aware of the tool's benefits (e.g.: inform users of activity that relates to them, take quick action)
 * Confirm that the community is generally ready to use this tool at this time

Plan your release
 * Are there any notifications that you do not wish to enable on your site? (see current list on this FAQ)
 * Do you need to change the default settings for new users and existing users?
 * Have you created a local version of this Notifications FAQ page and confirmed that it was properly translated in your language?
 * Contact the Wikimedia Foundation's editor engagement team with this information, as well as special needs for your project (note that special requests may delay your release)

There may be other important localization action items which should be added to this list. Please add to this list anything we missed.

More info
To learn more about Notifications, visit one of these pages:
 * Notifications FAQ
 * Notifications project hub
 * Feature requirements page
 * Testing page (for trying out features in advance)

Once you've tested Notifications and discussed it with your community, please share your feedback on this discussion page or report bugs on Bugzilla.

Thank you!