On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Mike Pruden mikepruden@yahoo.com wrote:
Perhaps I'm the only one who finds this a little concerning in my part, but lately I've been feeling that too many users are trying to watch too much of Wikipedia at one time.
Let me elaborate a little. It isn't uncommon for the normally active user to have hundreds, if not thousands, of pages on their watchlist. Then, when somebody makes an edit that a
People still use watchlists? Mine quickly exploded out of control (I was briefly in the habit of reading the article of the day each day and making a couple of edits). Instead, I use: 1) The 'related changes' view of a list of stubs that I've written. 2) "My contributions".
It's imperfect, but it sort of captures what I'm interested in: changes made to any article I've created (I like watching the little things grow, flower, die) , and changes made to any changes I've made recently (to see how other people react etc). I've requested a single view that captures all this, a couple of times.
The depressing thing about the first one is seeing just how much time and effort is expended on apparently trivial stuff: stub sorting, recategorising, interwikis, very minor style stuff. Probably 2/3 of the edits to my stubs don't affect the actual content of the article at all.
I agree with the central point though: it's very easy to get into the habit of pouncing on any change. And inefficient, too. It would barely take more time for me to assess and react to a month's (or six month's!) worth of changes, than a day's worth.
Steve