MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages

See Wikipedia:Watchlist notices for documentation of how to add, maintain or hide watchlist notices.

Proposed change to watchlist details message

@Pppery: I’ve disabled the {{edit protected}} using {{tl}} while we discuss the wording, expecting the “tl|” to be removed when consensus is reached. If this is inappropriate, feel free to remove the “tl|” while the discussion is ongoing. YBG (talk) 11:41, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

{{edit protected}}

The message at MediaWiki:Watchlist-details is currently:

You have $1 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages).

I propose a change to emphasize that TP changes are shown in the watchlist.

Your watchlist has $1 pages plus their associated talk pages.

If this is not the right place to post this suggestion, please ping me to let me know where I should post it. Thanks! YBG (talk) 08:06, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I've had a poke around and this was previously discussed in August 2017: "[...] after consulting with Matt, we decided there is no need to say 'not separately counting talk pages.'" It seems that's when the current wording was adopted. I'd agree that YBG's suggestion is an improvement on what's currently there. Schwede66 01:25, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

I would prefer 'and' instead of 'plus', but yes, it's a better wording. Stephen — Preceding undated comment added 02:30, 16 November 2023 ((UTC)

@Stephen, @Schwede66: What would you think of this alternative?

Your watchlist has $1 pages (and their associated talk pages).

My order of preferences is (1) my latest (and … TPs) (2) my original plus … TPs (3) Stepen’s alternative and … TPs .

Thoughts? YBG (talk) 11:41, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

My thought is that it needs wider input and you should think about methods for getting that. For example through an WP:RFC. Schwede66 15:42, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

@Schwede66 I don't think this really needs a full RFC. However it indeed does still seem to be "being discussed. @YBG drop a link to this at WP:VP/M, after a week someone can summarize whatever the consensus here is and reactivate the edit request. (Note: that could very well be "no consensus for change" with no ER needed). — xaosflux ^Talk 16:08, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

@Schwede66,@Stephen. Any thoughts on these alternatives?

1. Your watchlist has $1 pages (and their associated talk pages).
2. Your watchlist has $1 pages plus their associated talk pages.
3. Your watchlist has $1 pages and their associated talk pages.
4. You have $1 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages).

There are (1) my preference, (2) my original proposal, (3) @Stephen’s alternative, and (4) the status quo.

Thoughts anyone?? YBG (talk) 05:58, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Number 1 looks good to me. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:14, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

1, then 3. Schwede66 09:04, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

1, 3. Not convinced “associated” is really needed. Stephen 10:50, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

1 and 3, and I agree w/ Stephen that "associated" may be dropped. SWinxy (talk) 03:09, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I think that eliminating "associated" would be just fine. Had I thought about it before my post above, I probably would not have included it. YBG (talk) 05:02, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

As a regular editor, I just want the page count and ignore the rest of the message as boilerplate already noted. I like having the number prominently placed close to the start rather that buried in a sentence. The current message is almost ideal for my needs; I might even change it to 1,234 pages are on your watchlist.... However, newer editors may have differing needs. Certes (talk) 12:40, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Revised watchlist details options

Based on the feedback above, I am removing the unneeded word “associated” from (1)/(2)/(3) and adding a new option (5).

Most previous previous !votes for (1) and (3) stated ambivalence for “associated”; anyone who really wants that word included can !vote for (1a), (2a), or (3a).

It seems safe to assume that this leaves previous participants’ numeric !votes unchanged; they are invited to state, restate or change their numeric !vote, especially if this assumption is faulty: @Certes, @Novem Linguae, @Pppery, @Schwede66, @Stephen, @SWinxy, and @Xaosflux.

These revised options include (1) my preference, (2) my original proposal without “associated”, (3) @Stephen’s alternative, (4) the status quo, and (5) @Certes’s alternative:

1. Your watchlist has $1 pages (and their talk pages).
2. Your watchlist has $1 pages plus their talk pages.
3. Your watchlist has $1 pages and their talk pages.
4. You have $1 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages).
5. $1 pages (and their talk pages) are on your watchlist.

Thank you for your participation and patience. YBG (talk) 15:09, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we need to do a second survey. I think we have a clear consensus from the above survey that we should do the old #1 minus the word "associated", which is Your watchlist has $1 pages (and their talk pages). Shall we go ahead and make that change? –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:04, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree, a new survey in not necessary, but out of courtesy, I’d like to wait a couple of days before making a change. I don’t think there’s any rush. YBG (talk) 18:15, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposal

Unless there is an objection in the next few days, I will make a protected edit request to change the wording to this:

• Your watchlist has $1 pages (and their talk pages).

i.e. this wiki markup:

•  Your [[Help:Watchlist|watchlist]] has '''$1''' {{PLURAL:$1|page|pages}} (and {{PLURAL:$1|its|their}} [[Help:Talk pages|talk {{PLURAL:$1|page|pages}}]]).

