Talk:Community Wishlist/W247

Multiple watchlists

@Wostr This sounds very similar to earlier requests:

• Community_Wishlist_Survey_2017/Watchlists/Multiple_watchlists
• Community_Wishlist_Survey_2021/Watchlists/Multiple_watchlists

Is that what you are looking for as well ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:17, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

In principle, probably. In detail – not necessarily. These solutions go in a slightly different direction; in this proposal the most important thing is the possibility of prioritizing and organizing one's own work, as well as providing information for other editors that someone is planning to work on a given topic. Wostr (talk) 17:07, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

@Wostr, would allowing notes for each watchlist item, combined with multiple watchlists (you could have one dedicated to todo) do the job?

As for providing public info, I am not sure how Wikiproject todo pages aren't already good enough. Could you elaborate on the providing information for other editors aspect? Commander Keane (talk) 03:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

In many Wikimedia projects, wikiprojects don't work efficiently (if at all), and managing their pages takes time (most of the work is done manually). The way I see it, on pages added to the ones to-do list as 'public', an info would be visible in the toolbar for each editor that 'X people have this page on their to-do list' with the ability to see who is going to work on the page and to what extent/what can be done to help them or what they need help with. Wostr (talk) 14:53, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Related proposal about sharing todos

I like this part: Additionally, marking a given task on the list as "public" could simultaneously be displayed in the view of the given article or page, so that other editors can see that someone else is interested in the page and has plans to fix it. – see the related proposal about a tasks system where these todos could be integrated and be found by relevant editors: Suggested tasks based on contributions history (user interests) also for experienced editors. Probably I will link back to this proposal at the relevant part there.

The other parts of it may be neat to have but I think one can largely use a note editor for that (or bookmarks if people prefer that). Prototyperspective (talk) 19:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Also mentioned the latter in in another wish that also proposed something for todos – I think one could largely just use a local text editor (or todo manager). Theoretically it would be great if one could share todos – but without making tasks find people interested in them, as described in the wish linked above, it wouldn't be very useful. I'd like to offload lots of tasks and maybe most for Commons but already did so for a fraction by creating and adding them to c:Commons:Categorization requests where I think nobody implemented any of them to any degree and I think it would be similar for Wikipedia todos and is already a problem for Talk page posts there (and making a talk page post is another way to implement this with existing means). By the way, I think marking todos as inprogress or solved could be useful because for example the user who created it can then shortly glance over the implementation and people can then cut down on todos and focus on just the unimplemented ones (related wish when it comes to talk page posts).

In short, I think enabling experienced and overburden users to document and share todos could be very impactful but in practice the problem is that one also needs to consider how (and why) other people will find, read and implement these. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:38, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

Question

Hi @Wostr - I'd like to learn more about this so we can understand what kind of priority to give it as compared to the other possible things that could be worked on. I'm wondering what benefit you see to having this functionality within Wikimedia projects, versus having an external to-do list in your own note-taking app? Are there problems this could solve that are only possible if we built this feature into MediaWiki? Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 12:07, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Most users probably use more than one place to create such lists – I use four myself. These can be external applications (browser addons, phone apps, computer apps), but also browser bookmarks, as well as your own subpages in a specific project or even written notes somewhere near the place of editing. None of these solutions support one of the most important things in Wikimedia projects – collaboration between users on a given topic. A key element of this solution is information for other users that is easily visible and accessible from the article level that someone else is working or planning to work on a given topic. Wostr (talk) 19:24, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

To do template doesn't accomplish this already?

en:Template:To do in the English Wikipedia provides for setting up a to do list on talk pages. Is this not enough? Do other language Wikipedias not have this template? StefenTower (talk) 06:50, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

No, it is not. In short, this template does not achieve the purpose of this proposal at all, and is basically just another form of expressing warning/clean-up templates displayed above the article content, only dressed up in a different form. Wostr (talk) 11:37, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

I see that this proposal wants to make intended changes to an article editor-centric. The To do template makes this process article-centric. My view is that if it is article-centric, that works better for collaboration, and collaboration is what we want to see happen. If you want to make processing article to-dos more functional, I'm all for that, but I'd rather they stay focused on the article that needs improvement than the editor who wants to make improvements. Editors can already list things they intend to do on their user page. StefenTower (talk) 20:41, 30 July 2025 (UTC)