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Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Watchlists

< Community Wishlist Survey 2017
Community Wishlist Survey 2017
Watchlists
15 proposals, 188 contributors



Traffic watchlist

  • Problem: To be notified when an article has an unusual spike in page views/traffic. This usually indicates there has been an external news story or event driving traffic to Wikipedia, typically signaling the article needs updating with new information/sources.
Example Graphs
  • Who would benefit: Anyone keeping an article up to date
  • Proposed solution: Integrate Pageview API data into the watchlist
  • More comments: Spikes in traffic are normal and are usually short-lived (1 day spires see example graphs) These can be safely ignored. However when there is a sustained build-up and trailing off, looking more like a mountain than a spire, this can be determined to be a probable external event driving traffic to the article.
  • Phabricator tickets: A similar ideas was proposed at T168527 though based on page view rankings to help editors discover articles needing attention. Such a system could also include data about velocity of ranking changes.

Discussion edit

  • Pageviews normally lag behind (by a day) so this would probably miss any one day spikes, and on enwiki there is already a tool that displays the last 30 days of pageviews at the top of the page when you look at it. (you can enable it in gadgets, its labeled as xtools). and of course there is the pageviews tool itself to look at an article history, and various lists which are bot updated, which display the "most popular start class articles" and most popular articles, even some most popular articles by project. But this could be useful in addition to all these things as a more personalized list. A Den Jentyl Ettien Avel Dysklyver (talk) 15:25, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • Yeah I was thinking of an algorithm that would crunch data over the prior 7 or 14 days to determine there is unusual traffic pattern and visually it adds a small flag in the watchlist, which might then link to a graph (or not). But the system could be smart to notify users of unusual traffic patterns. -- GreenC (talk) 16:02, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • @GreenC: I like the idea, but I'm not sure if the proposal as currently written would solve your needs. I suggest more editing of the proposal, to clarify. -- There are 2 components to the request: (1) some new code that can identify "pageview spikes", and (2) a way to tell interested people (readers/editors/watchlisters/etc) about any recent spike. For (2), if the method was to display that info inside the Special:Watchlist page, then we would not be able to see if there was a pageview spike unless there was also recent editing activity. -- For (imperfect) example, I saw this youtube video (a comedy show that picks 1 or more Wikipedia articles, and asks the guests to guess at interesting facts within) which was uploaded on June 8 and mentioned w:en:Lyall's wren (history, pageviews for 1 year) (I don't know where the July pageview spike came from); In that case, there were a few page edits that coincided with the two major pageview spikes, but there might not have been. -- I suspect (IANAD) that it would be best to simply make this proposal about component #1, and then [if that's feasible and voted on and] once we have the info available, it could easily be displayed wherever desired via gadgets and such. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:19, 18 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Quiddity (WMF), excellent point you are right about separating the work. (With the survey closing in less than 24hrs it might be too late to start a new proposal..) Well maybe next year unless someone wants to take it on independently. -- GreenC (talk) 21:09, 18 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@GreenC: Only the proposals phase closes in 24 hours! Then there's a week to further refine the proposals, and then the voting begins on the 27th. Please do overhaul/update the proposal above, however would be beneficial. We want the proposals to be both clear/concise to everyone, and practical/feasible, when the voting begins and the deluge of visitors (who have ~230 proposals to read!) arrive. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 19 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting edit

Automatically watch pages containing specific string

  • Problem: There may be some pages you want to follow automatically after they've been created. For example on Meta-Wiki you would like to follow all the new Tech News (like Tech/News/2017/46) or on Wikipedias some project pages like "Requests for adminship" or pages that have a "(2017 movie)" in their title. Now you can only add them on your watchlist manually, but if there is an option to automatically add all pages for example starting with "Tech/News*" to your watchlist it would be very handy.
  • Who would benefit: Users who want to follow new pages they are interested of.
  • Proposed solution: Add an option to add strings of page titles that would be automatically followed after pages are created.
  • More comments:

