Wikipedia:Don't overload your watchlist!

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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WP:OVERLOAD

This page in a nutshell: A watchlist becomes harder to navigate the longer it is. Only watch articles that need watching.

Watching pages is a capability provided by Wikipedia that lets users efficiently see if any changes have been made to articles the user cares about. Any registered user can easily watch any page, and as easily unwatch (remove a page from one's watchlist) when logged in. This is far easier than visiting each page in which you have interest and visually observing changes.

Why watch a page?

That is a good question. Why do you want to know if any changes have been made to any particular page?

The following are some possible reasons:

You created the page, and you want others to expand it, or to know when others do
The page has the potential for more information to be added in the future, and you would like to know more about the subject from someone else
The subject may require updating, and you want to see if updates are made
The page is at risk for vandalism, and you want to be alert to catch the vandalism early

What is recommended to watch

Pages you have created (unless the creation was only for technical reasons, and you otherwise have no interest in the subject)
Pages on which you have made significant contributions
Pages to which you have made a recent contribution, even possibly a minor one, and you would like to see if it was accepted by others
Pages you have never edited, but would like to learn more about the subject one day than is currently provided
The subject receives frequent or periodic updates, and you would like to know when they occur
Pages you have marked for deletion in any manner. If those pages are deleted and then recreated, the recreation will appear on your watchlist and you can take action where appropriate.
Non-existent pages, if you would like to know if they are ever created
Pages that are common targets of vandalism or other disruptive activity, if you wish to assist with preventing or reverting the vandalism

What is not recommended to watch

For a counterpoint to this section, see Wikipedia:Why you should watch redirects.

Watching the following types of pages is not recommended unless you have some other interest in the subject:

Pages on which you have made only extremely minor edits
Additions of categories, navboxes, links to other Wikipedia pages, or other small details that are included on many pages
Pages on which you have reverted vandalism, unless the vandalism is ongoing, and you wish to help stop it
Pages you have previously edited, but since lost interest in
Redirects, unless they are controversial
User pages and talk pages of others, unless you are having an ongoing discussion with that user
Closed deletion discussions, unless they are currently under deletion review. These are never supposed to be modified.
Pages that you have patrolled and templated

Pages that are frequently edited

There are two settings for your watchlist: one in which only the most recent edit appears, and one in which all edits within the given timeframe appear. The advantage to only the most recent edit appearing is that the watchlist is smaller. The advantage to all edits being displayed is that you can see a significant edit that was not the most recent. If you choose the first of these two, it is possible for that a page could be vandalized, the vandal can make another seemingly acceptable, possibly minor edit, and the act of vandalism could go unnoticed to you.

Displaying all edits can be a drawback though if you are watching one or more pages that are edited many times on a single day regularly. This could be truly overwhelming for you to track, especially when you have multiple pages like this.

As an alternative to watching such pages on your watchlist, if you are interested in seeing how one changes, it may be useful to simply to visually observe it each time, and to check its edit history.

Pitfalls of an overloaded watchlist

The human mind has limits. Some can read and comprehend more than others in any given period of time, but we all have limits. The more pages on your watchlist, and the busier these are, the longer it takes to read it.

Reading a long watchlist in full may be exhausting. You may instead quickly scan it over, ignoring all but the most significant changes. However, by ignoring the bulk of changes on your watchlist, you defeat the purpose. It may make you miss an edit which is meaningful to you.

Dealing with long watchlists

If you find your watchlist has grown too large for you to manage (i.e. more than 40,000 articles, 100 user talk pages and/or 50 categories), there are several things you can do:

Remove pages you're not actually interested in (anymore). Especially pages that get edited often. If you don't want to lose these sites you could create a text-document, an online list, a bookmarks folder or a file folder for the pages that you remove from your watchlist.
Create multiple watchlists so that you can set priorities. Currently Wikipedia does not allow for multiple watchlists but the "related changes"-feature can be used for this as described in Help:Related changes.
User:Evad37/Watchlist-openUnread is a tool that allows you to manage large watchlists by allowing you to quickly open multiple unread diffs of your watchlist at once.