Help talk:Watchlist/Archive 6

Archive 1

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Archive 6

Archive 7

Common watchlists

There is proposal at the strategy wiki for common watchlists, see also Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Common watchlists. Cenarium (talk) 17:30, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

New stylesheet?

Has someone just produced a new stylesheet for watchlists? In the last hour or two I am suddenly seeing my watchlist, & pages such as WP:WATCH, with a different format, with the menu items which normally sit at the top of the page moved to the left. David Biddulph (talk) 14:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Belay my last question. The problem seems to have gone away, so perhaps I had a corrupt file somewhere? David Biddulph (talk) 14:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Grouping by days is very annoying

Is there any gadget or tool out there that would give a watchlist that actually shows all changes within a specified period instead of breaking it up by days within that period? It is very annoying and time consuming to see an article that happened to end in a vandalized state at the end of a day; the darn watchlist diff seems to indicate the article is still vandalized even though the next day all that was cleaned-up. Daily diffs must die! --mav (talk) 22:18, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Watching pages function not working properly

So lately I've been editing via Huggle, doing a lot of reverts on dozens of articles. I changed my preferences so that I don't automatically watch pages I edit or create. That seems to work for my Huggle edits, but when I edit a page out of Huggle I still watch the pages I edit or create. This just happened when I manually fixed some vandalism, using Twinkle, in Charles Dickens and warned the vandalizer. My Huggle edits to that page did not cause me to watch it, while my Twinkle edits caused me to watch both that page and the IP I warned.

What might be happening here? Anyone know? Thanks, JohnnyB256 (talk) 21:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I have never used Twinkle or Huggle but I will guess an answer :P Sounds like Twinkle doesn't respect the preferences (it can't check them). According to the documentation for Twinkle you can set it so it doesn't watch pages, by changing "true" to "false" for a couple of things and using "[ ]" instead of a list of stuff. You may need to manually install Twinkle to change the defaults. You could ask at the Twinkle page, or the Help desk for further help.--Commander Keane (talk) 08:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

That seems to be it. Thanks very much.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 15:20, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Help Page Needs Updating

This section appears to be wrong.

Each line shows details of each edit: whether minor (m), whether made by a bot (b), the time, a link to the page, a link to the difference ("diff") made by the edit in question, a link to the page history ("hist"), the editor's user name or IP address, the increase (green) or decrease (red) in the number of bytes, e.g. (+76), (-590) or, if over 1,000, in bold: (+1,365), (-2,412), and the edit summary.

On my watchlist, the increase/decrease turns bold after 500 (or so I presume). Is my watchlist an abberation or was the point where it turns bold changed and the section not updated with it? Secondly, is it the number of bytes added or deleted that shows on the watchlist, or is it the number of characters (or are the two identical)? --Thejadefalcon^{Sing your song}_{The bird's seeds} 14:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I have it as bold after 500; I've had a +501 bolded, but a +464 remained normal. For the most part, bytes and characters are the same, but I'm not sure; it counts every character you type, including markup (though when you type the four tildes to sign something, that gets expanded to the full code, and thus increases the size of the edit like this one). Aurora Illumina 23:31, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I would have just altered it myself, but I wasn't sure. --Thejadefalcon^{Sing your song}_{The bird's seeds} 23:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure? I've seen major edits (as in greater than Δ500 characters) be non-bold. -RadicalOne•^{Contact Me}•_{Chase My Tail} 02:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

500 bytes seems to be how it is for me. Gary King (talk) 02:51, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Do you use monobook? Maybe it varies? --Thejadefalcon^{Sing your song}_{The bird's seeds} 09:38, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

No, the bold appears to be hardcoded into the HTML as opposed to allowing the CSS to manipulate it, meaning that no matter what skin you use, it will always be bold if it's 500 or more bytes. Gary King (talk) 14:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Adding accounts to watchlist