Discussion edit

  • @Stryn: I think this is phab:T4308, but I'll leave it for you to add to the proposal in case I'm mistaken. (Also that task's description needs to be rewritten for clarity). See also the semi-related phab:T166924. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:41, 18 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Added the first phab link, but the second is about getting a notification so I didn't add it. Stryn (talk) 15:10, 18 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • @NKohli (WMF): Not all pages include categories + for example wikiprojects can be in many different categories, so you should first watch all the categories in order to find the new wikiproject pages. Stryn (talk) 10:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting edit

Setting for showing new notifications about new page links in the watchlist

  • Problem: Currently, when a page gets linked the creator of the page gets a notification. While normal patrolling happens via the watchlist this creates an additional separate system. It's okay when dealing with pages that get a handful of links but gets annoying when pages get a lot of links.
  • Who would benefit: People who create a lot of pages and prefer to use the watchlist over the notification system
  • Proposed solution: Have settings that allows to show the edits that create the links in the watchlist instead or in addition to the notification system.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:

Discussion edit

I am not sure I understand this fully. The watchlist is meant for watching pages, not one-off edits. Are you asking for the page which got linked to the page you created to be automatically added to your watchlist? I don't think a lot of people will appreciate that. A better solution seems to be per-page settings. What do you think? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 17 November 2017 (UTC) @ChristianKl: Hi, did you see my comment above? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 00:42, 21 November 2017 (UTC) @NKohli (WMF): I believe the idea is that instead of receiving a notification when a page is linked, they would like to see an entry in their watchlist. Similar to the "X was added to category Y" entries for pages added to categories one is watching, or the Wikidata entries in the Wikipedia watchlist which appear everytime something changed in an item related to a page one is watching. There would be an entry "X was linked to Y".--Cirdan (talk) 09:12, 21 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As far as I understand the watchlist is supposed to help people to keep track of edits that they might want to review. When dealing with pages that get a handful of incoming links getting notifications of "one-off" edits is fine. When dealing with pages that get hundreds of incoming links per year then the notification feature stops being the best task for the job and it would make more sense to it to the watchlist. ChristianKl (talk) 10:41, 21 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
"As far as I understand the watchlist is supposed to help people to keep track of edits that they might want to review." Nope. It's about pages you want to keep track of, not individual edits. The edit you are talking about would appear in your watchlist if you were to watch page Y. Technically speaking, this proposal would be hard to implement and confusing to people who want this for some pages but not others. I still think the better solution is per-page setting which I have linked to above. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 00:30, 22 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The wording of my request is agnostic about whether it's a global or a per-page setting. I agree that a per-page setting has advantages.
I'm not sure why you use the phrase "individual edits". When I'm getting notifications for 30 pages that now link to page X that feels to me like it's not an individual edit. There are cases where I do want to silence notifications because I don't care at all about the relevant information. On the other hand, there are cases where it's worth to review the linking to a page that's frequently linked and where the notification mechanism does seem to be ill-suited. ChristianKl (talk) 19:25, 22 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting edit

Show number of unseen changes in the page title

  • Problem: I often have the watchlist open in a tab, but to see if there are any new changes there I have to switch to that tab.
  • Who would benefit: All logged-in users.
  • Proposed solution: Many browser based e-mail services add (n) before the title of the page, in our case "Watchlist - Wikipedia", where n is the number of unread emails. Add a similar thing to the watchlist, and some way to dismiss/reset it. On Swedish Wikipedia we had this as a user script, but it stopped working with the new watchlists recently (and even if it is fixed, this would still probably be beneficial for far more users).
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:

Discussion edit

  •   Question: are we talking about live updating refreshing it (like Twitter feed)? Because, otherwise I don't see the point. --SuperJew (talk) 16:25, 6 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes. Ainali (talk) 17:53, 6 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting edit

