Arun Ganesh <arun.planemad <at> gmail.com> writes: > > 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.
For GSoC, I will be working on making several improvements to the watchlist feature in MediaWiki. You have provided valuable feedback which I've responded to point-by-point below. > 1. My watchlist begins half the page down, because of the watchlist > options box, which btw I have never used or peered into. I'd like to make this box collapsable with hide/show link - that should save screen real estate, but would it sacrifice usage? > 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) For me, (diff|hist) are the first links, followed by the article title... unless I've misunderstood what you meant. > 3. I have never clicked (hist) on the watchlist, I would first see the > (diff) and only then browse the history As Amir noted, statistics for usage of these buttons would be nice. > 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. I really like your idea of changing the way changes are displayed on the watchlist. It reminds me of the like/dislike bar on YouTube. Such a bar would be far more useful than a net change number (which many first time users probably don't understand what it's for.) > 7. Reading each edit summary is really slow. Identifying where it begins > on a line is tough of all the information that precedes it. After implementing watchlist grouping and a number of other improvements, I was interested in creating a narrow column version of the watchlist recent changes, inserting a line break at a set point in the line (probably before the user name). > 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) A diff for the section would be useful. > 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. Maybe we could add a "diff-lite" option that could be turned on by power users? > > 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. Thanks again for your feedback - my GSoC project page is available here and I'd appreciate any feedback you have: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Blackjack48/GSOC_proposal_for_watchlist_impro vements I will incorporate your suggestions into my project within the next few days. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