Pinging previous participants in this discussion: @Certes, @Novem Linguae, @Pppery, @Schwede66, @Stephen, @SWinxy, and @Xaosflux. — Preceding unsigned comment added by YBG (talk • contribs) 21:23, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

• That's fine. Thank you. Schwede66 21:42, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
• YBG, I assume that last one will need to be {{PLURAL:$1|page|pages}} not {{PLURAL:page|pages}}. — Qwerfjkltalk 14:50, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, and I’ve changed the text above. YBG (talk) 15:07, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

   Done I've edited the mediawiki page with the new text. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:31, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you!! YBG (talk) 22:59, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 11/22/23

I was wondering if the wikilink for the ArbCom questions could be changed to the actual questions page, which is Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2023/Questions. Thanks! - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 11:54, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

 Done. I moved the bolding and shortened it a bit. Hopefully this addresses your concerns, even though I did not add or remove any links. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:14, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

How to avoid linking "here"

In the current watchlist-message, we say: Candidate statements can be seen here. I'm struggling a bit to come up with a more accessible alternative (the word here shouldn't be linked [1]). "Candidate statements have been prepared" sounds awkward. Anybody has a better idea? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:55, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

You can view the candidates' statements. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:35, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

That works, thanks. When you vote there are more links to the mysterious here in the instructions, but no idea how to change that. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:44, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

@Femke bit of a pain now (it's in the election config). Can you leave a note at the following page, include where you see it, what it says now, what you suggest it says instead. Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2023#Follow_ups_for_2024 — xaosflux ^Talk 19:45, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with this blog post, at least specifically for Wikipedia UI. Our interface messages have a very egregious problem with linking random words in their body text, making it difficult to determine which of them is the proper link. A bolded "here" is typically the only thing that indicates where to click without making people read huge paragraphs of text. Maybe it's bad for SEO, but I don't think we really care about that, and we aren't formatting our pages as simple single-link call-to-actions, so most of the points here don't really apply imo. The accessibility concern it brings up uses screenshots (of what? it doesn't tell us what program) from Windows XP, and the other complaint (that seeing the word "click" causes people using phones to feel alienated) seems completely arbitrary. jp×g🗯️ 04:45, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I feel like the main accessibility concern was for speech synthesis (screen readers), which I guess will let you select links to follow from a list, based on their text. In that context (i.e. none), the text piped into a link should carry some information about where it points. Folly Mox (talk) 05:30, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, that's what I mean -- they say that in the blog post, but then their reason for it is screenshots from WinXP, which was released over 20 years ago. If someone who uses a screen reader says that this is the deal, then I will accept it's the deal, but I don't know how much I believe "some program in 2002 worked this way". I don't know who Granicus is but they don't seem to be very great at web accessibility; when I went to their front page it used 253 requests to load 8,510 kilobytes over the course of 17.89 seconds (for a couple screen heights of content), used parallax scroll (i.e. broke the default browser scrollbar behavior) for a "fun" effect, and featured its tagline in light gray text over a white gradient over a light gray background. jp×g🗯️ 05:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah I understand, thanks for clarifying. That is a pretty good point. I imagine the software has advanced and is probably able to contextualise links better nowadays, and also say more ads at people. Folly Mox (talk) 06:48, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Here's the relevant official guidance: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#link-text and at https://www.w3.org/TR/2008/NOTE-WCAG20-TECHS-20081211/F84 and an associated 'tip' https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/noClickHere and covered in an article at Mystery meat navigation#"Click_here" and in our MOS at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Links. Hope that helps. Quiddity (talk) 17:23, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

This is indeed true for most websites. On Wikipedia specifically, we have a quite pervasive issue with this exact style being used ubiquitously for links to completely interface-irrelevant pages. For example, this actual MediaWiki message says:

Your watchlist has $1 pages (and their talk pages).

Where does "watchlist" link? According to these guidelines, this is the style you're supposed to use for a link to the watchlist itself -- but instead it links to a completely different page that's a general explanation of the idea of a watchlist. The same is true for the text "talk pages" -- per this advice, this should be a link to a list of the talk pages on your watchlist, or something directly relevant to the task of checking it. But instead, it is a link to Help:Talk pages, an explanatory document telling you what a talk page is. This is useful... literally once, the first time you ever read it; every subsequent time someone check their watchlist, it's just a useless button and visual noise that distracts from the interface elements (i.e. "three of these links actually do something, the rest are WP:EASTEREGGs that exit whatever you were in the middle of doing and take you to a random help page). jp×g🗯️ 23:14, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I grok the frustration with inconsistency. Although, I think those guidelines are also framed around "content", whereas in-line interface documentation has a somewhat different set of style guides/expectations, where specialized jargon-words often link to their definitions/documentation, and are especially intended for non-expert viewers of the UI. Hence I think it makes sense to link to Help:Watchlist, and arguably to Help:Talk_pages (so many readers and brand-new-editors are unaware of talkpages!).

Plus, we're just transcluding MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages into the MediaWiki:Watchlist-details part of the UI, hence this thread is mixing together "content" discussions (the original re-wording suggestion) with this "UI" discussion, which possibly adds more confusion!? (I.e. If you're proposing we unlink those keywords, perhaps start a new thread?). HTH! Quiddity (talk) 00:33, 18 December 2023 (UTC)