Village Pump (technical) - Watchlist JS Bolding

Watchlist JS Bolding

This is not a new problem, but rather something that I've put up with since the day I registered nearly two years ago and I'm finally fed up with it. When I load my watchlist for the second or subsequent time in the same browser session, JavaScript bolds the entire line of all edits that are new since the last time I loaded my watchlist. This would seem helpful except for three major problems: first, it's based solely on whether it was listed the last time I loaded my watchlist with no regard to whether I've viewed the edit through other means, and second and more important, I have CSS set up to bold the titles of pages that have changed since I last visited them, and this JS thingy hinders that by bolding edits that I've already visited via other means, including my own edits. I've had enough of this and am looking for a way to disable the script that's doing this. Any ideas? jcgoble3 (talk) 21:49, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Have a look at Wikipedia:Customizing watchlists. NtheP (talk) 22:15, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I did. Most of that page deals with how to work with the changes from bugzilla:33123. There's nothing there about whatever script this is, which is far older than the $wgShowUpdatedMarker change. jcgoble3 (talk) 23:00, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

At Preferences → Gadgets, there is an option "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold. See Customizing watchlists for more options." Is it switched on? If so, switch it off. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:42, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

That's off, and again, that deals with $wgShowUpdatedMarker, which I actually use and want. This JavaScript is something totally different that has been around since at least January 2011. I know I did not do anything to turn it on; it was on from the moment I created my account. I'll get a screenshot for you guys in a few minutes. jcgoble3 (talk) 00:09, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

It probably wasn't since the day you registered, but the day after that. It looks like the script you added in this edit is what's doing it. Anomie⚔ 00:26, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Here's a screenshot. The top half of the image shows the watchlist as it is loading, with this page correctly not bolded because I have visited this page since the last change (indeed, the last edit was my own). The bottom half shows my watchlist after it completed loading, with the entire WP:VPT line and the entire line for my last edit now annoyingly fully bolded because that edit was made after the last time I loaded my watchlist. The fact that the bolding does not occur until after the page completes loading tells me that this is being done my JavaScript. If I use the "Inspect Element" feature of Firefox 17.0.1 to examine the HTML, I see that inline CSS has been added to the of the VPT line and the of my last edit. jcgoble3 (talk) 00:33, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

reply to Anomie OK, then if that script is the problem, then which parts of that script do I copy over to get just the top-of-page notifier line? I want to keep that but get rid of the watchlist bolding. jcgoble3 (talk) 00:38, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Looks like User:Ais523/watchlistnotifier.js would benefit from updating to accommodate the updated marker; probably excluding rows which have the class mw-changeslist-line-not-watched. I don't know enough JavaScript to comment more specifically.

As an aside, I think this illustrates a core failing of watchlists. The standard user interface ought to exclude edits made before a page was last visited, and also exclude edits that are listed on the watchlist when the "Mark all pages visited" button is clicked. (At present, the button also resets pages that were edited between the time the watchlist was generated and the time the button is clicked, so very recent edits are wrongly marked as visited even though they have not yet shown up on the user's watchlist.) See Bugzilla:4903#c7 for a related feature request that has been open for nearly seven years.

— Richardguk (talk) 07:18, 16 December 2012 (UTC)