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

The new format is very bad.

Can you elaborate?

It's overly large, probably for phones, and seems..."clunky", for want of a better term. It responds very slowly, fills my whole screen when it drops down, and the very fact that it's a drop-down is non-obvious. Drop-downs generally have arrows on them, they're not an entire bar across your screen.

<s>I have a simple question: where do I opt out? I hate it.</s> Thankfully, I found it on the Recent Changes tab of my preferences. This really should have been an opt-in, not an opt-out, in my opinion.

Thank you for sharing your opinion.

Width is the same as it was before. Some speed tests have been conducted and it appears that loading a filtered combination is around 2 seconds, which is close to the previous system.

Concerning the dropdown, it is not filling the entire screen width. Do you have something different than that?

Decision has been taken to have it as an opt-out option based on user testing, user feedback and global use. Overall, people are happy about those new filters.

Not obvious whether checking a box on filters included or excludes a class of items from the watchlist.

The things I change frequently, like the time period require using a pull-down. It's actually faster for me to edit the "days=" in my browsers' url lines.

Maybe it's better for a new user and for someone who wants to do a lot of customization (within the allowed limits), but it seems inferior for the kind of use I give to my watchlist since much functionality is concealed beneath pulldowns.

I would need to create mnemonic names for various filters to remind me of what the filter was supposed to accomplish, rather than being able to see by inspecting the visible check boxes.

I've opted out.

> Not obvious whether checking a box on filters included or excludes a class of items from the watchlist.

@DCDuring Checking includes it. You can also highlight without checking, which will emphase the edits. For instance, if you check "Newcomers" but highlight "Page creations" in green, you will have all edits from newcomers with page creations in green (see).

> The things I change frequently, like the time period require using a pull-down. It's actually faster for me to edit the "days=" in my browsers' url lines.

I'm confused: that's also the case on the old interface.

> Maybe it's better for a new user and for someone who wants to do a lot of customization (within the allowed limits), but it seems inferior for the kind of use I give to my watchlist since much functionality is concealed beneath pulldowns.

We have tried to find the most common use-cases that ease a majority of users' lives. We have conducted some user tests to know more about that, plus the continuous feedback we have received has been used to take decisions about product design. Can you describe the use you do of your watchlist?

> I would need to create mnemonic names for various filters to remind me of what the filter was supposed to accomplish, rather than being able to see by inspecting the visible check boxes.

It is possible: you can save a given set of filters.

> I've opted out.

I hope my explanations will convince you to give the filters a new chance! :)

"Checking includes it"

Thanks for letting me know, but my point is that it is not self-explanatory. Maybe you kids have the right intuitions and experience to instantly grasp such things, but it wasn't obvious to this older contributor (contributing mostly on Wiktionary).

"old interface" "requires a pulldown"

The watchlist and recent changes interfaces at Wiktionary do not require pull-downs, there is a row of checkboxes.

I remain opted out. If this is the only interface, I am likely to do patrolling less rather than more. Watchlist is harder to dispense with, but I have ideas about that too.

We have assumed checking the box was self-explanatory enough and it has been confirmed by the user testing we have made. It hasn't been mentioned by other users during the feedback phase (as far as I remember). But that's a good point: I've filled a task to ask if it is possible to add a tooltip. Thank you for that feedback!

And the default interface on the Wiktionary for the Watchlist has a dropdown. :)

I wouldn't know why or how you know the default for enwikt recent changes and watchlist has dropdowns. All I know is that the control boxes that I use daily on each of these does not have dropdowns for my selection of what subsets of changes I'd like to see. I'll be happy to send you what I see so you can correct any of my misunderstandings.

Please do. :)

Do you still have those dropdown when you use that link?

Edit - here is the screenshot uploaded on Commons:

At that link I have a dropdown only for namespace selection, which doesn't bother me. My main objection is to the loss of complete visibility of the current filter. Having multiple filter-choice sets is largely irrelevant to me. I like being able to see exactly what is excluded or included by inspecting checkboxes. I prefer checkboxes to the show/hide display.

I see.

