Last modified: 2013-09-26 03:00:26 UTC
would it be possible to allow other people to see the pages you are watching? this would be very useful for WikiProject coordination. to avoid privacy issues, you could have a "public watchlist" and a "private watchlist".. it has been suggested many times that a link from each page "users watching this page", may deter vandals; but understandably, it may attract some to pages that aren't being publicly watched (even though they may be privately watched). is this a conceivable idea?
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.
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?
You need a special page for this? I mean, a simple user subpage ("Pages I'm Watching") wouldn't suffice?
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.
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.