jimmy.collins wrote:

There is an extension
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/Watchers/ but it
don't differ between public and private.

Changing severity to enhancement because it's a feature reuqest - not a bug.

ml4macdo wrote:

i see; so that watchers extension is unlikely to be implemented in English
Wikipedia.. but what about one that distinguishes public and private, is there a
chance for that?

robchur wrote:

You need a special page for this? I mean, a simple user subpage ("Pages I'm
Watching") wouldn't suffice?

dunc_harris wrote:

Yes, you can make a public watchlist by creating a subpage, e.g.
[[User:Example/Publicwatchlist]] and then by going to
[[Special:Recentchangeslinked/User:Example/Publicwatchlist]] which will show the
related changes.

Though obviously this is non-standard, and perhaps a little inelegant. When bug
1492 http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1492 multiple watchlists is
implemented, maybe it would be possible to make some watchlists public and some not.

robchur wrote:

How is it nonstandard or inelegant? The reason watchlists are implemented as now
is to keep them private. You can do a public watchlist in the manner described
above.

It would be nice to have it all incorporated as part of a new watchlist
mechanism, but it isn't going to be critical, is it?

(In reply to comment #5)

How is it nonstandard or inelegant? The reason watchlists are implemented as now
is to keep them private. You can do a public watchlist in the manner described
above.

It would be nice to have it all incorporated as part of a new watchlist
mechanism, but it isn't going to be critical, is it?

Seconded, and this just seems to feature creep and add more complexity without
justifiable gain.

Add dependency on bug 5875

Changing component to "Watchlist"

• Bug 21223 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

bug 21223 is not a duplicate, it's for common watchlists, centralized and maintained by users or bots with appropriate permissions, and not necessarily public in any case - described in full at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Common_watchlists.

Common watchlists would allow for coordination though, it's even their prime motivation. So with this in consideration, as above, I don't see the need for a public personal watchlist and agree it would have some downsides not worth the implementation cost.

The Education extension allegedly covers the "shared watchlists" feature. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-February/076704.html
That part should perhaps be split out of the extension and integrated in core?

The mobile team is also working on Gather, which has a similar public list concept, though more oriented towards readers (at least for the initial version).

It would be good to have some core support for this.

Readers don't exist. I'd rather say the proposal mentioned above doesn't have a clear use case yet.

I'm going to make this happen. I've been hacking on an editor version of Gather in spare time. Hoping we can get together at Wikimedia-Hackathon-2015 and make this happen.

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Common_watchlists Maybe a nitpick but there's no mention that history actions need to show up in User Contribution History too, and everything should be Oversightable. Extra care is needed for any user-controlled content in Special. It doesn't get the automatic infrastructure that exists for wiki pages.

If this does get built, I'm not sure the current proposal provides the desired functionality. Or maybe there needs to be a second kind of shared watchlist with different functionality? This proposal doesn't create a "shared watchlist", it creates a shared list of pages that anyone can add to their own watchlist. It creates redundant parallel watching, not coordinated watching.

How about a list that has *it's own* last access date for each page listing. I check the list and see [apple] has an unreviewed new change (based on the list's access date). I check [apple], I see it's good. I then click [apple] as reviewed on the shared watchlist. My last-access-date for [apple] gets copied into the watchlist date for [apple] (only if my date is newer). My username gets copied onto the list next to [apple], identifying me as the reviewer. Bob checks the list and sees no new changes for [apple] because I already reviewed it. If Bob looks further he finds my name next to the no-new-change [apple] listing. If he trusts me, we just coordinated and saved 30 people from redundant review work. If Bob doesn't trust me, he can re-check [apple]. If [apple] is bad then Bob can red-flag [apple] in the shared list. Bob can post elsewhere that I'm a bad reviewer. It would be up to the community to deal with that.

Thanks for the elaboration on the exact story for a shared watchlist concept Alsee. As you mentioned, your scenario is different from what is proposed on this ticket, both are needed, however, they serve different causes, as you mentioned.

Scheduled in https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Hackathon_2015/Program&action=history