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Tooltip text for watchlist button assumes knowledge of the concept of watchlist
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Description

T25141 is on the icon itself, but some think that the hover text, supposed to explain the feature, fails its purpose:

(From comment T56730 comment 15)

On the other hand, the star itself doesn't even tell people who are logged in
what it is unless they hover, which frankly isn't very good for something
that's such an important part of the interface...

The current hover text is "Add this page to your watchlist", which indeed doesn't explain anything: it's just a tautological definition of the word "watchlist" which used to be the label of the button.

Maybe there's also some way to make it more obvious that one can and should hover an element?

See also: T13665: Make addedwatchtext message, shown after adding talk page to watchlist, less verbose

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 22 2014, 2:55 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz60595.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).
Krinkle renamed this task from Hover text for Vector's watchlist button (star icon) is not explicative enough to Tooltip text for watchlist button does not explain concept of watchlist.Dec 16 2014, 6:31 PM
Krinkle lowered the priority of this task from Medium to Low.
Krinkle updated the task description. (Show Details)
Krinkle edited projects, added Vector (legacy skin); removed MediaWiki-Watchlist.
Krinkle set Security to None.
Krinkle removed a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

It is not the purpose of the title text to "explain the concept" of the watchlist; its purpose is to describe what the button does, and it does exactly that.

Change 193682 had a related patch set uploaded (by AYUSH GARG):
en.json: tooltip text for watchlist button to explain concept of watchlist

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/193682

I've suggested better wording on the patch, because it was quite clunky.

Nemo_bis renamed this task from Tooltip text for watchlist button does not explain concept of watchlist to Tooltip text for watchlist button assumes knowledge of the concept of watchlist.Mar 2 2015, 8:51 PM
Jdlrobson changed the task status from Open to Stalled.Sep 24 2015, 10:28 PM
Jdlrobson added subscribers: siebrand, Jdlrobson.

From @siebrand on patch:
'Most MediaWiki content pages have a menu item called "Watchlist". Not mentioning the "watchlist" concept was Timo mentions add to potential confusion. Sometimes it's okay to leave something as it is, because the current solution is adequate. My recommendation is to abandon this patch set, and resolve the Phab task as Declined.'

This does tell users what the watchlist is, though. It calls it 'watchlist' which is, presumeably, a list of something watched. And it says, specifically, 'add this page' to it, which tells the users it's a list that can have pages added to it. So clearly it's how they watch pages.

What it means to 'watch' things in general isn't really clearly defined anywhere, but considering even the watchlist doesn't know and just keeps listing more and more and more of changes in absolutely everything, that... seems like a separate problem.

Aklapper changed the task status from Stalled to Open.May 10 2020, 8:51 AM
Aklapper subscribed.

I don't see what exactly this task is stalled on ("If a report is waiting for further input (e.g. from its reporter or a third party) and can currently not be acted on"). Hence resetting task status. This task should either be declined, or merged and resolved.

Change 193682 abandoned by Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE):
[mediawiki/core@master] en.json: tooltip text for watchlist button to explain concept of watchlist

Reason:
6 years old. The ticket got declined.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/193682