Wikipedia talk:Special:UnwatchedPages

This only goes up through 1 alphabetically. There must be more. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-21 16:42

I think it stops at a thousand pages, I got up to 2002 in Iraq or so.--HereToHelp 01:39, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Purpose

What's the point of this page? Apparently, it was installed at Jimbo's behest... Dan100 (Talk) 16:50, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

It's a great way to make sure that every page is on someone's watchlist. Vandalism or bad edits often survive Recent Changes but are caught by someone with the article on their watchlist. There's a number of enhancements that can be made to this tool, but I think it's an excellent start. Carbonite | Talk 16:55, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I've found 3 copyvios and 3 vandalisms so far. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-21 17:19

I was quite impressed by the guy who titled an article ''like this'', which made it great fun to try and link to... I've picked up at least one probable dodgy article, too.

On a more prosaic note, could this list be regenerated every few days? It might let us start making a dent in most of it - I've added maybe 150 of the pages here, but there's only a thousand up. Shimgray | talk | 00:30, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Does anybody else think most of the top level domains (for ex: .kz) do not need their own article and instead should be in a list if at all? - Taxman ^Talk 17:24, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• No, I think they're mostly worth dealing with eventually. A few - the ones which are essentually dead - could probably be listed individually, but if nothing else each one is likely to need a couple of individual external links, and enough of them are detailed enough that we can expand them over time... Shimgray | talk | 00:28, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

About a year ago I thought a good way of dealing with vandals would be for all articles to be on someone's watchlist. But now with less than 1,000 daily users (at a guess) and over 800,000 articles, this is clearly impossible.

Central vandal patrolling, enhanced by the usage of stuff like the IRC channels and CDVF, is the only realistic way to control vandalism (imo). We just need better tools (which are coming) and more people. And maybe IP editing turned off... Dan100 (Talk) 10:35, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Actually, if there are really 1,000 daily users, that would make for only 800-1000 articles on each watchlist, which is easily manageable, since only a minority of those articles are changed daily. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-22 13:15

Erm, well, agree to disagree on that I think... Good luck on you quest though, if it works out will undoubtedly enhance Wikipedia. Dan100 (Talk) 23:10, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Live changes

Apparently, the page will soon be changed to create a new list of unwatched pages every time the page is loaded. Try to keep the number of refreshes on the page low. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-22 02:44

• Cool. That way we won't be stuck watching the same pages at the front of the alphabet while vandals create hoaxes/autobiographies with names like "Zzzack...". I suppose once, if ever, we get all the pages watched, we ought to go back to cached mode for database concerns. — FREAK OF NUR_xTURE (TALK) 09:16, Dec. 22, 2005
  • Nope, I don't think it's going to happen. Tim Starling was for it, but Avar is against it. So, for now, it will be refreshed twice a week, but Tim Starling can make it more frequent. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-22 22:41

Maybe this information should be public

This is very useful information. I know right now it's restricted so it's not a honey pot for vandals, but we might want to consider going the other direction: what if each page, at the top, included a number that stated how many admins had the page on their watchlist? It would be sort of like PageRank -- the higher the number, the more you could rely upon the information on that page, and if it had a zero, you shouldn't rely upon it at all (and maybe the page could include a warning in red.) And perhaps we might want to institute a policy where pages are purged after a year if they remain at "0". (Forgive me if this has already been proposed elsewhere.)--Arcadian 15:47, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

This it to prevent vandals from exploiting this sensitive information.--HereToHelp 01:41, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Updated hourly

Avar has set this to update hourly. The only way we are going to see items further down alphabetically is to watch all of the earlier items. So please, watch them, even if you don't know anything about them, especially if they've only had 1 edit in the last 6 months. You'll never notice them on your watchlist. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-23 04:29

Mass-watch tool

For those who would like to help, but don't want to click a million times, you can use this new tool to add X articles to your watchlist at once, using only 2 mouse clicks:

Add this to your monobook.js (e.g. User:ABCD/monobook.js)

