Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia/watchlists

Users can add pages to their personal watchlists to make it easier to monitor editing activity on those pages. A checkbox among the Preferences controls whether pages a user edits are automatically added to that user's watchlist. Right now, the default for that checkbox is not to add pages.

Intervention

When new users sign up for accounts, randomly assign them to a treatment group and a control group. The treatment group will have pages they edit automatically added to their watchlists by default. The control group will not. Both groups will have the option of changing this setting in their preferences whenever they want. The intervention will only affect the default configuration upon initial sign-up.

Rationale

• What is the effect of subtle interventions?
• It's not clear what's preferred.
• People might become more active editors sooner if their watchlists grow quickly.