I thought of studying my watchlist for a moment to understand why it was
the way it was, and I noticed the following:
1. My watchlist begins half the page down, because of the watchlist
options box, which btw I have never used or peered into.
2. The first link in each item is that of the current article. I have
never clicked this because I might as well go through the changes by using
(diff)
3. I have never clicked (hist) on the watchlist, I would first see the
(diff) and only then browse the history
4. 0 is colored grey making it disappear from the list. But that does
not mean the article never changed, it could be +400 -400 words but the net
is 0. The edit calculation can be highly misleading. I would rather want to
know how many characters were added and how many deletions. Articles which
have only additions are low on my priority list to patrol.
5. Before contacting any user or checking his (contribs), I would
always see what his edit was. I open the (diff) and (contribs) in new tabs.
This could have become integrated because its part of the same task. Same
goes for talk and the user page links littered all over my watchlist
6. Knowing whether a user/ip has a talk page or not is important for me
to identify a newbie or vandal
7. Reading each edit summary is really slow. Identifying where it begins
on a line is tough of all the information that precedes it.
8. I can jump to the specific section directly by clicking the tiny →
but not the section name itself. I have never used this link either as i
would rather see the (diff)
9. The (diff) gives me the diff with the entire article and image loaded
below. In most cases, all the info I need while patrolling is just in the
diff. I only need the article if i want to check if tables/images are
broken.
With that in mind I made this, which would solve most of my issues:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mw-ux-visual_watchlist.png
Let me know if it would work for you as well? I hope to put some more
thought on it and improving the idea.
--
Arun Ganesh
User:planemad