/**** handy watch ****/
document.write('<script type="text/javascript"' +
  'src="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:R3m0t/' +
  'handywatch.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

/* This is to keep track of who is using this extension: [[User:R3m0t/handywatch.js]] */

The script will trigger automatically on Special:Unwatchedpages. It will prompt you on whether you want to active the script. r3m0t ^talk 04:10, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

— ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-24 04:11

Note: to split up the work, each admin needs to add at least 1500 items to their watchlist. The special page updates hourly, usually showing the latest version at around 5 minutes after the hour. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-24 04:16

Ok, maybe I'm just dense, but it doesn't work for me. I get the popup confirm box and I say yes, but no articles get added to my watchlist. And you make it sound like you can control how many articles get added somehow. Is it just a function of how many you have displayed, ie, 20, 100, 500? - Taxman ^Talk 16:50, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

• Yes. If you want to max it out, use http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Unwatchedpages&limit=1000&offset=0 but be aware that this will result in a lot of redundant watching. I did this once, and it froze up my comp for about 3 minutes, but it worked. — FREAK OF NUR_xTURE (TALK) 16:59, Dec. 28, 2005
• I don't know what the problem is with your computer. It only works on Firefox, as far as I know. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-28 17:00

Divide up the workload

I've done my part and using this page and the above mentioned mass-watch tool, I have added close to 2000 previously unwatched pages to my watchlist. I'll be adding more as they become available (apparently you can only view the first 1000 on the list so if you are waiting to see whats under "S" everything before that needs to be watched first). Perhaps someone should create a page to help divide things up. Maybe a list of names of those currently watching a lot of pages, and somewhere you can put the name of pages you are watching but have no real interest in. - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 12:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Sort

It would be even more useful if we could search or atleast sort it. --Pamri • Talk 12:50, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. The best thing I can imagine would be a search via category. I'd gladly add to my watchlist all unwatched pages from the categories I am interested in (Poland, sociology, etc.).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 00:34, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd be happy if it could be selected by namesapce. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:02, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Only shows first 1000?

Is this supposed to stall out at 1000 pages? android79 20:44, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• It's a long-running bug on all such pages. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-31 00:16
  • If we can somehow get people to watch these first 1000 we can check out what follows. Any suggestions? - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 01:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
    • First 1000? There were thousands previous to this that others (myself included) have been watching just to get to these. Each admin needs to add at least 1500 (and more likely 3-5000) to get this list under control. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-31 01:26
      • Yeah, I added a couple thousand to my list (all in the Ab to Al range). I'll add a bunch more but this may soon overwhem my ability to concentrate on my original ones. - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 01:32, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I only asked because I thought, since this is only updated twice weekly, we'd get a lot of redundancy... thought I'd start somewhere in the middle of the alphabet. Oh well. When is it updated? android79 03:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• It's updated hourly now. By :05 or :10 after the hour, it is usually up to date. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2005-12-31 04:13
  • Okay, thanks... android79 04:14, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Related Changes

What about an option to store them to a page that can be viewed using the related changes feature? That way, you can still have your personal watchlist that you care about, and also watch these millions of pages. Thoughts? -Mysekurity 07:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Second. Having admins add 100+ pages to their watchlist just doesn't scale. — Ambush Commander^(Talk) 03:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Absolutly. I would watch even more pages if I didn't have to weed through them to see my "really important" ones. On a somewhat related not, are we ever going to get to see what comes after the first 1000? I for one would like to know if Yukon is watched...or even Advertise- Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 05:24, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Getting around 1,000 limit; alternate offset?

