Ray-
Alas, some
of these wretched souls have ended up with rather large
watchlists due to my "Watch articles by default" feature, so the 1 hour
cutoff on large watchlists threatens their salvation.
I often wondered about the wisdom of that feature.
We could add an "Ignore watch request
if edit is minor" option that is evaluated post-save, but that may be too
confusing and would probably only end up being used by 4 people total, who
activated it by accident and then leave a question on the Pump about
mysterious watchlist behavior.
I intend to add an additional option that allows you to only watch newly
created articles by default. Expiring watchlist entries after a certain
default period (unless you make an edit in that period) may also help (but
also has some screwup potential).
I would still prefer eliminating the "Watch articles by default" feature
altogether.
I don't like the idea of automatically expiring watchlist item. The
oldest one on my 115 item watchlist (other than talk pages) is from
February 11. My list includes a number of things that I would like to
get back to if I ever have the time away from the mailing lists :-)
Eclecticology