Only show latest edits in mobile web watchlist

  • Problem: In mobile web view (e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist ) all edits to a watched page are displayed. It does not follow user settings on show latest edit of each page only (default behaviour for desktop) vs show every edit (only available behaviour in mobile web). This makes the mobile watchlist unusable for anyone with any high-volume page on their watchlist.
  • Who would benefit: People watching a variety of pages.
  • Proposed solution: Make the default behaviour of the mobile watchlist the same as the desktop watchlist: show only the latest edit to each watched page.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:

Discussion edit

No way as default behaviour. I can support this only as opt-in/opt-out preference/choice (some switch button?). --Vachovec1 (talk) 11:34, 11 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • The watchlist should follow user preferences both on desktop and on mobile.--Nizil Shah (talk) 12:43, 14 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting edit

Watch a Wikidata query

  • Problem: When adding data to Wikidata, it's difficult to check if it continues to be consistent. Example: check if someone updates the population in a list of cities without monitoring each item in the Watchlist.
  • Who would benefit: Data curators in Wikidata
  • Proposed solution: Add a query, tested in the WDQS, to a page and run it with a custom frequency (once per day/week) similar to Wikidata:Database reports
  • More comments: I currently use this workflow: prepare the query, create a Listeria page under my profile in itwiki, and check the diff in the Watchlist.
  • Phabricator tickets:

Discussion edit

@Sabas88: Could you clarify how your request is different than Listeria? Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 21 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Is this covered by Wikidata SPARQL Recent Changes? Ainali (talk) 14:50, 21 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
That's cool! I didn't know it! If there would be an RSS feed it would be really useful. To answer also @Ryan Kaldari (WMF):'s question, my request is to consider more integration of these tools in the Wikidata interface. The Watchlist has a RSS feed directly accessible in the Tools in left menu, and to monitor a page I need only to star that page, how to simplify the process also for Wikidata queries? --Sabas88 (talk) 11:58, 24 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting edit

Multiple watchlists

  • Proposed solution: Exactly what it says on the tin. Any logged in user, whether they are a reader, casual editor, long term contributor or administrator, can create multiple lists of articles they monitor for various reasons, giving them a title (e.g. "Game of Thrones related articles", "important", "stuff I want to read later", "TODO", "articles prone to spam"). Users may or may not be interested in the edits to each page. We've been here before, so there is no need to repeat the multiple user stories this would address and the detailed justification (which you can find at the Phabricator ticket below).

Discussion edit

  • Endorse. I watch about 5000 articles, and on any given day about 100 of them get edited. Some days I will do politics and others I do science but often I do not want to jump subject to subject. If I could sort my own articles into separate watchlists then I feel like I could be more efficient. I would also like shareable watchlists. Sometimes groups of people all want to watch the same collection of 1000 articles but not every individual in the group should have to set up that list of 1000 for their own account. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:51, 8 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Question for MER-C: wanted to avoid forking this if it can be the same proposal: are you married to multiple "lists", what if a watched item could have associated user-specific "tags", with a tag based filter for viewing? (May be difficult with RSS feeds). — xaosflux Talk 15:24, 8 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I can see your suggestion providing the described functionality, but I'll pass judgment until the UI wireframes and API interface show up (Special:Editwatchlist/raw may have problems). MER-C (talk) 04:53, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Amazing idea, this would help so much. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 21:15, 8 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I too would love this. Effectively it is "folders" for watchlists. Could we add the feature to make it possible to have a "shared" folder that others could also subscribe to? This would enable a people to watch, and un-watch a set of articles (e.g. Articles with specific Arb-com sanctions on them; articles created during a particular Editathon, articles related to a Wikiproject) without each person having to add (and remove) items individually from their own watchlists separately. Like Google-docs, the creator of the watchlist could be the controller of who gets to see, or edit, their folder. Wittylama (talk) 15:30, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I watch well over a thousand pages, even after trying periodically to cut the number down and removing stale discussions. This would be of immense use to me as a editor, and I could sort pages according to categories, or just by namespace: User talkpages, wikipedia discussion pages, articles, templates. Then by highly edited pages, stale discussions, deleted pages (shown on recreation). And by organize by subject, I could even move deletion discussions into their own watchlist. it's a great idea. That being said tags and filtering could be fine, but only if I can add pages to the tag with two clicks (I am not typing the tags out on every page). A Den Jentyl Ettien Avel Dysklyver (talk) 15:35, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I totally support this one too.--Temp3600 (talk) 11:14, 12 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Something like this was exist for years on mobiles as extension, and was removed a couple of months ago. Great idea. IKhitron (talk) 11:55, 13 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Actually this can be done by "watching" relating edits to some list - so one can create multiple lists as one's subpages and watch them. But I'll support this new possibility too. --Infovarius (talk) 13:51, 11 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting edit

