Topic on Talk:Version check and opt-in site reporting/Flow

• Rather than a [Check for Updates Now] button, can Special:Version (optionally) just always show if your wiki is out of date? If there's a performance concern from the HTTP request, the "tell the MediaWiki installation to set up the job to check for updates" could update a MediaWiki: message string or cache the info for Special:Version to display.
• I would like the out-of-date check to be even more obvious. Perhaps the default Main_Page could transclude {{Special:Updates/status}}
• Can the wiki introspect whether it's running a release tag and by default check for updates to that? "A dropdown will allow the user to specify if they are checking LTS versions, point release updates, or major releases" is useful, but we want the appropriate "There is a dot release for this MediaWiki version/This MediaWiki version is unsupported and does not get security updates" version check message to display by default.

I don't think the main page is the place to check for new updates. the main page is for new visitors usually. I don't think normal editors and admins use the main page so often. I'd say Special:RecentChanges would be even more appropriate :)

I propose to have some sort of periodic reminder that pops in like a notification, for sysops only (configurable through user rights):

mw.notify( 'Latest check for updates was a month ago. Can we do a very quick check for updates now? [yes/no]', { autoHide: false } );

Or even perform the check periodically and pop the message when we detect it's outdated. Note that some installations may not have access to internet (for security reasons, etc) and thus the automatic check may fail.

The check could be done on client side, though, to save this limitation.