I wouldn't say @DCDuring's comment about the checkbox is unique. In the previous system, you check to "hide" certain types of edits. The new system, in which you check to include edits with certain characteristics, is far more standard—just look at common sites where users can refine their search, such as Amazon (here's an example) But because the new interface is the opposite of the old system, users have had to make a mental adjustment. Most adapt pretty quickly once they understand the change.

@Trizek (WMF): By "overly large", I meant the text of the drop-down and the checkboxes themselves. On a desktop browser, they're unnecessarily large. As for the dropdown size, no, it's not filling the entire screen width—sorry for my lack of clarity—but it does cover the entire screen length. One of the things I like about the old system is that I can scan existing changes for what I need to filter while I'm setting my filter preferences; with the new system, I can't see a thing.

As for your user testing, in this thread alone, all three respondents have indicated that they don't like it. While I'll admit that people don't tend to post "I like it" as much as "I don't like it", it still makes me wonder if your test audience should have been a bit wider before release. Maybe I'm just becoming a curmudgeon, but it seems to me that every time there's a change in MediaWiki these days, it's something I either want to opt out of or have to learn to live with because I can't opt out of it (like this new talk page system that doesn't let me do anything useful in terms of formatting). That's not really a good thing for users to be feeling.

You can have a smaller list of filters, using a quick hack.

> One of the things I like about the old system is that I can scan existing changes for what I need to filter while I'm setting my filter preferences; with the new system, I can't see a thing.

@RobinHood70 I'm sorry but I don't understand what you describe. Can you rephrase?

Concerning user satisfaction, this is something we care very much about. This is why we have done the following actions for the filters and users satisfaction:

• some user testing on the prototype, asking people to complete a certain number of tasks, and ask them how they feel. Overall, they were happy and we have integrated their suggestions to the product development.
• deploy a first iteration of the filters as a Beta feature on a few wikis, so they can try it as volunteers. I've personally send the multiple announcements and reminders on community boards and took care of the feedback. We had a lot of replies on that phase, including happy users to have something more useful (highlight is appreciated so as filters search), and also many requests for changes and improvements. We have integrated their suggestions to the product development as well.
• When the changes have been done, we have deployed the filters as a Beta on all wikis, preceded by announcements on community boards on newsletters like Tech/News as well. The feedback was gathered here on mediawiki.org. Like you said, people who like something don't tend to say so, but we have been surprised to a well balanced number of people who just came to say they were happy compared to the number of people who came to say they weren't, unless if we fix this and that. It was the same on village pumps or community places where I've left announcements about the deployment. Again, we have integrated their suggestions to the product development as we can, because people were asking for more features, most of time complicated ones.
• Based on all that user feedback, we have consideres the filters as good enough to go, and announced the deployment of the filters as a default on Recent Changes, with an explanation on how to opt-out. That has been done by phases, to have time to work on possible push-back from the communities, but it hasn't been the case. This is where we are now.

Next phase (not scheduled yet) will be for Watchlists filters that are still in Beta (while filters on Recent Changes are default).

I'm sorry if you have missed the announcements. You can opt-out of the new filters by going to the "Opt out" section at the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc on the wikis you are active on. Opting-out is possible for (quite) all features.

To format your discussions using the structured discussion system, you can switch between visual editing and wikitext anytime when posting a reply. To do so, there is a small pen icon at the bottom-right of the reply form. You can also use a certain number of formatting shortcuts on visual mode. Hope this helps!

> One of the things I like about the old system is that I can scan existing changes for what I need to filter while I'm setting my filter preferences; with the new system, I can't see a thing.

@RobinHood70 I'm sorry but I don't understand what you describe. Can you rephrase?

@Trizek (WMF), I understand RobinHood's comment meaning that in the original filters, the list of items in the Watchlist can be seen at the same time as the available filters (which is possible because there are only 12 filter options in the old interface).

With the new interface, the dropdown covers the list of items in the Watchlist, so the user can't see these items at the same time as the list of filters, so this list can't be used to provide feedback on what kind of filter to select.

You mean you would prefer to select the filters you need and decide when to apply them?