Wikidata:Requests for comment/Remove watchlist summary
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- no consensus --Emu (talk) 12:29, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An editor has requested the community to provide input on "Remove watchlist summary" via the Requests for comment (RFC) process. This is the discussion page regarding the issue.
If you have an opinion regarding this issue, feel free to comment below. Thank you! |
THIS RFC IS CLOSED. Please do NOT vote nor add comments.
I, User:Lectrician1 and User:Lymantria recently enabled a way for you to dismiss the Watchlist summary at the top of your Watchlist:
However, if you click "dismiss", it means that each time load your Watchlist, you'll see the Watchlist summary briefly flash and then hide itself, which can be quite annoying and possibly cause you to mis-click on something below it due to the layout shift.
I'm proposing that we disable the Watchlist summary from showing at all for all users.
I personally visit my Watchlist to see my watched items, not to look at requests for comment, property deletion requests, or property proposals. I learn about those things through subscribing to Wikidata:Status updates and watching those pages. I don't need to see them every time I open my Watchlist. It's just a distraction and forces me to scroll farther. I can disable it now due to a gadget, but it still causes the huge layout shift and is still initially visible. For these reasons, I don't think the watchlist summary should be shown by-default for all users, as they likely have the same concerns as I do and can learn about the things the watchlist summary currently shows in a variety of other, less-annoying ways.
Please put your Support or Oppose below for this change. Lectrician1 (talk) 20:49, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Oppose I think it's important to make some discussions like requests for comments visible to more users than would otherwise find them and the Watchlist summary is a good place for that. On the other hand I do think we could make it shorter. The number of proposals in the different groups doens't seem valuable information to have there. I could also image a system where new entries to that list as far as RFCs and requests for deletion disappear after a week.
There are many users who just create items and edit items in Wikidata. It's useful to expose them to other parts of Wikidata that are more about setting policy as well. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 21:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]- It's useful to expose them to other parts of Wikidata that are more about setting policy as well.
- That is why we have Wikidata:Community portal... Lectrician1 (talk) 21:29, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The problem is that many users don't click on it. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 00:03, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Support; can be permanently suppressed with custom CSS on Special:MyPage/common.css, though. —MisterSynergy (talk) 21:15, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Support; a watchlist should be just that: the.list.of.things.*I*.want.to.watch. Right now 70% of the splash screen is other junk. Anything that needs promoting should go in the Wikidata weekly summary; that is the proper place for inflicting 'important' things on users. Let us just have a watchlist on the watchlist page, huh? --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:37, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The weekly summary only gets read by users who look at the project chat and most don't. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 00:08, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- No..... You can get the weekly summary delivered to your talk page or by email like I do... Lectrician1 (talk) 00:55, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The weekly summary only gets read by users who look at the project chat and most don't. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 00:08, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Support. The watchlist summary is just noise that I skip over 99% of the time. It would be great to not need to scroll past it. Perhaps we could find a compromise, however, between the rather long summary that is currently shown vs. no summary at all. I propose the following changes:
- Remove the list of RFC's and proposed property categories and, instead, only show two links: Wikidata:Requests for comment and Wikidata:Property proposal. This could reduce the header to one line while still exposing users to other parts of Wikidata as @ChristianKl: wants.
- Completely remove the current property deletion requests. It tends to be a lot of items that are not very interesting to most people.
- — The Erinaceous One 🦔 23:55, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Pintoch, Rschen7754: Lectrician1 (talk) 21:40, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Oppose unless the possibility to have it shown is turned into a gadget. The watchlist is a good page for all things that a user might be watching. Having these in different places would cause extra work to go look at them both. Ainali (talk) 21:41, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Ainali A gadget you can enable or is enabled by-default? Lectrician1 (talk) 21:43, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- That doesn't matter to me. Ainali (talk) 22:44, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @Ainali A gadget you can enable or is enabled by-default? Lectrician1 (talk) 21:43, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Oppose, however I sympathize with the frustration that the summary has gotten too big and is not often updated in a timely manner. Maybe it should be slimmed down. --Rschen7754 21:45, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- If you want to follow RfCs, add Wikidata:Requests for comment to your watchlist. If you want to follow property proposals, add Wikidata:Property proposal and/or its sub-pages to your watchlist. IT IS STILL POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO WATCH ALL THIS STUFF WITHOUT INFLICTING IT ON THE REST OF US. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:49, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Neutral I assume I was pinged because I tried to work on this some years ago, but I am neutral since I am no longer active here. Hiding the watchlist summary with custom CSS (
.mw-special-Watchlist .mw-specialpage-summary { display: none }
) just works for me, but it does not help anyone else. In my opinion this watchlist summary is overall a nuisance that people should be able to turn off more easily, as it forces people to scroll quite a lot before seeing their actual watchlist. @Tagishsimon: I cannot see a reason to start shouting about this though. − Pintoch (talk) 04:36, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply] - Support Keep the watchlist pureVicarage (talk) 16:34, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Oppose PMG (talk) 17:05, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- @PMG Reasoning? Lectrician1 (talk) 17:38, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Neutral I use watchlist a lot but the page loading takes such a long time that the additional 0.5 sec needed to scroll down is not significant to me.Vojtěch Dostál (talk) 08:12, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Oppose I like having this quick summary to look at. Maybe it can be controlled using custom CSS to set the parent container to not display (it should prevent the flash). RPI2026F1 (talk) 02:09, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Support while maybe keeping 2 or 3 main links as The-erinaceous-one suggests. See Lectrician1's and Tagishsimon's for ways of still watching these pages for those who want it. --GrandEscogriffe (talk) 16:34, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Info I propose to close this RfC as no consensus after 31 January 2024 (5 aye, 5 nay). Please comment if you don’t agree. --Emu (talk) 20:38, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- fine by me Lectrician1 (talk) 20:47, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]