The purpose of new star icon used for watching is not obvious. For example some wikipedias use similar symbols to mark featured content.
A better symbol can be an eye or some other thing related to watching.
Maybe plain text is even better to avoid problems with translating to language were symbols have different meanings.
Version: 1.16.x
Severity: enhancement
(In reply to comment #0)
The purpose of new star icon used for watching is not obvious. For example some
wikipedias use similar symbols to mark featured content.A better symbol can be an eye or some other thing related to watching.
That could be a better symbol for /English/, maybe, but there's plenty of languages where the name of the watch functionality is not related to eyes at all.
I think we should be just be asking if "watchlist" is obvious or not. The icon is based on a favorites analogy, which is the most common use case for the watchlist. Perhaps "watchlist" should be renamed "favorites".
(In reply to comment #0)
The purpose of new star icon used for watching is not obvious. For example some
wikipedias use similar symbols to mark featured content.A better symbol can be an eye or some other thing related to watching.
I agree that it can be confusing next to the featured article star, though Firefox and other programs use the star icon for watching/bookmarking pages, so it's a toss-up.
(In reply to comment #2)
I think we should be just be asking if "watchlist" is obvious or not. The icon
is based on a favorites analogy, which is the most common use case for the
watchlist. Perhaps "watchlist" should be renamed "favorites".
I've never heard of anyone being confused about the term "watchlist." You aren't favoriting a user talk page or a noticeboard, you're adding them to a list of pages that you want to watch.
Who says the metaphor of "watching" a page is even that clear. I would really like to do some crude user testing to get some more qualitative analysis going on this topic. Design by consensus between a few users out of hundreds of millions won't help this issue.
(In reply to comment #4)
Who says the metaphor of "watching" a page is even that clear. I would really
like to do some crude user testing to get some more qualitative analysis going
on this topic. Design by consensus between a few users out of hundreds of
millions won't help this issue.
I fail to see how the opinions of a half-dozen randomly selected people living in the SF area are better than the opinions of the tens of dozens of developers from around the world who have worked on MediaWiki for years.
Average computer users selected by objective criteria and presented with a set number of tasks show us what is wrong when they try (and fail for various reasons) to execute those tasks; opinions of developers are just that, opinions. They may often be thoughtful opinions, based on broad experience, etc. etc. but they are not a substitute for seeing how the target audience interacts with the application in question.
You could also try reading up on the subject, for example in *cough*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing*cough* :-P
Indeed, Ariel is on target here. User testing !== opinions. Also, we are not necessarily limited to local testing, and commonly have conducted remote testing using screen-sharing software.
(In reply to comment #1)
(In reply to comment #0)
A better symbol can be an eye or some other thing related to watching.
That could be a better symbol for /English/, maybe, but there's plenty of
languages where the name of the watch functionality is not related to eyes at
all.
Indeed. In Dutch "Watchlist" is for example (translated back to English) "Follow list".
michael wrote:
Longtime user here, puzzled by the star and didn't guess what it was until I clicked it. A star says “star rating,” or perhaps “favourite,” but my watchlist is a different concept.
beland wrote:
I have to say I agree the star is not obvious. I'm an administrator and I was *looking* for the watchlist control, and for a while I concluded it had been removed and I had to go to my watchlist page or do a null edit.
What would be wrong with using words localized for each language instead of an non-self-explanatory icon?
Abigor wrote:
We use a "eye" instead of a star on our wikifarm
It seems that a eye is more close in watching a page than a star...
Not only is there a good rule worth following about not using body-parts in iconography, especially if it's being used internationally, but in most languages, "Watch" is translated more like "Follow", which would be even more confusing if an "eye" were used.
I think this has been hashed out a few too many times, which is an indication that we need to do a better job documenting design guidelines. I will look into poking at that soon.
I don't think that a "X is not obvious problem" can be fixed by documenting the design.
Sure, that can explain what not to do. But won't help the people which was lost looking for their watch tab.
Maybe the default should be using it in text form, allowing to override on each language, so in one it can be a star, in other an eye, and in other an ideogram. For example, Chinese users may prefer to replace the star with "監視", which wouldn't use significantly more space.
Re-opening.
The level of obviousness doesn't change with the passage of a few months. Sometimes interface issues take years to resolve and, yes, require a lot of conversations in which the same things are said and re-said. Bug 577 is a decent example of this.
I also found star very counter intuitive as a symbol for watchlist. May be writing "add to watchist" would be better. I do not add to watchlist my favorites - I add everything I edit.
mhershberger wrote:
Unassigning default assignments. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/54734
The start is still there. Are there any plans to change it?
Not that it's relevant, but https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:Athena-Wikimania-2012-BrandonHarris.png has no star, although I couldn't find/deduce any [watch] functionality either. Under the More tab?
I'll weigh in since someone added me to the bug.
lets not use body parts or human forms, it can be weird at best and offensive at worst in some cultures.
an eye specifically is a very overloaded metaphor (not that a star isn't) using graphics apps a lot, an eye makes me think of visibility, not watching.
I think we could try a 100 different icons and arrive at some great things, that lots of people would like, and lots wouldn't, that said, the star has become part of the vocabulary of the site, its overused, barnstars, featured articles, watchlists, etc. But when it comes down to it, its part of the brand. For that simple reason my recommendation is to keep it.
I gave a talk recently at techdays, and the star issue was one point that I made when I talked about inconsistency on the site. We have a bug logged to sync the desktop and mobile stars as well as make the start Hi-DPI compatible https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54307 (May will be providing the asset next week)
Will we change the imagery for barstars? unlikely, featured? maybe.
Let's work on consistency first, and then we can explore some alternate ways to clarify what the purpose of the star is, when it comes down to it, I don't think the problem is the icon, its a problem with discoverability and the core concept of a watchlist that confuses new users.
My recommendation is to close this out, and start thinking of new ways to represent "featured" that don't involve stars…
This report hasn't got any progress in a long time, and by now everybody got used to that star for watching pages. Resolving as WONTFIX.