[Wikipedia-l] Big brother...

Tue Oct 21 07:43:54 UTC 2003

It depends on the goal of the feature

* More information on an article :

It could at any time provide the number of editors
"watching" the page. It could be just a number at the
bottom of the page, and would likely help to measure
the interest there is in the article (for editors,
especially since we can now easily remove items from
our watchlist)

This feature would be at the same level than the
previous "hit counter". For those of you newer on
Wikipedia (Jesus, do I sound old saying this !), the
hit counter was a number displayed at the bottom of
each page, and incrementing each time the page was
displayed. It gave information about the global
interest for the article (for editors and readers).
That feature was disabled several months ago to help
the struggling server. I think it was the first of a
very lengthy list of features to be removed. I suppose
that if we think of providing a counter for the
"watch", we could also get back the hit counter, which
was also very informative. The two counters would
nicely complete each other. 

* More information on an editor : 

This is not a technical feature to help editing, this
is a protection feature to help against vandal, or a
feature to help against antagonistic editors. There
should be no confusion. This will be seen as invasion
of privacy. The drawbacks will be to madden quite a
number of people, a reduction of liberty rights, will
perhaps lead some to create false accounts to create a
second watch list. I also see a possible slipery
slope, where only those "trusted" will be offered that
feature, further setting classes among editors.

I hope people who agree with this feature, will also
understand WELL what they agree for, and support it in
all knowledge. Do you support a technical feature or a
security feature ?

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