Edit Review Improvements/New filters for edit review

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Preview a new interface that improves Recent Changes page filtering generally and helps reviewers tap the full power of ORES predictions. That video is a screencast of the prototype.

New Filters for Edit Review is a suite of improvements designed to help edit reviewers be more efficient and effective on pages like Recent Changes, Watchlist and Related Changes.

An additional goal of the project is to help new contributors, who, according to research, require a more supportive edit-review process. The new tools do this by enabling reviewers to identify, for the first time, edits by new volunteers who are making errors but are, nonetheless, acting in good faith.

The New Filters for Edit Review introduce an easier yet more powerful filtering interface as well as a whole list of new filters and other tools, including live page updating, user-defined highlighting, the ability to save filter sets for re-use, and predictive filters powered by machine learning. This page summarizes the new tools and other benefits the project provides. The documentation pages can help you learn how to most effectively use these new capabilities. The New Filters were created by the Global Collaboration Team.

What is new about the ‘New Filters’?

The following items describe key additions and enhancements of the New Filters for Edit Review project.

All features below are now standard on the Recent Changes page and on Watchlist and are available on all wikis.

New filter groups

Get predictions about edit quality

Available on certain Wikimedia wikis only

The “Contribution quality” filters offer predictions about edits. Are edits likely to be of high quality or to have problems? With those filters, it is easier to search for good edits, to thank or help productive contributors. The filters can also detect bad-quality edits and help patrollers to improve them.

ORES, a machine learning service, makes the quality predictions based on statistics. ORES has been trained on a large set of edits, previously scored by human editors. These quality predictions filters are available only on wikis where the ORES “damaging” test is enabled.

Learn more about Edit Quality predictions.

Get predictions about whether users are in good faith

Available on certain Wikimedia wikis only

The “User intent” filters offer predictions about whether edits were made in good faith or not. With those filters, it is easier to search for edits made in good-faith, by good-faith users. By enabling detection of bad-faith edits, filters assist reviewers looking for vandalism.

Like the Quality filters above, these predictions are made by the machine-learning service ORES, based on statistics. These intent predictions filters are available only on wikis, where the ORES “damaging” test is enabled.

Learn more about User Intent predictions.

Search by experience level

Three new filters let you search by the experience level of editors who are making changes. These filters can be useful in a number of ways. For example, research shows that new editors are particularly vulnerable to rejection. The Newcomers filter enables reviewers to treat new users with the care they require.

These are the three new experience levels:

Newcomers - Registered editors who have fewer than 10 edits or 4 days of activity.
Learners - Registered editors whose experience falls between "Newcomers" and "Experienced users." (corresponds to autoconfirmed status on English Wikipedia.)
Experienced users - Registered editors with more than 500 edits and 30 days of activity. (corresponds to extended confirmed status on English Wikipedia.)

The filters return the edits only of users who are currently logged in.

Learn more about filtering.

Search by new change types

In the past, reviewers had the ability to hide Category changes and Wikidata edits only.

The New Filters add three additional “Types of change” filter:

Page edits - lets you filter for changes to content and discussion pages.
Page creations - lets you use Recent Changes to patrol new pages.
Logged actions - lets you isolate—or exclude—things like account creations, page deletions and administrative actions generally (the events tracked on Special:Log).

Get (only) the latest

The “Latest revision” filters let you choose to see only the most recent edit to any given page. All prior changes on that page will be omitted.

Watch your Watchlist (from Recent Changes)

Use the “Watchlisted pages” filters group on Recent Changes to isolate or highlight changes made on pages you watch.

See the ‘Unseen’ (on Watchlist)

On Watchlist only

On Watchlist, use “Seen changes” and “Unseen changes” filters (in the “Watchlist activity” group) to identify changes to pages you have or have not visited since the changes occurred.

Search by namespaces and particular edits

Search by namespace

Filter namespaces to narrow your search.

Search by tags

Filter tags used on your wiki to find particular edits.

Power tools

Make results more meaningful with Highlighting

Highlighting lets reviewers apply color intelligently to emphasize edits that match desired criteria. Used correctly, highlighting adds meaning to Recent Changes search results and can help you find what you are looking for more quickly.

Learn how to use highlighting.

Bookmarking: save and reuse your settings

The New Filters provide a lot of new functionality. To help you manage the wealth of options conveniently, we have provided the ability to save sets of filters, by name, for later use. Just click the bookmark icon to save your current settings. You will find all your saved settings in the “Saved filters” menu, where you can easily switch among them.

Learn how to bookmark filters.

Manage preference right on the page

With bookmarks, you can declare a set of saved filters as your default. Those settings will load automatically every time you visit the page. This means you no longer need to visit the Preferences page to set your preferred behavior.

We plan to remove all redundant Recent Changes and Watchlist preferences, consolidating the remaining options on one tab.

Live update

A much-requested feature, “Live update” lets you use Recent Changes for near-real-time monitoring. In Live Update mode, the Recent Changes page automatically adds new changes to the top of the search results every three seconds.

