Proposed solution: Add an option to hide sets of edits that collectively produce an empty diff. Such a set commonly includes one or more edits by a vandal and a rollback edit.
Who would benefit: Editors with many pages on their watchlists. My watchlist contains over 700 pages so hiding the edits that don't require my attention would be a huge help.
More comments: As a workaround, I configured my browser to run following JavaScript snippet every time I open my watchlist:
I have seen changes of 0 text that were meaningful. You will need to pin down the criteria under which you think this hiding should be made. --Izno (talk) 19:02, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I mean completely empty diffs, not 0-byte changes. The class mw-plusminus-null is just used as a heuristic in my workaround. Dexxor (talk) 21:42, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. Yeah, I am not sure this is a good idea even still, because you get permissions-farmers who will make -1 +1 edits that don't change the source for every pair of edits (not that I've seen this too often on watchable pages, but there have been some). Izno (talk) 19:51, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How do you even get the "2 changes" layout option? I just get the last edit to a watched page or if you select "Expand watchlist to show all changes" ever edit is separate. Having "x changes" looks useful (and familiar.. like something I used to have...) KylieTastic (talk) 20:17, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would love to hide (better: mark in some way: grey out?) pairs (or larger sets) of consecutive edits which result in no overall change. This includes some but not all zero-byte changes. If someone changes "Trump" to "Biden" I care, even though the size is unchanged. If they change "Trump" to "poop" and it's reverted, I don't care; someone already dealt with that. Certes (talk) 01:55, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Often the size of my watchlist dissuades me from going through it, when in reality most of the changes are reverted. If I could filter them I'd do it without a thought. Sophivorus (talk) 23:06, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support: substantial use case. I wouldn't enable it as I like to check that if added content has been reverted then none of it was usable and if removals were reverted then there's no issue with that content that does need resolution, and also whether I need to request page protection (if there's a lot of vandalism). However, I can see that clicking on reverted vandalism edits for a lot of people would just be a time sink and they do not want it as part of their workflow. — Bilorv (talk) 11:24, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Perfectly good edits are sometimes reverted due to a misunderstanding, or mistrust of IP editors. Even if you are only interested in fighting vandals, you should not turn these off - I've seen vandals make reverts just to be disruptive. SpinningSpark10:17, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Spinningspark: You got a point there but I still believe an option to hide edit groups that produce an empty diff would be useful. Before I had my browser configured to hide those edit groups, I simply ignored them because checking them is a waste of time in 95% of cases. So unhiding those edit groups would not result in me noticing the good edits that you brought up. As long as there are some hardworking editors like you checking every edit I don't see a problem with my approach. For other editors, the proposed feature would increase their productivity and willingness to go through their watchlists. Dexxor (talk) 10:31, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Femke (talk) 19:40, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
(Talk) 01:28, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
Oppose If your watchlist is filled with that many unnecessary edits, then clear it up. I don't see how this is necessary. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 08:54, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