I know you can offset the list by offset=<x> where x is a number. But, is there a way to offset the list to tell it to return unwatched pages beginning with, say, the letter h? --Durin 16:00, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

RfA regarding Special:Unwatchedpages

There's a Request for adminship currently underway at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Genisock2 requesting a second account of admin Geni be granted admin rights so as to create a second watchlist for him of 5000 articles from Special:Unwatchedpages, allowing him to fight vandalism on a subset of these unwatched pages. Those of you following this talk page may be interested to follow the RfA and it's talk page. --Durin 16:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Geni changed his mind, citing Guettarda's excellent suggestion. Er, OK, but what/where is this excellent suggestion of Guettarda's? -- Hoary 12:38, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Since neither of the two mentioned that solution publicly, it's possible that some WP:BEANS are involved. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 12:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

No, it was actually pretty simple. If you choose to use a sock for this purpose all you need to do is log in with your admin acct, and go to this page, where you will see the unwatched pages. Then open another tab (or browser window) and log out of your admin acct and log into the sock acct (but don't close the tab that's open on this page). Go back to the tab, and open each unwatched page you want in a new tab/window. Then add them to your watchlist. As long as your original page doesn't refresh, you will still see the unwatched list, but since you are now logged in with your sock, you will be adding the pages to that acct and not to your main acct.

One BEANS consideration though is if you have a dedicated sock you may not want to identify it was such to everyone (maybe just to someone with checkuser?) since any page the sock edited would probably be an unwatched (or now, slightly watched) page. Guettarda 05:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Duh, why didn't I think of that. Nice one. Thanks! -- Hoary 07:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Clearing up to A

I've taken all the unwatched up to A (7 more just been created). I'm now going through them to check for possible deletions (AfD), moves etc. One thing that I have also been doing is checking the history. If the article was created after January 1 2006 and it looks like the creator is still active I am leaving this on their talk page. With a bit of luck they will turn the feature on and the list will not populate so quickly. I'm going to amend the text asking that they reply if they turn it on. That way I can perhaps drop some from my watchlist. The main problem is that the editing function of the watchlist opens all as one page (6000+). CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 00:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

New refresh?

Special:Unwatchedpages appears to have been static since the server problems earlier in the week. Is there any chance someone could start it refreshing again, or are there technical issues? Shimgray | talk | 20:40, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeh I've noticed the same thing... enochlau (talk) 14:13, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

why is this feature available for administrators only?

I don't see any reason why this feature should be available to administrators only. I'm sure that there are many users who would be willing to "adopt" some pages. --Ixfd64 00:59, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

That's answered above, and if you think about it it makes a lot of sense. Of course there are non admins that could be trusted to help out with this, but the issue is there hasn't been a technical way to restrict access to trusted users besides restricting it to admins. You could try asking at the technical village pump, but if non admins want to help out with vandalism, it's probably better to use one of the automated tools like Vandalfighter, AWB, etc. - Taxman ^Talk 16:25, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, you could set it so it is only visible to editors who have x number of edits or have had an account for x number of days. This would prevent most drive-by vandals simply looking for something to mess with. Though really, I'm perfectly fine without seeing the page. Koweja 20:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Updates infrequent

Seems to only update a couple of times a week. Given the enormous number of pages, is there anyway we could make this special page update at will? Is anyone working on this? Cool Hand Luke 01:50, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

We'll its been a few years, is there any progress on making this page actually usefull? - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 20:42, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Would it be possible to have 37 of these Unwatchedpages? Twenty-six alphabetic (one each for A, B, C....Z), then one each for the numbers 0-9, and one for special characters? That way the 1000 article limit would be slightly less odious. Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:07, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

That would be better. We could even have an admin claim each letter and try to reduce the list each time it's updated. However, I get the impression that no one cares about this list. Cool Hand Luke 02:15, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I am a brand new admin (just got the bit yesterday) - where could we ask about getting this split up / fixed? I don't want to spill the beans at the village pump technical or would WP:AN work? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:09, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe some community input at Village Pump technical and then mediazilla. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 09:12, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Another suggestion, unwatched BLPs. If the article is unwatched and has Category:Living people attached, it makes another protected list.↔NMajdan•talk 18:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Another suggestion: Special:Recentchangeslinked/Special:Unwatchedpages - at this point, to actually _watch_ them, you'd have to either add all the pages to your watchlist, or make a page with links to all of them (which would disclose the list). —Random832 18:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Good idea - my thought was there are certain things I would add to my watch list (counties and places in Pennsylvania and Ohio), but I like the active version too. I will try to make a suggestion at WP:AN in the next day or two. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