All-new interface

Easier to use

To make the sophisticated functionality offered by the New Filters as friendly as possible, the filtering interface has been completely re-imagined. Functions are grouped logically and explained clearly. An "Active filters" area shows at a glance what your settings are. And a smart help system provides in-context guidance.

Discover the new interface.

More powerful

In a number of ways, the New Filters are organized using a different logic from the old ones. For example, by putting related filters into logical groups, the New Filters enable users to intelligently broaden or narrow their searches. Similarly, most previous Recent Changes filters offered only a simple option to hide a certain property (X). By augmenting those old filters so that they now let users show or hide both X and its opposite (notX), the current tools provide more control. For example, previously, one could show Wikidata edits or hide Wikidata edits, but one could not show only Wikidata edits.

Learn more about filtering.

Project updates

End of August 2018

Every Wikimedia wiki has the new filters as default on RecentChanges pages and Watchlist pages. An option to opt-out is provided in Preferences.

Those filters will be available by default in MediaWiki install package in October 2018.

July 10, 2018: With Watchlist speed improvements, beta graduation is in progress

In response to our announcement about graduating the New Filters for Edit Review out of beta on Watchlist, we received reports from users about slow load times. Because of this, the team delayed graduation while we investigated.

We worked a number of different angles related to this problem (see the list of completed tickets below) and succeeded in significantly speeding up load times on Watchlist, in particular, and on Recent Changes as well. Users reported seeing Watchlist times drop by half or more, figures that check with our own tests.

With these performance improvements, we have moved forward with the process of taking the New Filters out of beta on Watchlist and making them standard on all wikis. Graduation already took place on a number of smaller wikis on Monday July 9th, and the remaining wikis will get the new features on Monday July 16th. If you are still experiencing what seems like unusual slowness on Watchlist please let us know on the talk page. Users who do not need the new features will be able to opt out in their preferences, on the Watchlist tab.

Completed speedup tasks

Fix slow Watchlist load and interaction times (main task)

June 12, 2018: ‘Hide filters’ function coming to Watchlist and Recent changes

We plan to add the ability to hide/show the “Active filters” area of the New Filters interface on both Watchlist and Recent changes. See the designs below (or task T177206).

The design for this hides the Active filters display area and the search bar, so that patrollers can see more search results sooner on the page. But even with these tools hidden, the page is still fully usable, with patrollers able to interact with tools like Live updates, Saved filters and the ability to change the time period searched or number of results displayed. When you need to edit a filter setting or create a new filter, you just click the “Show” button to restore the Active filters area.

Making the New Filters tools collapsible is something users have asked for for some time. We should be able to release this change in June (2018). We are moving on it now to particularly accommodate Watchlist users, for whom the New Filters will be graduating out of beta this month to become standard on all wikis (see the post below for more details on that).

June 2, 2018: New Filters on Watchlist to graduate out of beta soon

In September of 2017, subscribers to the New Filters beta got the New Filters on Watchlist.

The filters will be out of beta on Watchlist by late June or early July 2018. After launch, this suite of improved edit-search tools will be standard on all wikis. Individuals who prefer the existing Watchlist interface will be able to opt out by means of a new preference.

Advantages

The New Filters introduce an easier yet more powerful filtering interface to Watchlist as well as a whole list of filters and other tools that make reviewing edits more efficient, including live page updating, user-defined highlighting, the ability to create special-purpose filter sets and save them for re-use and (on wikis with ORES enabled) predictive filters powered by machine learning. If you are not familiar with the New Filters, please give them a try on Watchlist by activating the New Filters beta feature. In particular, it would be very helpful if you can test the new functionality with your local gadgets and configurations. The documentation pages provide guidance on how to use the many new tools you will discover.

Known limitations

The New Filters may take about a half-second longer to load than the old interface, especially the first time you visit the Watchlist after some days (times will vary depending on how fast your computer is, the speed of your connection, the size of your Watchlist…). And the new interface, which provides a lot more functionality, may take up more vertical space than the old one—about one line of search results, depending on your window size, filter combinations, and other variables. As noted above, anyone who prefers to use the old interface will be able to opt out of the new version via a setting in Preferences.

Let us know what you think

Over 70,000 people have activated the New Filters beta, which has been in testing on Watchlist for more than eight months. We feel confident that the features are stable and effective, but if you have thoughts about these tools or the beta graduation, please let us now with a post on this talk page. In particular, tell us if you know of a special incompatibility or other issue that makes the New Filters problematic on your wiki. We will examine the blocker and may delay release on your wiki until the issue can be addressed.

Sept. 2017: Standard on Recent changes (and Related changes)

Since May 2017, the New Filters have been available as a beta feature on Recent changes (and Related changes). In the months since then, Global Collaboration Team has received and acted on numerous feature suggestions and bug reports from community members and others, and the features have been through multiple rounds of user testing. They have, in general, received a very positive reception.

In September and October 2017, the principal New Filters features listed above graduate out of beta on Recent changes only, becoming standard parts of MediaWiki. Users who want to can opt out of the improvements in their preferences.

Sept, 2017: in beta on Watchlist