Is there any way to add accounts to your watchlist, so they go on your watchlist when they edit? There are several people who vandalize over and over, despite warnings, and I would like a way to keep my eye on them. --The High Fin Sperm Whale (Talk • Contribs) 04:57, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I think there is no technical solution for this yet. Looking in the Help desk archive I found this. http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org is where to check for feature requests, but I haven't been able to open it in some weeks. Given the popularity of this question something should be added to the Help page. It would be a great feature too :-) --Commander Keane (talk) 05:40, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Generally, if I think the vandal is serious, I keep their contributions log open in a seperate tab until either a) they're blocked or b) they've been inactive for half an hour or so. It's the best method I've been able to figure out for now as it lets me rollback whatever they do in seconds, even if it's for a page I usually wouldn't touch with a twenty-foot barge pole. --Thejadefalcon^{Sing your song}_{The bird's seeds} 12:22, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Number of watchers

I had a hard time finding information regarding the "Number of watchers" feature, currently accessible from the top of every 'history' page. I eventually found a hint of the info at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Create a counter of people watching a page. I was wondering if there were any better locations to point curious people towards, eg a signpost article or VPR thread or bugzilla entry or similar, and if that could then be mentioned in this projectpage. Thanks.

Relatedly, there was a thread about watchlisting not equal to activelywatching, at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive_57#Ignore watchlisting by inactive users recently. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:46, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. I came here looking for the same information, and would also be interested in reading more if more existed. Blue Rasberry 22:22, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Besides the number of watchers, however their status may be defined, it would be informative to have measurements of watchfulness; for example how many diffs have been looked at in the past week or month, or since the twentieth or hundredth newest edit. Jim.henderson (talk) 08:58, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Multiple languages on one watchlist?

I have pages from multiple languages that I regularly follow, but I can't seem to get them together on one watchlist. It wants to put them on separate lists for each language (very tedious for many languages). Even if I manually type in a foreign-language page on my English watchlist... as I save the page, the software automatically removes it from my English page, assuming, I think, that it's doing me a favor. Am I missing something obvious here? Tom Hulse (talk) 22:47, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I didn't even know you were able to view pages from other languages in the English Wikipedia. How do you do this? Gary King (talk) 01:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm not grasping the extent of practical separation between the different languages on Wikipedia. I wonder what the reason for separation might be, especially since they are all in the process of being interlinked back & forth between each other & WikiMedia Commons. To answer your question Gary I'll point to my favorite page, for the plant genus Brugmansia. Notice in lower left of that page under "languages" there are about a dozen links. I can go from the English main Brugmansia page to the one in Dutch, and from there to the Dutch page for one of the subordinate species, Brugmansia arborea, in Dutch, then jump to the Spanish site for Brugmansia arborea, then back to English, etc., etc. Each language has a different perspective on the species, and unique information to add, and the group as a whole is so much more powerful than one cell. They are all interlinked through a formal Wikipedia template, and I use them all. So my question is, what practical advantage is there in having separate watchlists, preferences, etc., that I can't even check by direct link from one to the other? Is this separation of different language wikis arbitrary, or is there a practical advantage that I don't see? Tom Hulse (talk) 01:29, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The advantage is that each wiki is for a different audience; in this case, people who speak different languages. Each wiki should ideally be separate from one another in terms of content, meaning that an article in one language's wiki should not be dependent on content from another. But of course as you say, that's usually not the case. It definitely is not an arbitrary separation. I assume you speak both English and Dutch; many people only speak English and no other second language, for instance, so they only stick with the English Wikipedia. Gary King (talk) 02:50, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Separate in one sense, yes of course, but to what extent is appropriate? Wikipedia is international in many respects; I think it is far more integrated in practical use than you infer. For instance the last three editors that I have conversed with regarding their edits have been from (primarily) different languages than English, but were editing on the English version of Wikipedia. Also the language links I mentioned before are formally sanctioned under Wikipedia templates, and they criss-cross these many language wikis together, around, and back again. I am an English speaker who has a command of no other language, so I must muddle through with translators & help from various native speakers because I do have expertise in one small area of botany that can help in many languages. However I would wager that the majority of non English-first WP users are actually multi-lingual. Are we discouraging them from contributing in their other languages? If we said that Wikipedia was set up to conveniently edit for only one language (as would be appropriate for many Americans), wouldn't that seem a little similar to the Anglo-centric bias that we are so often warned about on WP?