That would be wonderful! It would be especially important to scrutinize unwatched pages for vandalism, and the recent changes list would revolve constantly so that you'll always be able to pick up new pages in areas of interest. Cool Hand Luke 19:22, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I finally listed this at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Suggestion_for_Special:Unwatchedpages Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, the requests are in at bugzilla:13062, bugzilla:13063 and bugzilla:13064 - I have never done this before, so hopefully these are OK. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 04:58, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

A new project...

Before I was syssoped (sp?) a few days ago, another admin gave me the links to a handful of articles here, and I watchlisted them and then sent them scurrying to their appropriate wikiprojects, where there were people happy to be able to watchlist them for me. Now that I can see this page myself, I plan to continue doing this in a slightly more organised way. I will create some pages, probably in my userspace, each referring to a different wikiproject.

I'll watchlist the pages as I pull them off here (copy and paste into a raw watchlist) and then list them according to which project they belong to. Then I'll go and notify each project in turn when there are new articles to be searched. At leats, that's the plan, though currently, there aren't any pages showing up in the list... Anyone got any thoughts? Fritzpoll (talk) 23:16, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I like the plan. FYI, the page is up again - was run June 1st. It is curently just a list of asteroids whose names start with the number 1 (the list is only 1000 entries long). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Asteroid Belt

I looked at this and my first reaction as that as I have a fondness for lonely rocks I might watch a few asteroids to move the list along. Then I noticed that there are 10,988 asteroid stubs in total. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 11:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure what else to do here - I thought making 26 plus such lists sorted by first character would solve some of the problems, but no work seems to have been done on my Bugzilla requests. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:29, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

It is hard to guess how many pages would actually be on this list in total, but it could be anything between 20,000 and 100,000. In its current state it is completely useless. I wonder if there is any mileage in suggesting a sort by category? Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 18:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

There is a Bugzilla request in to make an unwatched Biographies of Living Persons list based on a cat. I think the problem is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease and no one complains much about this. Perhaps a posing on the Village Pump Technical? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Might be worth it. I imagine the community would be alarmed if they became aware that a potentially very large number of pages are unwatched, but as suggested above somewhere there is a possible downside to giving it publicity. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 08:56, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I was surprised to see that I could access this talk page when I logged out, so this discussion is open to non-admin eyes (although I doubt many users of any sort come here often). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 11:51, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed about that. I also suspect that few admins are that interested in this subject or action might have been forthcoming. I therefore can't see any point in flagging the subject up at the Noticeboard. I do however think that a note to the effect that pages to the number of at least four figures, probably five, and maybe even six are not watched by anyone might get some attention at the Pump. I know nothing about the technicalities but it is hard to imagine there is something inherently problematical about creating a list of unwatched pages either by starting letter/integer/symbol, or by some kind of categorisation. If it were not complex I'd favour the latter as I am more interested in say Geography articles than I am in articles beginning with 'E', but either would be a step forward. The alternative would be to simply delete this page - in its current form it is effectively useless and we are kidding ourselves to pretend otherwise. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 15:09, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

My thought was if I wanted to check that a place in Pennsylvania or Ohio was unwatched, I could look in the alphabetic list. I agree that categories would be easier. I will try to post something to the Village Pump Technical later today. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 18:12, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

It occurs to me that an IRC discussion might be a more secure way of dealing with the issue but I am not a practitioner of this dark art. I know someone who is if you want me to give it a try. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 09:10, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I have also never been on any IRC channel, but it sounds like a good idea. Please go ahead - discussion could also take palce here once people know more. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:15, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Said old chum seems to have left Wikipedia in despair but I'll see if I can find someone else. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 14:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

