Wikipedia:Organised Watchlists

I'm not sure if this counts as one of the three (guidelines, policy, or process) but I definitely think this is a useful feature that should be considered for future wiki-code.

Note: I am not a programmer, but I understand computers enough to know that this is possible. I do not know how relevant this is to the wikimedia foundation, but it would streamline things immensely for me.

I propose Organised Watchlists.

Explanation and Ideas
What do I mean by this? Well, right now the watch list is kind of a jumbled mess. A useful jumbled mess, and I use it every day, but I believe it would be much simpler and user-friendly if there were a way for the user to organise these lists into categories.

I, as a Wikipedian, tend to watch an absurd amount of articles and topics, ranging from ones that interest me to ones that are part of my lifestyle. I believe if I were able to customise my watchlist so I could separate each list of topics by category, I, and all Wikipedians would be much more efficient with their watchlist-editing.

For example, I would be able to designate a template (table, section, what have you) solely for Egypt-related articles. I could do this for articles relating to Anarchism, Final Fantasy, or anything else I feel like. I *could* technically just make a sub-userpage right now, however, this is not automated. What I propose is integrated watchlist organisation.

There could also be, perhaps, auto-categorisation. From the [[Category:]] links at the bottom of articles, when a Wikipedian wants to watch an article, it would propose categorisations based on what it has already been designated. The user could change these or add more as he or she wished, and articles could overlap into multiple categories.

I also think it would be ideal for these to be coded on your watchlist page in such a way that each template could be collapsable if you did not want to view it at that particular time, a la Bloglines, perhaps.

I believe this is a very solid concept, and I hope other Wikipedians consider it. I realise it would perhaps require an update in the code, and while I don't expect any sort of immediate gratification, whenever the next update is, I strongly suggest this feature be included.

I also realise this proposal is very informal, un-wiki like, and in the first person...I assume since it is a proposal I am allowed to speak from this view.

Lockeownzj00 02:29, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
 * (this already possible - see talk page)