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Hiding bot edits in the Wikipedia Watchlist also hides edits by humans if done before some bot edit
Closed, DuplicatePublicBUG REPORT

Description

Steps to replicate the issue (include links if applicable):

  • In the Wikipedia Watchlist (EN), click on the Filter changes burger menu
  • There under "Automated contributions" check "Human (not bot)" and leave "Bot" unchecked so it only shows human edits

What happens?:
It also hides items from the Watchlist that were recently edited by a human but shortly thereafter by a bot. This means for example that people can vandalize articles as much as they want and then simply request e.g. Citation bot to fix a few minor issues in the article to hide their changes from people's watchlists.

Moreover, that's certainly not what many users trying to hide bot edits from the watchlist through checking "Human (not bot)" think will happen. I think probably most wouldn't think that this results in human edits not showing up on their watchlist anymore at all if there is some bot edit afterwards. Articles on ENWP get changes very quickly all the time so it's normal there's a few unseen human edits per article which would get hidden.

I found out about this as part of this proposal "A way to filter edits by Citation bot, InternetArchiveBot and OAbot from diffs" because I thought maybe this means making the Watchlist exclude bot edits was already possible. Not only is it not possible – much worse: it is dangerously hiding edits from the Watchlist when many if not most people probably don't expect this to happen and is a vulnerability opening a way for people covertly vandalize articles.

What should have happened instead?:
It should still show the article if it was previously edited by a bot. Probably it should be sorted chronologically according to the last human edit so it would be further down. It would be best if the edit summary shown there was of the last human edit and when one clicks on the diff button it would show the last human edit, not the latest edit which is some bot edit.

Software version (on Special:Version page; skip for WMF-hosted wikis like Wikipedia):

Other information (browser name/version, screenshots, etc.):
Could provide examples like screenshots but I hope it's clear. English Wikipedia, Firefox, normal Javascript Watchlist. This may be less of an issue in slower changes wikis albeit it's also a big problem there, especially since people could use this to hide their changes there as well. Even disabling this filter asap for now would be better than doing nothing about it. A way to filter bot edits from the Watchlist as described would be very useful but I think first the vulnerability of people hiding their edits this way needs to be closed.