When you say "Each wiki should ideally be separate from one another in terms of content, meaning that an article in one language's wiki should not be dependent on content from another", I think I have to respectfully disagree. :) The ideal is really the opposite. Encyclopedic-type facts, 99% of the time, are equally true in any language, and the ideal is for many more editors, throughout the world, to be able to lend their expertise & local flavor for a more complete, more interesting, and more perfect article. If they can't easily follow articles in more than one language, aren't we discouraging the worldwide mass of multilinguals from their full potential of contributions? Tom Hulse (talk) 05:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like another feature yet to be implemented, see Bug 3525.--Commander Keane (talk) 05:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Bug in hide bot edits

If you check the hide bot edits checkbox (and probably others), and you don't check Expand watchlist to show all changes in your watchlist, pages with previous conventional edits are not listed properly in your watchlist. From what I've found out, that is due to an old bug in the software (SQL) that nobody has fixed yet. I think that should be mentioned in this page as a caveat. --Jotamar (talk) 23:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
Has the bug been fixed yet? Keyboard mouse (talk) 20:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

No, it hasn't, I've just checked it. --Jotamar (talk) 15:07, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Then, we need someone to notice it and fix it. Keyboard mouse (talk) 00:04, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I created T25309. Svick (talk) 16:20, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Now has it been fixed yet? Keyboard mouse (talk) 23:52, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Watching a section only?

It would be very useful to be able to watch only a specific section of a page, such as a specific discussion in a discussion page. Is this possible? This issue was also discussed back in 2008 on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_talk:Watching_pages/Archive_4#Watching_a_section_only but at that time it didn't seem to be possible. David.hkmt (talk) 08:37, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Let me echo this idea. It would be particularly useful for sub-articles on pages such as WP:ANI and WP:RS/N JakeInJoisey (talk) 15:20, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

This is planned in the LiquidThreads, but who knows when they will be implemented. Svick (talk) 20:32, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you both for answering. Now I understand that it doesn't exist yet so there is no reason for me to spend more time "searching for the feature". David.hkmt (talk) 11:11, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Displaying Changes Older Than 30 Days

Is there a way to make the watchlist display changes older than 30 days? Keyboard mouse (talk) 01:48, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

The edits in watchlist are taken from recent changes, that are kept only for 30 days, so the answer is no. Svick (talk) 02:31, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed that the watchlist can display changes older than 30 days, but it doesn't because the watchlist is dependent on the List of Recent Changes. Keyboard mouse (talk) 20:16, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Not displaying multiple edits to an article

Please excuse me if I have missed an option, but my watchlist only displays a single entry for a page, even if it has been edited several times that day. Is this a bug or intended behaviour? Thanks Alex Stacey (talk) 16:50, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

In your preferences, go to the “Watchlist” tab and check “Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent”. Svick (talk) 01:09, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Alex Stacey (talk) 15:17, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Watchlist notifications

Is there a way of suppressing all the messages that appear at the top of the watchlist? It seems like every time I come to view my watchlist there's a new message. I don't want to see any more notices permanently. --Bill ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Adding #watchlist-message { display: none } to your user CSS and then bypassing your cache will hide them. Svick (talk) 00:23, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Redirects in Watchlist

Is there a way to label redirects when your are in the "edit watchlist" section, that way I can know how many actual pages I am watching. I create lots of redirects, and I would like to watch them but I also want to know how many articles I am watching?Sadads (talk) 14:14, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Abbreviations and legend for minor edits

I'm just making the change from MonoBook to Vector. I've avoided it until now because I haven't much felt like determining which scripts work and which ones don't. Some that don't are those relating to the legend for minor, new, and bot edits on the Watchlist. At /Archive 5#Underlines on minor edits, someone provided additions to Custom.CSS that removed the legend and the underlining. Unfortunately, they do not work for Vector. Does anyone know what to do? -Rrius (talk) 22:06, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

