Introducing Upcoming Changes, a system to manage new features and changes to existing functionality in your community

[lindsey (Lindsey Fogle)]

@NateDhaliwal

I’m curious - how does it control how the change is rolled out?

You’ll be notified of new features while they are still in a state where you can try it out early (opt-in) and turn it off temporarily to fix any issues caused by the change (opt-out). If a change is going to become permanent (which means you can’t opt-out) and you’ve currently turned it off, we’ll let you know.

This section describes that in a little more detail:

@lindsey

Sometimes, changes will move linearly through these statuses (i.e. start in Experimental and end in Permanent), but not always. Some changes may be introduced in Alpha or Beta status, and some will end in Stable status (if they will not be forced on).

There is no set time for how long it will take a particular change to progress from one status to another, but admins will be notified when:

• A new change is available to try out
• A change has been enabled automatically
• When you have disabled a change that will soon be forced on

@darkpixlz

Is “upcoming changes” really the best name for it though?

Right now, you’re seeing only experimental changes because we migrated those over from the settings area to Upcoming Changes, but in the future there will be non-experimental updates here, too. So “labs” doesn’t feel accurate for how we are using this system.