[WikiEN-l] ALERT: Idea for new feature: "Who's watching this page?"

Wed Oct 22 04:17:45 UTC 2003

>Actually, it's a good idea. In no way is it a invasion of privacy. Anyone
>who wants to get some idea of a contributor's interests can look at his edit
>record. There's no good reason not to have watchlists be public.

>If you don't want people to know what your watchlist is, then don't have
>one.

>Wikipedia benefits the more open the actions and behavior of its
>participants are to each other and to the outside world.

>Qui custodiet custodies? Omnia mundi in Wikipediam.

"Who watches the guards?  The entire world in Wikipedia."

>Don't confuse this with actual invasions of privacy.

Before watchlists, people kept lists of links on their userpages
and used [[Special:Recentchangeslinked]] to watch their pages.
This was open to public view; if somebody wanted a private watchlist,
then I suppose that they just kept their list somewhere else
(and were deprived of the convenience of [[Special:Recentchangeslinked]]).
It's not clear to me whether, in creating [[Special:Watchlist]],
the fact that the lists became private was intended or a side effect.

If I had the option to make my watchlist public, then I would,
in the interests of the openness that The Cunctator mentions here.
At the same time, I don't want to remove the convenience
that [[Special:Watchlist]] brings to watchlist management,
simply because somebody prefers to keep a private watchlist.
A user preference would avoid this, and that preference's justification
would be if there were people that would insist upon using it.
There seem to be some!

As for the justification of having possibly public watchlists at all,
well, I think that /I/ would only care about knowing /how many/ people
are watching a given page.  But if other people want more,
and they can convince a developer to program it, then I won't complain. ^_^

-- Toby