The code that is there should work (I use it myself). Didn't you forget to bypass your cache? Svick (talk) 22:34, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Oy. I thought I had, but apparently not. Thanks. *hangs head in shame* -Rrius (talk) 22:37, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Detection of additions to a category

The text "Detection of additions to a category" is linked to Help:Category#Detection of additions to a category, but this doesn't seem to be a valid section of the Help page. Could someone please fix this? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 05:35, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I changed the link to point to the section "Related Changes" with categories that talks about this (and I added my tool there). Svick (talk) 11:46, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Watchlist dropping articles

My watchlist occasionally drops an article from its list -- ie, on its own, so that I have to navigate to a page and click the star again. Is there something I'm missing here? Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask, I did a quick search of archives with no luck. Any help is appreciated. -PrBeacon (talk) 03:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Enabling Enhanced Recent Changes ?

Under Help:Watching pages#Options, it states that an "enhanced" display mode may be enabled by a script. I tried adding:

importScript('http://meta.wikimedia.org/skins-1.5/common/enhancedchanges.js');

to my User:Al-Andalusi/monobook.js, then bypassed the cache but it didn't work. Any help on getting it to work is appreciated. Thanks. Al-Andalusi (talk) 19:11, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Interlanguage links

Is there a way to add interlanguage links to one's watchlist using JavaScript? F. F. Fjodor (talk) 20:40, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Hiding most bot edits

Is it possible to hide bot edits except those by a certain user? The reason is most bot edits just clutter up my watchlist, but I want to see those from SineBot, as they indicate a user adding something to the talk page. –CWenger (^ • @) 03:14, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Figured out how to do it with some custom JavaScript. If anybody is interested they can check it out at User:CWenger/vector.js. –CWenger (^ • @) 06:13, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Viewing Talk pages on watchlist

My watchlist always says it is excluding talk pages, however there is no option to have them included. Am I missing an option button somewhere? It would be nice to know when someone responds to my posts in those pages. Any help is much appreciated.DesertPhox (talk) 19:09, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

When you watch a page you're automatically watching its talk page too, you can't disable that. The "excluding talk pages" is referring to the number of watched pages. F. F. Fjodor (talk) 21:05, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Suraj.yadav09, 19 May 2011

Request you to edit the article.

Mr. Suraj Yadav 07:19, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

 Not done Provide a specific request and change. CTJF83 16:48, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

do italics have any meaning?

While editing my watchlist I noticed that some articles have italicized titles while others are plaintext. Is there a reason for this? Do the italics have some meaning or is it just some parsing error? Cliff (talk) 03:25, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Italicised pages are redirects. McLerristarr | Mclay1 10:01, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Aha. That makes sense, thanks. Cliff (talk) 11:22, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Two different messages

Why is the message telling you a page has been added to your watchlist sometimes at the top of the page and sometimes it takes you to another page, just containing the message? McLerristarr | Mclay1 10:06, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Nithyamfin, 23 July 2011

Stock Broking, Technical analysis, Technical Calls, Fundamental Calls

Nithyamfin (talk) 12:48, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. Jnorton7558 (talk) 13:44, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

haberial.in

--Huzurli (talk) 22:43, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

http://haberial.in/

güncel flaş haberlerin mekanı araştırma geliştirme sizin sayfanız Huzurli (talk) 22:43, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. --Jnorton7558 (talk) 00:11, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Annoying reminders at the top of my watchlist, and on Wikipedia in general

Does anyone know how I might permanently disable any notices on my watchlist? They appear at the top of the page and have to be dismissed. I find them to be nothing more than a pain in the neck, and would rather I never saw them again. And what about the messages that appear on normal wikipedia pages, such as the recent survey requests? Can they also be disabled? Parrot of Doom 09:55, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Watch button doesn't work--says "Watching..." but doesn't add the page to watchlist

Mediawiki 1.17. I have 3 installations of 1.17, and on the first one the watch button works perfectly, but on the other two it just says "Watching..." when I click it. If I right-click the link and choose "open in new tab" then it works in the new tab. What could be causing this problem? All 3 sites are configured identically, except for the usergroup permissions. Could permissions possible affect the functionality of the watch button? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MonsterTrike (talk • contribs) 17:14, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

More Than One Watchlist?