As of 11:58, 16 July 2008 "There are no results for this report", which makes discussion a shade harder. For the benefit of anyone joining this debate the last posting of the list was clogged up with asteroids stubs beginning with the integer 1, of which there are clearly many hundreds, if not thousands.Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 15:11, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I have seen this "no list" before - in some ways it is an even better argument for changing the system - none at all is worse than 1000 asteroids. Unfortunatley I just got bogged down in an FAC and need to do some rewriting. Perhaps the Village Pump Technical is the way to go - I brought this up at AN/I after I became an admin and all I got out of it were the Bugzilla requests. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 19:26, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Take a deep breath, folks. First off, the asteroids really aren't that bad. There is a bit of a trick to this, and there are a few of us doing it. Consider creating an acknowledged alternate account specifically for watching these pages, and when the list appears (as it does about once a week or so, depending on the wonts of the developers), copy it over to the alternate account. (I stop in Word in between to strip off everything but the article name.) I have several thousand pages on mine, many of them asteroids and planets, and I check it once a day or so to catch vandalism. Remember that BLP-related vandalism can occur on any article; some of the worst is sneaky and put into articles that don't give the appearance of being related to a person. Since I started working on this, about two months ago, I have found one BLP related vandalism edit, and only about half a dozen other vandalistic edits. Even with all these pages on the watchlist, it's rare that I see more than 10 page changes a day; when I do, it is usually because a bot has gone through. It's a worthwhile endeavour, to ensure all pages are watched by someone. Don't forget, though, that plenty of pages are "watched" by users who have long since left Wikipedia. Risker (talk) 20:24, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much Risker. I have nothing against asteroids (and would love to visit one someday), but my guess is that inhabited places will have more vandalism since people actually live there. Just for the sake of argument, let's say Zelienople, Pennsylvania is unwatched (it's not - I just added it to my list). If I could somehow get a list sorted by Pennyslvania boroughs, then I would see this right away. By your plan, assuming only 1000 unwatched articles per number and letter and one new list a week, I would have to wait 35 weeks to see if it was unwatched, and would have to have a watchlist with 35,000 articles on it to get there. My guess is there are many more articles on most letters and numbers and it would take longer and I would have an even bigger list to watch. While your method works, it is not the most efficient way to do this. I also have thought about the watched only by the departed problem, but will worry about that more when this is better resolved. Thanks again, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 00:45, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Watching the top pages each week only results in many people watching the tip of the iceberg. This needs to be fixed so that the submerged unwatched pages beneath can be watched, especially in sensitive categories. Incidentally, I think 100,000 is a very conservative estimate given how we've been gnawing away at the beginning of the list since it was created. Cool Hand Luke 00:48, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

All I can say is that I'm doing my bit. If the list was automatically generated as soon as everything on it had moved to a watchlist, it would all go much faster. I figure 100,000 is probably a bit high. I'd be more than happy to have all those celestial bodies on my alternate account watchlists (incidentally, about 15% of these numerical articles aren't asteroids) and am looking at an alternate way of getting them onto my watchlist so that this list will move more quickly. If there was a willingness on the part of, say, 100 editors to all take 1000 articles, and we could make arrangements with the devs to get the list to regenerate more quickly, it could be taken care of in no time. Admins would have to assist regular editors who are willing to help (my betting is there are quite a few who would be willing), but it is pretty straightforward. Risker (talk) 01:15, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that would work. Hell, if we could get this damn thing refreshed even daily, we could probably chomp down the list in a year. But I should point out that 100,000 is not a high estimate. This list rarely gets past "1" I've hit random page over over 100 times, and have not yet seen something that low. I'm guessing that the proportion of articles starting with "1" or lower <1%, and if unwatched pages are randomly distributed throughout, we would expect well over 100,000. Cool Hand Luke 12:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

July 25th list

Just to let folks know I have added the July 25th list to my alternate account watchlist, so nobody else needs to do so if they do not wish.

