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 [[ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_Review_Improvements/New_filters_for_edit_review | 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 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&oldid=794697988#New_filters_for_edit_review_Beta_feature:_how_to_show_new_edits_on_watchlists.3F | 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.
- When the user sets a highlight so that a highlight color is applied to a particular edit- As on Recent Changes, the hollow/filled dot for that edit will be displayed in the relevant color (using the same dot colors as for 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 no highlighting is applied to a particular edit, the dot for that edit will be displayed in the default color !!Info here TK from @Pginer-WMF re. the proper color for default, un-highlighted dots. See comment below.!!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.
|Filled/empty bullets|Filled/empty bullets combined with highlighting|
|---|---|
|{F8805084}|{F9014374}|