Since the effective limit for watchlists is approximately 9800 pages, is it possible to have more than one watchlist? Allen (talk) 23:03, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

No, but the first paragraph at Help:Watching pages#Alternatives to watchlists describes how to get round this. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:01, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

New format for watchlists?

Is there a new format for user watchlists? Is there a way to go back to the old version? Allen (Morriswa) (talk) 21:50, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I guess this refers to your problem at Wikipedia:Help desk#Wikipedia is not working correctly, probably caused by [1] where you imported User:Ais523/catwatch.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:35, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

What are the green stars for?

Now all of a sudden there are green stars on my watchlist on almost every entry. Why? --Hammersoft (talk) 21:06, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

It means the page has been edited since you last visited it. There is currently experimentation with a way to indicate this. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 126#Watchlist - bold letter article titles! The green stars may not stay either. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:11, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep it, please. Or go back to bold. I slightly prefer the bold over the star, but either is a big improvement over a lack of indication whether I have already seen the changed version. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:25, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

• So now the software keeps track of what pages you've visited? It'd be nice if somewhere on the page it actually told you what the green stars are for. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:34, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
• Uhg. And now the green stars are gone. Am I hallucinating or are the developers fielding things as haphazardly as they like without any oversight by anyone other than a programmer???? --Hammersoft (talk) 22:16, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

The bolding was discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 83#Enable "Show changes since last visit" on watchlist. Many interface settings are in the MediaWiki namespace which can be edited by any admin. The green star was added to MediaWiki:Common.css in [2] after many complaints about the bolding. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:57, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

So, as of right now, can I turn the bolding/stars off from the settings page, or is it still only possible via CSS? -BlameRuiner (talk) 12:41, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Other way around, I think. The program was written this way years ago, and other wikis have been happily using this feature for years. A decision was made earlier this year to implement it here, but hundreds of Admins have the power to change the option and several did so, without consulting each other. Which is to say, it's too many supervisors able to meddle without thinking, rather than programmers running amok in cooking up pleasant features. Jim.henderson (talk) 02:18, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

A little off topic but I would deary love to have the opposite of the "Only show edits that are latest revisions" option in my contributions page. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:08, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

See User:Markhurd/hidetopcontrib. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:17, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I would just like someone to stop changing it back and forth, then tell us exactly what everything means. I used to get bold for edits the happened after I last visited my watch list. Now it looks like it bolds everything anyone else ever did, and doesn't bold any of my edits. Just please decide what you are going to do, then do it, then document it somewhere (not on an archived talk page) instead of flip-flopping. Don Lammers (talk) 19:48, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't want bold or stars. I can remember on my own just fine... Smarkflea (talk) 23:06, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I reckon having the article be bold when somebody edits is an excellent idea. It should be kept.Mjs1991 (talk) 13:37, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I also support the Bold when edited protocol, which we had briefly here. It's useful at Commons, and would be useful here. --Pete Tillman (talk) 01:00, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

This topic is a subject of an RFC at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Watchlist survey and is under discussion in various pages. Perhaps other editors will compile a list of relevant discussions. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:38, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

What is going on?

Why change soemthing that doesn't need changing? I went to check and edit my "watchlist" as I normally do and when I "clicked" on "You have 1,014 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages)", I am redirected to this Help page. I do not need Help, I need my old watchlist format so that I can edit my watchlist. Therefore, and even though it may seem as a contradiction, I must ask you to "Help" me in this issue. Tony the Marine (talk) 18:14, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

• Never mind. I don't know how, but the problem has been solved. Take care you all. Tony the Marine (talk)

Disable confirmation dialogue when watching a page?

