Last modified: 2014-09-23 23:33:13 UTC
I first posted this as a comment to an old feature request about multiple watchlists. Afterwards I noticed that it was an old request and that it wasn't moved up in the list, so I thought it might not be read unless I make a new request. Please correct me if I was wrong. This is a detailed proposal of how to implement something I call "watchlist categories" (should maybe come up with better name so it isn't confused with normal categories). The idea is to make the MediaWiki watchlist more flexible and allow users to have more than one watchlist: * Per default users only have one watchlist category called "General". * A new page is available at Special:Watchlist/categories where users can add, rename and remove watchlist categories. * When adding an article to your watchlist and you only have one watchlist category defined (default), the watched article will automatically be assigned to that one category (to the user, the watch proccess will look just like it does today). * When adding an article to your watchlist and you have defined more than one category, you'll go through an additional step. This step is a simple page of checkboxes that allows you to choose which of your watchlist categories you want the article to be assigned to (if none is chosen, the article is not watched). * The current watchlist edit page (Special:Watchlist/edit) gets an additional feature: Next to each article is a "Categories" link, that sends the user back to the pick-categories page with the checkboxes (see above). * At Special:Watchlist, besides the Namespace popup, another popup is added called "Categories" that allows you to choose which of your watchlist categories you wish to view (maybe that HTML form should be changed into GET-style so that users can bookmark specific category views). The easiest implementation is to only allow users to view one category at a time.
I think this would be extremely useful, not only to be able to view/filter my Special:Watchlist page by topic, but also to prioritize pages. There are some pages on my watchlist, such as Living People, that I want to scrutinize every edit made. Other pages are lower priority for me. The proposal, as described by Hannes, is good as-is. Though, ideally, it could go further. For article priority categories, I would suggest there be a numerical scale (1-5?), being 1 = "I'm closely watching every single edit to the article" to 5 = "It's on my watchlist, but I'm not/can't scrutinize all edits to it". The categories would also help me group articles by topic or be able to pick out just the living bio (or corporations) articles on my watchlist. That way, if I'm busy and only have so much time for Wikipedia on a given day, I can at least look at my highest priority articles. On the back-end, we could use something like Special:Unwatchedpages (and why can we only view the first 1,000 of these at present). An enhanced Special:Watchpages capability could help identify living bios that nobody is watching or not enough active Wikipedians are watching. The stats page defines "very active Wikipedian" as 100+ edits in a month - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm If I knew what some of those unwatched or inadequately watched articles were, I might be willing to "adopt" a few more articles.
*** Bug 1492 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Changing component to "Watchlist"
Tweak summary, so we don't think this is about categories, when it's actually about grouping. Also removing dependency, since this has nothing to do with public/private watchlists.
A similar proposal to this has gained more recent traction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Persistent_proposals#.22Categorised_.28user_defined.29.22_or_.22split_.28user_defined.29.22_watchlists.3B_an_idea_previously_proposed_as_.22multiple_watchlists.22 I'm new to Bugzilla and am not technical... can someone help me with how I move this idea forwards from here? I would be *very* grateful if someone would leave a message on my en.wp talk page and let me know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bodnotbod
Please, someone adopt this feature, this propblem. With passing time, as one is contributing for Wikipedia for a long time (Years.., with some inactivity in between for example) it is untenable to use just simple watchlist. To high degree everyone tends to use it also as kind of awareness-list. But when working in hurry or after time delay, such watchlist doesnt work as practical watchlist. When items are deleted from watchlist - it became practicle - but the item can not be loaded back. They are lost. If one is willing to have come-backs, the watchlist as it is now is not much helpfull. I believe, that implementation of feature witch would help engage long term editors is quite helpfull for the project. This might be one of the ways to counter the continuing furtive loss of editors from the projects.
Is this a candidate for a Gadget?
I am interested in pursuing this project for GSOC - please review my ideas on this bug page: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424#c26
There are two proposals for Google Summer of Code that have to do with watchlist improvements: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Blackjack48/GSOC_proposal_for_watchlist_improvements https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Bagariavivek/GSoC_Application Please comment on them as soon as possible, preferably before April 6th 19:00 UTC! Thanks.
I was about to create an enhancement bug called "allow multiple watchlists", but see this was proposed as far back as 2006. As Chad notes, it's a grouping thing rather than categorization - more or less exactly like creating and managing wishlists on Amazon. Did anything come of Blackjack48's GSOC proposal?
(In reply to comment #10) > Did anything come of Blackjack48's GSOC proposal? I stumbled upon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Blackjack48 which led to https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/dashboard/231 and to http://mw-watchlist.tumblr.com/ For Bagariavivek's project, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WatchGroup
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:UncleDouggie/smart_watchlist#Screenshots which is quite intriguing. I'm testing it right now. (Note: It requires "Group changes by page" (Enhanced Recent Changes) to be enabled; and it works best if "Expand watchlist to show all changes" is disabled.)
That is GREAT. It does exactly what I want from this bug. Thank you!
Looks like I forgot to update this - unfortunately, that script doesn't appear to correctly remember your settings between browser restarts, let alone between browsers. So I ended up uninstalling it. It is, nevertheless, an encouraging demonstration.
(In reply to Quiddity from comment #11) > (In reply to comment #10) > > Did anything come of Blackjack48's GSOC proposal? > > > I stumbled upon > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Blackjack48 > which led to https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/dashboard/231 > and to http://mw-watchlist.tumblr.com/ > > > For Bagariavivek's project, see > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WatchGroup Could something like this be deployed (after review, of course)?