Automatic notification of new links to a page should be able to be activated/deactivated on a per page basis

  • Problem: Currently, the creator of a page gets notifications when the page gets linked from elsewhere. It's possible to deactivate this in the settings for all pages but when you create 10 pages and a single page gets constant notifications it's not possible to deactivate the feature for the single page.
Additionally, it's not possible for other people to switch on these notifications for a page that they didn't create.
  • Who would benefit: Users who create a lot of pages where some pages get a lot of incoming links and the resulting notifications on specific pages are annoying. The biggest benefit will be in Wikidata where some pages get thousands or even millions of incoming links.
Users who want to get more information about pages they didn't create also benefit.
  • Proposed solution: Create a per page setting that allows a user to activate or deactivate the notifications that are sent when the page gets linked.
  • More comments:

Discussion edit

  • ChristianK, I'm confused as I've never seen automatic notification of backlinking (links to a page). I wrote a program specifically for this purpose, to notify when a page gets new backlinks (see Bakclinks Watchlist). If this is built-in to the system somewhere I'd like to see it. Thanks. -- GreenC (talk) 17:01, 8 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • It works, but only if you have created the page in question, and then always, unless you turn it off in your preferences (maybe it’s off by default, and that’s why you don’t know about it?). It can be turned off only globally, and can’t be turned on for any page if you aren’t the author of the first revision. These limitations are what this proposal wants to get rid of. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 17:26, 8 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • @ChristianKl: I happened to create a Phabricator ticket for exactly this a week ago. I've added it to the proposal in the Phabricator section, but please read the description I wrote and remove it if it's not what you meant. Wittylama (talk) 16:59, 14 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting edit

Allow watching (or unwatching) just the page or just the talk page

  • Problem: Sometimes, you want to watch just a page or just a talk page. For example, you want to watch a noticeboard, but not the chatter that is going on on its talk page.
  • Who would benefit: registered users
  • Proposed solution: This should probably be implemented by allowing registered users to unwatch just the page or just the talk page.

Discussion edit

Voting edit

Automatically unwatch pages after a certain, user defined, amount of time

  • Problem: I am one of those users who have his preferences set to automatically watch any page I edit. This is usually done to make sure replies to pages aren't missed or to catch any edits made in response to one's own. Unfortunately, over time the watchlist grows to an unmanageable size, and becomes too large to effectively monitor.
  • Who would benefit: Anyone with growing watchlists, or users with this setting enabled.
  • Proposed solution: The solution is to allow for the option for the page to automatically be removed from the watchlist after a given amount of time has elapsed. Users can define how long the page should be watchlisted, when the pages being watchlisted should have an expiry, and be able to adjust the expiry on a per page basis for example.
  • More comments: The ideal solution is adjusting this feature from the preferences page. The user can define whether automatically watched pages should be automatically unwatched, or if all watched pages should automatically unwatch themselves, define how long they prefer the default time should be before they automatically unwatch, be able to set the expiry to reset if they edited the watched page, and also set the option if the user wants to be prompted for an expiry when they manually watch a page.

