Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Archive/Please add exact number of page watchers under Page informations

Random proposal ►◄ Archive The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Please add exact number of page watchers under Page informations

N Proposes a social/policy/licensing change rather than a technical feature

Problem: Under the tool Page information (example) you have no exact Number of page watchers (only "Fewer than 30 watchers").
Proposed solution: Delete groups like "Fewer than..." and place the exact number of page watchers.
Who would benefit: probably all editors
More comments: Thank You!
Phabricator tickets:
Proposer: W like wiki (talk) 05:03, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is a deliberate limitation placed for privacy. While lowering the threshold may be an option, always showing the exact number is not. Nardog (talk) 09:00, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@W like wiki: As Nardog points out, this is an intentional limitation. Users with the unwatchedpages right can view the actual number (e.g. usually admins). See mw:Manual:$wgUnwatchedPageSecret for more info. It does look like the number '30' might have been chosen a somewhat randomly: there's a comment on the original task saying that it could be adjusted, and a comment in the WMF config saying that it comes from the "default value of https://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/watcher/". So perhaps a discussion can be had about what the number should be (although that's something that doesn't need to happen within the wishlist). The main idea of not surfacing which pages are underwatched is sound though, because if no one's watching a page then people can more easily vandalise it. There's also the possibility of figuring out who is watching what, on wikis with very few users. SWilson (WMF) (talk) 06:09, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The threshold can be changed with a simple config change, once there is community consensus to do so. No engineering work needed. SWilson (WMF) (talk) 06:30, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]