In a bright (distant?) future, we'll be able to remove the preference "Show talk page message indicator in my toolbar" (echo-show-alert) which currently occupies a section of [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo]]. (Context: the "New message indicator" is (currently) a smallish orange bar in the [[mw:personal tools]], which replaced the [[m:OBOD]] aka [[m:New messages notification]].)
This may require some change to the indicator in question so that it's perfect enough, or something else, I don't know; but eventually it will need/be able to to be removed.
Current stats show that only a minuscule fraction of users use this preference. Of course numbers are skewed by deployment history (cf. [[mw:Echo/Release_Plan_2013#Completed]]), existence of local gadgets to replace the indicator etc.: in particular, on en.wiki they are completely meaningless given the number of back and forths on the feature with removals, changes, local hacks, user scripts, gadgets etc. However, the order of magnitude gives an idea.
Meta:
mysql> /* SLOW_OK */
-> SELECT
-> up_property,
-> COUNT(*)
-> FROM user_properties_anonym
-> WHERE up_property = 'echo-show-alert'
-> AND up_value = 0
-> GROUP BY up_property;
+-----------------+----------+
| up_property | COUNT(*) |
+-----------------+----------+
| echo-show-alert | 10 |
+-----------------+----------+
1 row in set (0.14 sec)
fr.wiki: 32
hu.wiki: 5
pl.wiki: 17
pt.wiki: 14
sv.wiki: 6
es.wiki: 25
ja.wiki: 45
nl.wiki: 10
zh.wiki: 21
en.wikt: 2
Commons: 14
--------------------------
**Version**: master
**Severity**: enhancement