Suggestion to improve Watchlist

[LoyceV]

Forum rules require editing the last post in a topic instead of creating a new post if it's within 24 hours.
When the last post in a topic I've read gets edited, it shows up as NEW on the board list, and I can click the NEW button to go to the edited post. This works okay.
But when the same topic is on my Watchlist, editing the last post doesn't make it appear as NEW. I think this can be improved.

Example: this post was edited. I had read the post already, so when I clicked the topic on my Watchlist, I was sent to the next post. I only noticed the added information when it got quoted.

Suggestion: Watchlist should behave the same as the board index: when the last post in a topic gets edited, act as if it's a new post.

[EarnOnVictor]

That's a good suggestion, especially for those who prioritise the watchlist. But my concern is the kind of editing that occured on the post, whether it will be worth it or not, as wouldn't this cause a lot of false/unworthy new flags, just because someone corrected a typo right after posting or later, making it look new, despite an insignificant change? I believe the current system somewhat prevents a lot of notification spam if thought through, even as some edits do not happen once.

[LoyceV]

wouldn't this cause a lot of false/unworthy new flags, just because someone corrected a typo right after posting

The first 10 minutes after posting aren't registered as "edited".

[ibminer]

Does anything happen in the watchlist when the OP of a thread is edited?

[LoyceV]

Does anything happen in the watchlist when the OP of a thread is edited?

Nope.

[pandakitty]

If this behavior applies only to the last post in the thread, I'm on board.

My concern is that editing a post on page 3 might take me there instead of the last page (30), making me lose the last "checkpoint".

[ibminer]

Does anything happen in the watchlist when the OP of a thread is edited?

Nope.

I think it makes sense to get notified on an OP change, and it doesn't seem like a bad idea to have it happen on the last post as well. It's not really a "bump", but do you think it would need to fall under similar rules for various sections?  I'm just wondering how it might be abused around here.

[Cricktor]

From my perspective the expected behavior of the Watchlist should be what LoyceV suggests as improvement of current behavior:
if I "see" the most recent post of a topic in my Watchlist at time A and an update occurs at time B later than time A, then the last post should be "new" for my Watchlist.

An update of the first post should not trigger to put it on focus for my Watchlist. That feels counter-intuitive to me. I agree that the first post of a topic has an obvious significance, but later edits are already recorded as last edit timestamp when they occur 10min after the initial posting time.

I wouldn't mind if we had the following behavior: any newer edit of posts in a topic compared to my last view of that topic in my watchlist highlights those edited posts in some meaningful way.

I would probably like to use this when I can open a topic in "All" list mode, having the whole topic on one page, to easily spot newer edits of posts compared to the last time I visited and watched the topic from my Watchlist.

I'm pretty sure this is rather niche and likely data structures of the forum wouldn't allow an efficient display without putting to much stress on the forum's server and database.

[LoyceV]

I think it makes sense to get notified on an OP change

I barely re-read the OP of a topic, so that would make sense. But it shouldn't be under the "NEW" link: that link is reserved to jump to the latest new post.

[joker_josue]

I had never noticed that before, even though I use that forum feature a lot.

The problem will be managing to adjust this when both situations occur simultaneously: an edited post/OP and a new post in the topic.

Either way, if it's possible to adjust things to start notifying edits, that would be positive.

[ibminer]

I think it makes sense to get notified on an OP change

I barely re-read the OP of a topic, so that would make sense. But it shouldn't be under the "NEW" link: that link is reserved to jump to the latest new post.

Holy crap, well this is a little embarrassing. After 13 years of being here, I never even registered that little "new" icon as a separate link, smh. I've always used the "last post" icon on the far-right of my watchlist, even on board lists, and just scroll, sometimes going one page at a time, to where I last read. I always took "new" as just an extra goofy little indicator SMF had to distinguish a new post on a thread, on top of the bold title.

I was basically saying here that the thread should just pop back in the watchlist when the OP has an edit, and then I'd be able to determine it was an OP edit because there would be no recent last post. Now I wonder if a new icon could be there with "op edit" to show it was an edit which takes you to the OP.


edit: Just saw joker_josue's post and am glad I'm at least not the only one!

[LoyceV]

Holy crap, well this is a little embarrassing. After 13 years of being here, I never even registered that little "new" icon as a separate link, smh.

You made me chuckly I know how it feels, I'm also a creature of habit who doesn't look at all the things I never use. But you'll use this one from now on

[joker_josue]

edit: Just saw joker_josue's post and am glad I'm at least not the only one!

I was actually referring to the aspect of not appearing in the list when a post is edited. 

Either way, don't worry, I hadn't noticed the "new" button for a while either, even though I accessed that page all the time. 

[ibminer]

You made me chuckly I know how it feels, I'm also a creature of habit who doesn't look at all the things I never use. But you'll use this one from now on

Definitely will use it now, thank you Loyce!  This would have helped a lot when I was following WO, but I had to step away from that place anyway... will still help me with other threads though!

I was actually referring to the aspect of not appearing in the list when a post is edited.  

Either way, don't worry, I hadn't noticed the "new" button for a while either, even though I accessed that page all the time.  

All good, still a little embarrassed, but I'll get over it.

[joker_josue]

I was actually referring to the aspect of not appearing in the list when a post is edited.  

Either way, don't worry, I hadn't noticed the "new" button for a while either, even though I accessed that page all the time.  

All good, still a little embarrassed, but I'll get over it.

No need. I think we all keep discovering some "features" that the forum has. Or at least, we haven't used them in so long that we don't even remember they exist, until someone mentions them, and it seems new to us. 

[Cricktor]

...

I had a good laugh reading this, too, because I use the link all the time and the last post link rarely and only when I deliberately want to skip to the newest post.

But it took me years to discover the proper use of the Watchlist instead of unreadreplies where I was always annoyed to have topics pop up to which I didn't want to engage anymore and "unwatched" them. "Unwatching" them had of course no effect at unreadreplies. Bummer!

A new edit to the initial post could be indicated by another similar icon, like "OP edited". Would you prefer that this indication, if we could get it, were tied to a users last visit to the initial post (likely no such data is recorded by database) or to some other topic's visit time metric?

[satscraper]

I use Watchlist quite often. Sometimes I remove old entries, and other times I add new ones. But when the watchlist grows large, manually scrolling through an unsorted list becomes a chore.

I would like to suggest adding the new button in Edit Watchlist that allows all entries to be displayed in alphabetical order. I would appreciate it if this could be implemented.

[theymos]

Done, though there will be some weird edge cases which I'm probably not going to fix, such as:
 - Edits within the 10-minute grace period will not count, since those are not logged.
 - If a moderator merges the last two posts in a topic by deleting one and editing the other, then this will count as a "new" post, even though you will have seen both posts.

I don't think that it makes sense for OP edits to show up in the watchlist. They're too common to be something that people watching a topic will usually care about, I think.

[LoyceV]

- Edits within the 10-minute grace period will not count, since those are not logged.

I don't think that's much of a problem. Most of the time, the post will be more than 10 minutes old already by the time I read it, and even if it's edited, those will be minor changes.

- If a moderator merges the last two posts in a topic by deleting one and editing the other, then this will count as a "new" post, even though you will have seen both posts.

I can live with that
Thanks!

[joker_josue]

I confirm that it is already working.
To me, even topics from a few years ago appeared on the list.

Thanks for the update.