Pine, the time-limited watchlist feature is in phab; see the many subtasks of https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T8964 - AFAIK the primary work is going on in the tasks listed in this workboard https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/expiring-watchlist-items/ - The WMDE TCB team are already in contact with the WMF CommTech team.

Jan, The only research I know of is CommTech's survey earlier this year. The results are at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Cross-wiki_watchlist#Survey_results

I don't believe there is any other research that is focused primarily on how editors use watchlists in general. (I searched the meta Research: namespace, and wikipapers.referata.com, and the first three pages of scholar.google.com results. There was only 1 paper that seemed tangentially related.[1]).

There is a linkdump (compilation of most major links, mostly phab tasks, in no particular order) regarding watchlist wishes/discussions/tasks/etc, from over the last 15 years, at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Watchlist_wishlist

It needs better organization and more annotations, but should be helpful.

I believe the major back-end feature that will enable many additional (widely- and long-desired) front-end features to be developed, is Multiple Watchlists, a.k.a. Priority Watchlists, a.k.a. Watchlist Groups, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T3492 - If I understand correctly, the technical implementation that is currently being worked on for time-limited watchlists, will be a step towards that [by adding a new "name" column to the existing watchlist database tables, which can then be used in a variety of ways]. (I might be wrong or out-of-date on this, though.)

From deep within all those links, the most intriguing item from a UX perspective, is probably the old smartwatchlist.js userscript at Enwiki. See screenshots at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:UncleDouggie/smart_watchlist.js#Screenshots

See also the "Requested features" list near the top of the page.

It is/was a very powerful tool, that could be used in a variety of ways. It was a bit buggy a few years ago (I haven't tried it recently), and the author hasn't edited in many years. My only major criticism of it was the inability to mass-categorize pages - they had to be categorized one-by-one (unfeasible with my 9,000+ watchlisted pages). Many good ideas within.

Hope that helps!

Quiddity / Nick

[1] http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20150009483 -- See also the "Wiki Accountability and Culture Shift" video linked at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Darenwelsh#Videos for a presentation with those slides.

On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 5:34 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jan,

I believe that WMF Community Tech is working toward unifying watchlists across wikis. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Tech/Cross-wiki_watchlist

I like the idea of time-limited watchlist items. You might propose that on Phabricator.

Regarding research (as opposed to enginerring), I am unaware of current research projects but I suggest that you check the archives of the Research Newsletter.

Dario or others may have more information.

Pine

On Jul 20, 2016 01:23, "Jan Dittrich" <jan.dittrich@wikimedia.de> wrote:

Hello Research list,

Are you aware of research on the use of Watchlists on Wikipedia? There are is the wish in the German Community to improve watchlists (one suggestion is the ability to watch a page only for a certain amount of time) but I currently lack the data to find out about the needs behind that and other wishes.

Jan

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