Grants:IdeaLab/New and better ways to edit Watchlists

status: idea

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project:

New and better ways to edit Watchlists

idea creator:

Anne Delong

project contact:

Anne Delong

participants:

join this idea!

• Anne Delong
• Connor Shea

summary:

Watchlists can be cumbersome to manage. New options for organizing and pruning watchlists would make their use more efficient.

created on: 18:48, 27 March 2014

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

Many active editors spend a lot of time managing their watchlist. For example, I do a lot of work at English Wikipedia's Articles for creation project, and so the pages that I edit keep moving around, from userspace to Wikipedia talk: to Draft: and sometimes to more than one title in mainspace. Then there are the associated talk pages for each one and the submitters' user pages as well. I want to watch these pages for a while, but then I would like to delete them from my watchlist, especially ones that no longer have content. The "View and edit watchlist" feature works fine for deleting individual items, but it is time consuming when the watchlist is thousands of pages long. As well, this leads to large watchlists which take up processing time unnecessarily.

Project goals

I would like to see the creation of a utility that would give editors an option to:

• remove all watchlist items which are redirects, or talk pages of redirects, or at least identify them for easy removal.

• remove all watchlist items where neither the page or the talk page exist, or at least identify them for easy removal.

• sort the watchlist items within namespace sections by date of addition to the list instead of alphabetically, to allow easy removal of stale items and new but unneeded ones.

• mark and separate items to be watched permanently, preferably into their own section, or at least by colour or style, so that the other items can be looked over more efficiently when choosing items to delete.

I envision either an addition to the current "View and edit routine", or a standalone routine, that would offer these four options to editors when they are managing their watchlists.

Get involved

Welcome, brainstormers! Your feedback on this idea is welcome. Please click the "discussion" link at the top of the page to start the conversation and share your thoughts.

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