Is there any way for me to skip that annoying confirmation prompt which asks if I really want to add a page to my watchlist, and go back to the old behaviour whereby a page was added immediately when I said I wanted to watch it? Watching/unwatching is an innocuous action, trivially reversible if a mistake is made, so I've never understood why it was felt necessary to augment the procedure with an extra confirmation step. — Richwales 17:31, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

It never asks confirmation from me, so must be some setting under "My Preferences" I think. - JohnnyWiki (talk) 18:19, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not aware of a preference to add such a confirmation step. Maybe you add pages using some script instead of the default way. What is your skin and how do you add a page to your watchlist? I have the default Vector skin and click the star tab to the right of the history tab. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:10, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm using Monobook. I'm also using the "Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar" gadget — this moves the watch/unwatch function to a drop-down menu item under the "page" tab at the top of the screen. Additionally, I'm using Twinkle.

I do see a difference in the watch/unwatch behaviour when I use this gadget (it gives me a separate screen asking me if I want to watch/unwatch), as opposed to when I don't use this gadget (it does the watch/unwatch immediately, adding a notice near the top of the page, but without leaving the page). I would obviously prefer the latter behaviour — but I'm not willing to give up the page/user options gadget because, without it, all the extra Twinkle tabs stretch way off the right-hand edge of my browser window.

So, I guess that means I should bring up my issue with the maintainers of the drop-down menu gadget, right? — Richwales 19:50, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

After poking around the drop-down menu gadget and the MediaWiki "watch" API, it appears the problem is that the drop-down menu gadget is not supplying a "watch token" parameter (added to the API a few months ago) as part of its "action=watch" or "action=unwatch" call. The default watch/unwatch button, on the other hand, does include the watch token value. I assume, again, that I'll need to bring up this issue with the maintainer of the drop-down menu gadget. — Richwales 20:40, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Documentation at mw: is often missing or behind. The token is older than the February addition to mw:API:Watch. There is already a small discussion at User talk:Haza-w/Drop-down menus#Remove this page from your watchlist? It seems like the right place but may need more attention. I don't know how to make the fix. Haza-w seems inactive. The discussion was started by Gadget850 who is also an admin. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:29, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Suspicious page size change calculation

Spratly Islands is on my watchlist. I have this entry for 22 June 2012:

19:00 (cur | prev) . . (+34,288)‎ . . CommonsDelinker (talk | contribs) (Removing "Vietnam_Spratly_island.jpg", it has been deleted from Commons by Martin H. because: copyright violation.)

The diff[3] linked from prev shows no changes. As its name implies, User:CommonsDelinker doesn't add content to pages; it typically removes one wikilink of about 100 bytes. It is curious that the watchlist entry shows a change of +34,288 bytes for this edit. Certes (talk) 13:42, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

It's a bug which has occurred on many pages. 34,288 is the page size. It's discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Diff/watchlist difficulties. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, it's good to know that someone is already addressing the problem there. Certes (talk) 10:16, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Watch both main and talk page

I guess I missed the memo. Since when have Watched pages automatically included the associated talk pages? Can that be disabled so we don't need to follow every talk page associated with those which we watch. NECRAT^{Speak to me} 09:27, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

That's been the behaviour for years; here is a version of the help page from 2006. There was a discussion a few months ago (where?) about allowing the two pages to be watched separately, but, as far as I know, nothing has been done about implementing it. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:39, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

It's possible to separate the two, if you manually edit your watchlist. I've done it once, to ignore a high-traffic Talk page, but monitor the low-traffic article. Some discussions are just too upsetting to even watch the edit summaries. --Lexein (talk) 09:47, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

See the section Help:Watching pages#Hiding pages from a watchlist for details on how to hide pages and/or talkpages. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:24, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

New system? Where when what

1. People are wondering at WP:VPT#Watch/unwatch box, where the new system came from (the overlay balloon below the searchbox, instead of the old wide-box that pushes the entire page-content down), and asking if they can personally disable/revert this new feature. Please reply there and/or here.
2. The note at Help:Watching pages#cite_note-0 links to the non-existent http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/ajaxwatch.js and the links in WP:CLASS to ajaxwatch.js (http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/skins/common/ajaxwatch.js?view=markup) are also kaput. (possibly related to point#1, and should be updated)

P.s. My only guess was MediaWikiWiki:User:Blackjack48/GSOC proposal for watchlist improvements reported on at WP:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-08-13/Technology report#Google Summer of Code: Watchlist improvements but I can't trace what got changed.

Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 23:52, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

How can watchlist notices be restored?

The old trick of deleting Wikipedia watchlist cookies doesn't work. --Lexein (talk) 16:19, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 22 October 2012

Navunaveen (talk) 06:31, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Not done: You have not explained what you want to be changed. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:47, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Subtitles - How to add?

How to add subtitles to the video? Is the video's talk site [4] the one to ask? Thank u4 reply.

--Monowysiwyg (talk) 21:50, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Request for updated images

Could someone please update the images on this help page to show "Talk, Preferences, Watchlist" instead of "My talk, My preferences, My watchlist"? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:33, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Technical glitch with the Watchlist

I recently noticed that my Watchlist stopped updating at approximately 04:03 February 18, 2013 with any new updates that were made to any articles on my watchlist. I know this to be true due to the fact that I, myself, have made some updates to some of the articles on my watchlist, and the edit that shows up as most recent on my watchlist was the edit that happened before the one I just did. Is there an issue going on with the watchlist that needs to be resolved?

The action I have taken so far, due to the fact that I know that this can most likely not be fixed by any user or administrator on here, is I went to Wikipedia:Contact us and sent an email to the email address provided in that section. Other than that, I do not know where to take this issue. This page does not state anything about how to resolve a technical issue with the watchlist when it is not working as it should, and I highly suggest that we add an additional section to this article detailing how to resolve an issue like this, and/or who to contact and how to contact them if an issue like this happens again in the future. In fact, there could even be some sort of "server maintenance window" happening on Wikimedia's servers that might need to be included in this article, in case the maintenance window happens at the same time each week, etc., just so users/administrators can know when these windows happen, and not be alarmed by them if they do. Steel1943 (talk) 05:11, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The default place for this kind of query is Village Pump (Tech). See Wikipedia:VPT#Watchlist_lag_but_no_notice. There is also an IRC channel for technical stuff.--Commander Keane (talk) 05:22, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to that discussion; it helped me a lot. However, I'm still thinking that there might need to be a section added to this article to possibly direct to that Village Pump page, in case an issue like this happens in the future, or some information of that nature to help other editors in case an issue like this happens. Steel1943 (talk) 05:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

By all means add a link to the Village pump on this help page. Other things can break too though, so maybe a link in a more general place would be better.--Commander Keane (talk) 05:52, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

 Done. Steel1943 (talk) 06:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

"Hide bots" actually means "Hide pages last edited by bots"?

(Hopefully I'm not way off track here.)

When I view my Watchlist, I don't normally use any of the "hide" options, but with that bot doing all the interwiki stuff recently, the "Hide bots" option seemed useful. I assumed that this option would just hide edits by bots, so that as far as my Watchlist was concerned, the most recent edit would be the most recent non-bot edit (and the page would show up on my Watchlist if that edit were in the specified timeframe being viewed).

But apparently, "hide bots" means "hide all pages where the most recent edit was a bot, even if a human edited the page twenty minutes earlier." I realized this when I found that the article Oscar Pistorius was not showing up on my Watchlist when I used the "hide bots" option. Is this how the function is supposed to work, or is this a bug? It's easy for me to imagine why someone would prefer not to see bot edits on their Watchlist. I can't imagine why someone would prefer not to see human edits on their Watchlist simply because a bot edited the page after the human. Theoldsparkle (talk) 18:18, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

