Hi,
I intend to change the "watch new and modified articles" user preference to "watch new articles". Most people seem to make too many minor edits to watch all articles, but in most cases you want to keep an eye on the articles you start. If there are no objections, I will implement this change.
(These could also be separate options, but we should try to avoid prefs clutter.)
Regards,
Erik
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Je Dimanĉo 25 Majo 2003 01:44, Erik Moeller skribis:
I intend to change the "watch new and modified articles" user preference to "watch new articles". Most people seem to make too many minor edits to watch all articles, but in most cases you want to keep an eye on the articles you start. If there are no objections, I will implement this change.
I object strenuously. I want to keep an eye on most articles I've touched, and the present option serves me very well.
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion-
I object strenuously. I want to keep an eye on most articles I've touched, and the present option serves me very well.
OK, how about this:
---------------------------------------------- | Watchlist options | | | | Watch articles by default: | | ( ) No articles | | ( ) Newly created articles | | (*) New and modified articles | | | | .. in the following namespaces: | | [x] Articles, meta, images, user pages | | [x] Discussion pages | | | | Watchlist entries will expire after | | [0 ] days in the article namespaces | | [7 ] days in the discussion namespaces | ----------------------------------------------
This way, every aspect of watchlist behavior could be modified. Entries which have expired would be expunged when the watchlist is loaded. This would allow the watchlist to be effectively used to monitor conversations you take part in, without requiring you to remove these from your watchlist manually. Articles on your watchlist would have their expiry date pushed forwad when they are edited.
Thoughts? I know: feature bloat. But especially for our jumbled conversation system this could be very useful.
Regards,
Erik
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Je Dimanĉo 25 Majo 2003 02:37, Erik Moeller skribis: (proposed additional watchlist munging options)
| .. in the following namespaces: | | [x] Articles, meta, images, user pages | | [x] Discussion pages |
...
| Watchlist entries will expire after | | [0 ] days in the article namespaces | | [7 ] days in the discussion namespaces |
Oh ugh.
How do you plan on making that work cleanly? Pages in plain & talk spaces are treated as common bundles: you can't watch one and not the other. This is very deliberate, in order to make sure that new talk discussion will show up in your watchlist for pages you're watching without any intervention on your part, even if the talk page did not previously exist. And so changes to a page you're discussing will automatically show up in your watchlist, no with no intervention on your part. You can't separate them, because that would be to defeat the purpose of talk pages.
The idea that pages should "expire" from my watchlist strikes me as, well, not at all desirable. My browser already shows me links to pages I've visited in the past few days, and my brain remembers the pages I'm working with right now; I want a watchlist to keep track of things long-term. I want it to show up that article I created two years ago that someone has just added to (or vandalized), or that vaguely interesting article i clicked 'watch' on last August that has suddenly blossomed and now I ought to check it out.
Should it be easier to take things off the watchlist? Yes, definitely. Should things expire automatically? No, no, no, please no.
- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion-
you're correct, I forgot about the bundling. How about just having two options for the watchlist (new and modified) and another option
Watch conversations for [5 ] days
This would be a separate table that includes the expiry date, whereas watchlist would continue to work without it. As you say, the watchlist is more useful for long term observations. Talk pages would be added transparently to the talklist, without any requirement for user intervention.
The conversation watchlist could either be viewed as part of the normal watchlist (upside: usability, downside: watchlist has to be loaded unnecessarily in some cases) or as part of a separate "My conversations" list. The conversations could be displayed like this:
My conversations
Talk:Zombie *User:Eloquence - May 25 10:00 - ''zombies suck'' - diff *User:Brion VIBBER - May 25 10:30 - ''do not!'' - diff Talk:Main Page ...
The text in '' would be the edit comment; the list would show all edits since your last one. Alternatively, a shorter form:
My conversations: *Talk:Zombie (3 new [[edits]] since your last one on ..) *Talk:MainPage (1 new [[edit]] since your last one on ..)
I think we really need a better way to keep track of discussions. People split up discussions across different talk pages because of our nifty message notification, or do stuff like "Please see .. for my response". This should not be necessary.
Regards,
Erik
At 02:56 AM 5/25/2003 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
The idea that pages should "expire" from my watchlist strikes me as, well, not at all desirable. My browser already shows me links to pages I've visited in the past few days,
Does your browser also keep track of whether those pages have been modified since you last visited them? I for one would _love_ to be able to put things on my watchlist in such a way that they automatically get removed after a while; there are many times when I will make an edit to an article and then someone will fix some goof I made a day or two later, and while I'm not really interested enough in the topic to watch it forever I _am_ interested in seeing changes that are a direct result of my own messups.
I've edited thousands and thousands of articles, most of which were of only _passing_ interest to me. I wouldn't want to have to manually clean them out of my watchlist all the time, but it would be nice to have them in there for a few days while the interest is still fresh. If someone puts this functionality in, I will use it with gusto.
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Bryan Derksen wrote:
At 02:56 AM 5/25/2003 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
The idea that pages should "expire" from my watchlist strikes me as, well, not at all desirable. My browser already shows me links to pages I've visited in the past few days,
I've edited thousands and thousands of articles, most of which were of only _passing_ interest to me. I wouldn't want to have to manually clean them out of my watchlist all the time, but it would be nice to have them in there for a few days while the interest is still fresh. If someone puts this functionality in, I will use it with gusto.
I think the idea is very interesting. But I think I would like two things: One watchlist I manualy add pages to, to keep track until I remove them, and the list I activate with watch new/modified for some days.
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