Topic on Talk:Edit Review Improvements/New filters for edit review

Two quick comments:

• When you are not using the new filters, you can click links on the recent changes list as soon as the page is loaded. With the filters, they have to load or execute completely before you can click on anything. This slows down the workflow compared to the old system and is annoying. It's a step backwards.
• Currently, the text provided by MediaWiki:Recentchangestext is not displayed by default, which seems kind of strange - this text was surely put there for a reason. This recent change also makes this content uglier; for example, a table that would previously float on the right margin is now suddenly floating close to the centre (example). Maybe there is an HTML workaround for this latter part about floating, though.

Hi @Njardarlogar. Thanks for your reports. I'll take your issues in reverse order:

MediaWiki:Recentchangestext  links not displayed by default You have a couple of issues here. The first is that we've hidden these links by default. As you probably know, these links are created and edited by volunteers. On most wikis, these lists have grown over time, and most now have little or nothing to do with Recent Changes. All these unrelated items positioned just below the page title on an already complex page make it harder for new users of Recent Changes to understand what the page is about. The links also push the search results way down, which many users object to. We did research on 5 sample wikis (here is a summary of results) and found that most of these links are rarely used. E.g., on Czech, which has about 90 links at page top, only 7 links got more than 2 clicks during a week when the page got 30,000 page views, and only 2 of those 7 got more than 10 clicks. So all in all, this seemed a poor use of space. We announced that we planned to hide the links widely and well in advance, and solicited opinions; all respondents (admittedly a small number, but what can we do?) were in favor of the change. This change was also warmly welcomed in usability testing. As you have no doubt figured out, users can choose to leave the links open or closed; the page will keep your preferred setting.

Your second issue about the links concerns an unfortunate layout peculiarity on Nyorsk Wikipedia: a volunteer chose to create that vertical box, which is a very nonstandard element (I haven't seen it on any other wiki). I don't know how many of the links in this box are really useful (I can't read your language). But my suggestion would be 1) all communities should take a hard look at their links and eliminate those that are off topic and just taking up space (e.g., Recent Changes generally attracts pretty advanced users; is a link to the "Welcome to Wikipedia" page really appropriate?), and 2) this vertical box should be shifted to a layout that fits the new format. If you need help with that latter issue, it's possible someone on our team could help.

Can't click on links until page is fully loaded. I don't understand the issue you're reporting here. Do you mean links in the results area, to pages you wish to review? Or some other links? Please say more about this problem: Walk us through what you do, step by step.

Thanks again for your feedback!

@JMatazzoni (WMF)

• The MediaWiki:Recentchangestext pages are presumably maintained by the people that use Recent Changes the most; if they didn't want it, they could just blank or delete it. If they want changes, they can make them.

• Why not let Recentchangestext use the full width, as it does without the filters?

• When you go to Recent Changes with the filters deactivated, the page loads almost instantly on my current computer. With the filters enabled, the list of recent changes still loads near-instantly, but the filter feature itself takes another 1-2 seconds to load, during which nothing in the list of recent changes can be interacted with.

So if I just created a page and want to find it via Recent Changes, that'll take another 1-2 seconds with the filters enabled, which is annoying. On a wiki with few edits and where the filters don't do much, I turned them off because they made the editing experience worse rather than making little difference.

Hi @Njardarlogar. Thanks for the clarification about not being able to click while the filters load. This info is very helpful. There are a few tickets we're working on that are related:  T166908 is a prerequisite to T173533, which your note prompted us to write and which should solve your problem. I've prioritized both for work this quarter, but there's a lot on our plate so it may take us a few months to get to them. Thanks for your patience.