Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist
On 9 May 2012 12:17, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com wrote: 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 These days I most often click (hist), less often (diff), and practically never anything else. (hist) is more useful for me on the English Wiktionary because I mostly add translation requests and several bots watch the recent changes feed which result in minor changes to most pages alter, which are of no interest to me. Also it seems that people monitoring the activity also often add other translations. By clicking (hist) I can see 1) If only bots have changed the page since me, in which case I don't need to see a diff. 2) When there were several human edits, which ones were in languages I am interested in. 3) The history page give me a way to get a diff of all changes since my last edit, rather than just the most recent chage. Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail) 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 ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist
On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: 2012/5/9 Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com: I thought of studying my watchlist for a moment to understand why it was the way it was, and I noticed the following: Thanks a lot for the review. The watchlist is like an inbox for me and for a lot of other people, although better statistic is needed to know how many. See comments 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 visit that page so frequently that I just got used to that. I use this JavaScript snippet to hide those options by default: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Collapsible_ChangesList_options There is also this other script https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Snippets/Unwatch_from_watchlist but it is not very convenient because most of the time you don't go to Special:Watchlist just because you want to unwatch things. Those links take a lot of space. Best regards, Helder ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist
From: Aaron Pramana aa...@sociotopia.com To: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist Message-ID: loom.20120510t020226-...@post.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 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. Thanks Amir. Aaron, that is awesome, I'd be happy to help you out with the visual design and css. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist
On 13 May 2012 11:38, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com wrote: From: Aaron Pramana aa...@sociotopia.com To: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist Message-ID: loom.20120510t020226-...@post.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 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. Thanks Amir. Aaron, that is awesome, I'd be happy to help you out with the visual design and css. Just to give our GSoC participant a bit of a heads up, a fairly routine change that was made to watchlists on Enwp a few days ago (and has been implemented fairly widely on other projects) created a disproportionate amount of confusion and reaction.[1] It might be a good idea to mine the thread linked below and co-opt multiple users in that thread to act as beta testers for the proposed improvements. Oh, and it reminds us that changes to the common.css should be tested on multiple skins. Looking forward to seeing the end result! Risker/Anne [1] non-permanent link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Watchlist_-_bold_letter_article_titles.21 ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist
Risker risker.wp at gmail.com writes: Just to give our GSoC participant a bit of a heads up, a fairly routine change that was made to watchlists on Enwp a few days ago (and has been implemented fairly widely on other projects) created a disproportionate amount of confusion and reaction.[1] It might be a good idea to mine the thread linked below and co-opt multiple users in that thread to act as beta testers for the proposed improvements. Oh, and it reminds us that changes to the common.css should be tested on multiple skins. Looking forward to seeing the end result! Risker/Anne [1] non-permanent link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Watchlist_- _bold_letter_article_titles.21 Thanks for the advice! I'm going to post a prioritized feature/fix list and put out a call for testers shortly. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
[Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist
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 ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist
2012/5/9 Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com: I thought of studying my watchlist for a moment to understand why it was the way it was, and I noticed the following: Thanks a lot for the review. The watchlist is like an inbox for me and for a lot of other people, although better statistic is needed to know how many. See comments 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 visit that page so frequently that I just got used to that. But every time I teach people to use Wikipedia, it strikes me again. Also notice that various projects often customize the area above the list. Many frequent editors visit this page all the time, so it's a good place for community notifications and various utility links. Of course, different projects do it completely differently and complain when MediaWiki updates break their customizations :) It may be worth to research what projects put there, and add the most common customizations to the core software. 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) I frequently click it... but actually I mostly do it to remove the page from the watchlist if I lost interest in it. There are gadgets that do it directly from the watchlist, but I got used to the old way, and I guess that I also want to take that one last goodbye look :) Click statistics can be useful here, too. 3. I have never clicked (hist) on the watchlist, I would first see the (diff) and only then browse the history I click the history link all the time. It's much more useful than the diff link. The diff link shows only the last edit, and there may have been others. 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. A half-related comment: The MindTouch wiki software shows the number of words added and removed. It's used in the Mozilla Developer Network, for example: https://developer.mozilla.org/index.php?title=en/Localization_Quick_Start_Guide/Initial_setupaction=history 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 +1, in general, but this also has a dark side: there are trigger-happy patrollers who revert most edits by user with red links. The people who research participation and editor retention statistics (Brandon and others) may have a lot of data about this. 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) I use that link frequently. Linking the section name is a very good idea. 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. Very, very nice. Watchlist needs revamping and this is a good direction. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual watchlist
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