Discussion edit

  • Great idea. It would also be nice if you could set such an expiry date from your watchlist itself (so you can, for example, set a page that you only want to watch because there is a news story on it). This would be kind of like how the feature where you can allow of removal of watchlist entries from the watchlist itself if you turn on a specific preference to do so. RileyBugz (talk) 19:38, 8 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Excellent idea! That would help all the good folks who anti-vandal-patrol, start and/or process deletion requests. --Hedwig in Washington (talk) 20:36, 8 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •   Comment Maybe Article reminder would be a possible solution? "remind me to have a look at [article] in 5 Days" Trizek (WMF) (talk) 09:54, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Not for me. I certainly do not want a reminder to look at the thousands of IP talk pages that have cluttered my watchlist.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 12:42, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Expiry of watchlist items is a yes, (especially if I can set it to defined presets). But I do not want to be told that it has happened, given a reminder, notification or other useless popup that I am no longer watching Articles for deletion/bollocks or some talk page. It's worth noting this could work in conjunction with the proposal for multiple watchlists and we could be looking at some serious improvement. A Den Jentyl Ettien Avel Dysklyver (talk) 15:46, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I hope the community with support this proposal massively. This is one of the best I see yet. Any time I click watch star the desire to have this future will resurfaces. Deletion discussions, some pages where you reverted IPs trolling or vandalism and left notes, ongoing discussions of interest and many, many things all need temporary watching. But without this future that's why watchlists grow to 100s of pages which of course reduces its effectiveness by missing important changes. Ironically at the end, editor will end up not "watching" many pages on "watchlist". Ammarpad (talk) 00:42, 13 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Maybe move expired entries to "expired list", and clear the latter manually? --Dalka (talk) 07:58, 30 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • What would be even better would be the ability to autoremove discussions that have been formally closed (maybe with a popup notification that this is happening?) Daniel Case (talk) 03:30, 1 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I have around 29,000 pages on my WL, and growing. It's not a lot of work to scan through the 200 or so entries on each reload, but it would be impossible to to manually edit a list of this size to get rid of the chaff. Yes, a very good idea. Kudpung (talk) 21:34, 6 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting edit

Allow seeing all changes since last visit directly from Special:Watchlist

  • Problem: If you go to your watchlist/RC and want to see diff of all changes of some specific page since you last visited that page, there is no link or button to achieve this in one click.
At the moment, there is only "diff" and "hist" on a watchlist line. If 5 changes have been done since my last visit (1st is the older, 5th the last), I can't see them immediately. "diff" will show the difference between the current and the previous change (between changes 4 and 5), "hist" will show the entire history page. Solution could be a link to show the diff of the 5 last changes, like it is on grouped recent changes ("cur" link that displays the result of diff=0).
  • Who would benefit: Users monitoring pages by changes since last visit
  • Proposed solution: Add some button or change diff link target (if showing just the last change preference is on) to view diff of all changes since last visit, not only the last change to date.
  • More comments:

Discussion edit

  • Endorse. Truly a no-brainer. NMaia (talk) 00:46, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •   Comment The new filters (available on all wikis as a Beta feature) allow that for watchlists ("Unseen changes" filter). Trizek (WMF) (talk) 09:58, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    So you can click on some button in watchlist and see more unseen revisions in one diff? --Dvorapa (talk) 11:31, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    @Trizek (WMF): Maybe you mean something like T74937? (not to be confused with) --Dvorapa (talk) 11:36, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Dvorapa, yes, that's the same principle: you can monitor all unseen changes on your watchlist. To try it, please go to your home wiki and enable the "Nové filtry pro kontrolu úprav" (New filters for edit review) Beta feature on your wiki, and then check on your watchlist. There is more than one click to set it up, but you can also save your filters setup to retrieve them quickly. If you have questions or feedback about that feature, please use the feedback page. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:28, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    @Trizek (WMF): But this doesn't solve the issue presented in this wish. --Dvorapa (talk) 13:42, 9 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]