On most wikis new, or "unseen", changes on Watchilist are indicated via boldfacing of the page title. But some wikis, notably English Wikipedia, have customized this system. The English Wikipedia community elected to institute a system that uses a blue dot in the left margin for seen changes and a bright green (3D) dot for unseen changes.
Now that Global Collaboration team is extending the New Filters for Edit Review UX to Watchlist, custom systems like the one on English Wikipedia pose a problem. Specifically, the New Filters UX displays colored dots in the left margin in combination with highlighting to help users understand what colors of highlighting have been applied to edits. Testing shows users find these dots very helpful, particularly when multiple colors have been applied to a particular edit.
After consulting with the community on the best way to resolve this inconsistency, we will be standardizing all wikis (including English) on the following system of indicators:
- Boldfacing of the page title will be standard across all wikis for unseen changes.
- A secondary indicator will be that the dots next to each result in the left margin will be, respectively, hollow or filled to indicate seen vs. unseen status. This has the advantage of being similar with the use of hollow/filled dots in Notifications to similarly indicate read vs. unread states. To be clear, filled dots = unseen; hollow = seen.
- As on Recent Changes, when the "Highlight results" button is in the INACTIVE state: the bullets are displayed in the default (blue-green) color. (Unlike Recent Changes, the dots are hollow or filled to indicate seen/unseen.) See screenshot below.
- When the "Highlight results" button is in the ACTIVE state: the filled/hollow dots are either shown in the highlight color or gray (See screenshot below):
- 1) Dots for results that are highlighted are displayed in the relevant color (using the same set of dot colors as for Recent Changes).
- 2) Dots for results that are not highlighted are shown in gray.
Using a secondary indicator of filled/hollow dots will enable wikis or individuals who dislike boldfacing to customize their display without sacrificing the useful distinction between unseen and seen changes. In addition, the new UX adds new seen/unseen filters, which will enable users to further make that distinction.
| Highlight Off | Highlighting on |
|---|---|
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