As my list is building, I am noting certain trends in the articles included:

• Military units and ballistics
• The arts, including songs, albums, and award shows (15th annual...)
• This year in history of a certain country/literature/etc
• Notable addresses

While I don't have time to do this right now, I am inclined to sort some of these into their own categories and approach editors interested the these general subjects to "take over" these smaller sublists. Thoughts? Risker (talk) 12:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like a good idea to me, although the sorting could be a lot of work, and something that would ideally be done automatically. Ben MacDui 13:15, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for doing this. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 14:41, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Co-ordinating and splitting up topics is a fabulous idea. Cool Hand Luke 14:44, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I suppose we could get a bot to do it - there is one which splits up new articles by topic so presumably the same could be applied to this page. Hut 8.5 15:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The following entry appears in the Signpost Technology report: "The information in Special:UnwatchedPages is now available to administrators via the API (using list=allpages with apfilterwatched). (r37748, bug 14020)". Sounds good, no idea what it means. Ben MacDui 15:46, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is good - if the API can access the information then bots can get at it and process it. Hut 8.5 16:00, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

France

I've left a discreet note at WProject France about the unwatched pages here. It remains to be seen if anyone replies. Ben MacDui 19:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Just found this page - added some to watch

Somehow I have never seen this special page before. A good idea indeed, it it is refreshed often enough. Even though my watchlist is already way too long, I understand that many of these unwatched pages do not/should not change too often so I'll add some of them to my watchlist so at least someone watches over them. I'll also peruse the list periodically to find hidden/unseen vandalism as I've read in the previous comments. Cheers! -- Alexf⁴² 16:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Create a counter of people watching a page

Okay, in Wikipedia:PERENit is noted that this would specifically make unwatched pages vulnerable to vandals.

Simple issue (with a little software tweak): You do not give a count. You only give (as an example) one of the following three possible responses:

This page is watched by:

• Less than 10 editors
• 10-100 editors
• More than 100 editors

This would make sure that there are no invitations to vandals, yet I could be sure that I am not leaving a page unwatched that I don't really care THAT much about if I am number 11+ Ingolfson (talk) 08:56, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Opening things up

What was the rationalle for making this special page require admin rights? It doesn't make a lick of sense to me - Don't make users ask for the tools if all they want are mundane information-gathering tools like this.

Alternative:

Possible workaround: instead of creating this sock account, program the software to allow any user to view all unwatched pages in a "watchlist-style" format, so that it shows each page in the order they were last edited. --M@thwiz2020 20:44, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The proposal made by M@thwiz2020 in the 2006 RfA cited above seems like a reasonable in-between, if there really are legitimate reasons to hold this close. That said, though, I would certainly prefer to just see this page opened up to registered editors. Potential damage from vandals building massive watchlists from here would be largely mitigated by the suggestion from Ingolfson above. MrZaius^talk 08:22, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The current problem is not so much who has access to the page as that it is totally dysfunctional. It is updated very irregularly and the size limit makes it largely useless. Until this is fixed I can't see any point in extending the franchise. Ben MacDui 09:53, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep; the page should be functional before its worth expanding. But a watchlist-style feature would be a great improvement. We would add Special:Recentunwatchedchanges. Through that page, all of the unwatched pages would be visible on a rolling basis, and admins could adopt pages off that list as they peek their curiosity. Cool Hand Luke 20:01, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

To answer your original question, the reason it was admin only was that (when it worked) vandals could pick-and-choose from it to find places they wouldn't be spotted. – iridescent 21:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

That's the reason that, if this were to be fixed, it would be nice to also have Ingolfson or Mathwiz's proposed fixes implemented. That said, if Special:Statistics can differentiate between active and inactive users, it would be extremely useful to add that caveat to Ingolfson's proposal or, if this page is fixed in its older format, to also ignore watchlists of inactive users. If it's the product of (Total number of watchlists)*(Total number of pages) that's causing this issue, it might actually make it a good deal easier to bring it back and expand it per Ingolfson's proposal if the tool only looked at active user watchlists. MrZaius^talk 06:42, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, one of User:Ruhrfisch's best bugzilla suggestions back in February has apparently been coded and works. Who do we talk to about making it live? Cool Hand Luke 18:42, 4 October 2008 (UTC)