That is the current behaviour, even though it's not very helpful. Those "hide" options are only useful if you select the "Enhanced watchlist" option in your preferences - see the Help:Watching pages#Options section. The idea is that you can choose to see all 20 edits made to article X in the last 24 hours, listed one per line on your watchlist display, and then choose to hide the 5 bot edits. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:31, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, that I can understand. Thanks. The current set-up, with the way those options are displayed and described to those using the non-enhanced option, seems not just unhelpful, but anti-helpful; I fear I may have missed important edits when I used the "hide bots" option earlier. It was just luck that I happened to notice the problem today. Theoldsparkle (talk) 19:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Just so you know, I have been troubled with the same dilema, so these posts have helped me also, so thank you. This all reminds me of a similar situation with the so-called "Thehelpfulbot". As in this example from long ago I tucked away for future reference,[5] a vandal hacks up an article with blatant vandalism, removing the Reflist in the process which causes a "cite error" tag. So then "TheHelpfulBot" comes along [6] and immediately puts back the reflist template, but does nothing else, effectively hiding the vandalism from everyone's watchlists. Ironic in that the bot would have been far more "helpful" had it done nothing at all! --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 23:53, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I manage this by using "Navigation popups". I use the "simple watchlist" with all the "Hide" options turned off, so I get only one watchlist line per page. For each one, I hover the mouse over the "hist" link to see all the recent edits. "Works for me"™ -- John of Reading (talk) 07:22, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

This doesn't make sense. It should be "ignore bot edits", it doesn't make sense to not show pages that we last edited by a bot, as there may be several real edits that are relevant. --Iantresman (talk) 14:16, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

That's right. Those "hide" options are only useful if you select the "Enhanced watchlist" option in your preferences. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:24, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Temporary Watchlisting

To all interested, there is currently an RfC on adding expiry options to watchlisted pages. Deadbeef 20:57, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata - tweaking the watchlist display colors

If you have "Show Wikidata" enabled in your Preferences, you may wish to change the visual styling of those lines. (To better separate the 2 streams of information). This is the css class needed, (paste it into your Special:Mypage/vector.css), and two example styles:

- to give each Wikidata line a light-grey background, use:

.wikibase-edit { background-color:#ebebeb; }

- to change the color of the entity links (eg "Q5301194"), use:

A.wb-entity-link { color:#745151; }

Those are the only classes currently available. See Wikipedia:Customizing watchlists for related info. Hope that helps. –Quiddity (talk) 00:07, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Watchlist token

I'm looking to adding a "watch" link to a template of wikiproject links, but noticed that the standard watch tab has a token that is seemingly automatically invoked when a user is logged in. Does anyone know how to get that token so that other "watch" links can be created? VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 07:19, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Watchlist on smartphone - changes, not improvements

I regularly check my watchlist on my (not very) smartphone (Android, Orange San Francisco). But in the last couple of days the appearance has changed totally:

• It defaults to a list of all my watchlist, I have to choose "modified" option to get a list of changes
• It lists all changes in sequence, not grouping together multiple changes to one page
• When I click on a link, I can only see the actual change, with no context
• (Possibly an improvement) there are tabs to click to see "articles", "talk", "other"

It's dreadful. Is this "progress", or is there a way I can revert to my "ain't broke, don't fix it" watch list display - like the one I get on my laptop? PamD 06:47, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure, but I'd suggest looking from or asking at mw:Wikimedia Mobile engineering. (I just searched for "mobile" at meta, and got led to there. The only specific page I could fine was mw:Mobile design/Watchlist view but that hasn't been updated in 7 months). HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 07:05, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion

Is this the place to suggest something regarding watchlists in general? If it isn't, can you point me towards the place where I can? Nick1372 (talk) 02:57, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

It's not the right place but the best place depends on the suggestion. What is it about? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:51, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I wanted to suggest the ability to place article feedback pages on a watchlist. Nick1372 (talk) 04:59, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

That belongs at Wikipedia talk:Article Feedback Tool/Version 5, but see Wikipedia talk:Article Feedback Tool/Version 5#Watching feedback? and other sections. The feature was there in the past but was disabled for performance reasons. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:51, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Nick1372 (talk) 20:43, 23 July 2013 (UTC)