Last modified: 2014-10-16 22:58:03 UTC

Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Wikimedia migrated from Bugzilla to Phabricator. Bug reports are handled in Wikimedia Phabricator.
This static website is read-only and for historical purposes. It is not possible to log in and except for displaying bug reports and their history, links might be broken. See T35888, the corresponding Phabricator task for complete and up-to-date bug report information.
Bug 33888 - Requesting a user-centred rethink of how watchlists work
Requesting a user-centred rethink of how watchlists work
Status: NEW
Product: MediaWiki
Classification: Unclassified
Watchlist (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Normal enhancement with 1 vote (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2012-01-22 21:11 UTC by Sue Gardner
Modified: 2014-10-16 22:58 UTC (History)
9 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description Sue Gardner 2012-01-22 21:11:11 UTC
I am constantly having difficulty staying on top of pages I care about on our wikis; the watchlist functionality just isn't really meeting my needs. In this bug report, I'll lay out some of the difficulties I'm having. But my real purpose here isn't to say "please make these changes for me," since my use case may be unusual. Really, I'm hoping to provide input for a general rethink of watchlist functionality. I think it'd be worth undertaking a user-centred investigation of how people track pages they're interested in, and how the watchlist functionality could be revamped to better support various use cases. My use case might or might not be unusual; I don't know.

Personally, my goal is to keep on top of multiple pages on multiple wikis. I want to follow what's happening on those pages, but I also want to prompt myself to contribute, regardless of whether other people are contributing. There are two main types of pages I'm interested in: 1) Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia article discussion pages, where I want to either track other people's article edits, or remind myself to edit in future, and 2) "other." Other is everything except articles and discussions about articles -- it might include policy pages, user pages, and so forth.

Some issues I have: 

i) I am interested in the pages themselves, not necessarily whether they're been edited by anyone else lately. So the default view, which shows recent changes, isn't really what I'm looking for. For my personal use, I'd prefer "My watchlist" to show Special:EditWatchlist, rathen than Special:Watchlist.

ii) I am active on multiple wikis, but I can only view the watchlist for the wiki I am currently in. I would rather be able to see my watchlist as a single list including all wikis. (Or at least, all public wikis.)

iii) Currently my watchlist is split into main, user and template pages. This is okay, but ideally I would want to be able to create and maintain my own categories.

iv) There is obviously lots that could be done to better support users with notifications, beyond what exists today.

This is just a super-fast note off the top of my head. My purpose here isn't to recommend specific changes that I want to get implemented -- it's more to raise the bigger question of 'how could watchlists be revamped to better support what users are actually trying to accomplish." I'd be interested in knowing about ways to support my use case with the existing functionality, but I am more interested in the general revamp discussion.

(Also, probably this is obvious, but: I am not requesting this in my role as ED -- I do not want to derail the WMF tech roadmap, and I am sure aspects of this are on the roadmap. I'm just flagging a pain point for me as a user.)
Comment 1 Antoine "hashar" Musso (WMF) 2012-01-23 15:24:32 UTC
> ii) I am active on multiple wikis, but I can only view the watchlist for the
> wiki I am currently in. I would rather be able to see my watchlist as a single
> list including all wikis. (Or at least, all public wikis.)

Have a look at Bug 3525 - Cross-wiki watchlists

> iii) Currently my watchlist is split into main, user and template pages. This
> is okay, but ideally I would want to be able to create and maintain my own
> categories.

That one is bug 5875 - Group similar pages in watch list
Comment 2 Timeshifter 2012-08-31 03:39:11 UTC
Here is much more info:
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Integrated,_interwiki,_global_watchlists

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Multiple_watchlists
The discussion about multiple watchlists linked just above is current, but will eventually be archived. Its linking illustrates another watchlist problem. There is no way to watchlist individual sections of talk pages, and also, there is no permanent link to that discussion. 

This has been solved on the central, community forums (Village Pumps) at Wikia and Portuguese Wikipedia. All individual discussions are on separate pages, and each can be watchlisted and linked to permanently. See current discussion here: 
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Convert_Village_Pump_to_Wikia_Community_Forum_software
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Proposal_for_one_Village_Pump_using_DPLforum_or_other_subpage_discussion_software
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Support_or_oppose_a_test_Village_Pump_based_on_Portuguese_VP

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.


Navigation
Links