As promised in the Annual Plan, we will make the New Filters—currently in beta on Watchlist— standard for all wikis by the end of Q4 2017-18 (end of this June). The main task is captured in T181193.
There are currently something like [[ https://edit-analysis.wmflabs.org/beta-enables/#projects=fawiki,nlwiki,ptwiki,plwiki,cswiki,enwiki,dewiki,trwiki,wikidatawiki,ruwiki,frwiki/metrics=RCFilters%20Beta%20Enables | 50K users of the beta ]]; these folks will see no change. And we will offer a New Filters opt-out for Watchlist, just as we did for Recent Changes, so there is an escape for people who wish one. And we will, as before, provide introductory notices to people when they see the new UX for the first time—including specific information about how to opt out (see T195427).
Despite all this, I think we can expect a certain amount of blowback on this release, compared to the release of the New Filters on Recent Changes, for the following reasons:
- Users, who are very sensitive to such things, will notice a small but appreciable difference in load times with the new UI compared to the old. We've done everything we can to reduce this already.
- In usability tests, users tended to see the New Filters as nice but not essential on Watchlist (compared to Recent Changes). This means that any cost (e.g., the slower load) feels more burdensome.
- Watchlist is a more widely used page than Recent Changes.
- Users must, of course, learn the new tools and change their habits accordingly, which takes effort.
For these reasons, we'll need to be thorough in notifying users and explaining the benefits of the new system, so CL help will be essential.