Hi,
A discussion has started on-wiki about a global watchlist, and other related improvements to the watchlist feature.
A few people have started to organize the various bug reports about watchlists, but there is still much to do before we have a clear & prioritized vision of what the watchlist feature should become.
Improving a feature as used and central as the watchlist has the potential of drastically improving the users' experience, but is also likely to cause an outcry if proper research isn't done in advance, given that everyone has their own workflow.
One comment that came up during the discussion was that people didn't want to spend time working on research, specifications & prioritization of features unless they had some sort of guarantee that their work wouldn't just be ignored and rot in a corner because nobody's interested in actually implementing the changes. I think this is a fair and understandable request: nobody wants their hard work to go to waste.
Therefore, if a few developers could declare their interest in tackling the watchlist issue in the foreseeable future, it would help arouse interest and enthusiasm from users, and motivate them to organize user research in order to design a better watchlist feature.
I don't think we need a formal pledge or commitment; a simple declaration of interest would imho be enough to get started. The specifics can be ironed out later.
So, I have two questions: * Does this make sense? * Are you interested in improving the watchlist feature within, say, the next 6 months?
More information:
Discussion: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Watchlist_wishlist Draft product page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Watchlist_wishlist
-- Guillaume Paumier