Help talk:Watchlist

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Person icons

My watchlist has, overnight, started putting little person icons next to user names. It's annoying and distracting. How can I remove it? Giant Snowman 21:11, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sort by expiry?

Assuming my memory isn't faulty, the "view and edit watchlist" page used to sort entries by how soon they were to expire. I've noticed that the watchlist has been updated (twice now, I think) and now everything is sorted alphabetically. This means I have to manually look over the whole list to see if anything is about to drop off the list which I might want to add more time to, and hope I didn't miss any articles while doing so. The new "view and edit watchlist" page is formatted like a table, but unfortunately the columns don't seem to be sortable. I've looked in the preferences but wasn't able to find a way to set it to restore the previous sort order.

Is there an option I missed somewhere to sort by time left until expiry? If not, does anyone happen to know if whether this option is planned for future updates, and whether these changes are made here on Wikipedia or over on the broader MediaWiki project? If this isn't the right place to ask, can someone point me in the right direction? – Scyrme (talk) 07:43, 12 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

So we got a labelling system recently, which is interesting, but is making the "expiry" column sortable not on the table? Should I be asking this somewhere over on MediaWiki? – Scyrme (talk) 18:26, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I was advised on Phabricator to add my support to Meta:Community Wishlist/W454 to help the developers assess the priority of developing a method for sorting watchlist items by expiry. If you were also affected by the change in sort order, please add your support too! – Scyrme (talk) 17:55, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(In the meantime, this script, User:KylieTastic/EditWatchlistByExpiry, may help; though it only sorts page by page). – Scyrme (talk) 18:11, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata pages appearing in watchlist

How the heck do I stop Wikidata pages from being included in my watchlist? I don't care about edits in the Wikidata of an article. Pyxis Solitary (yak). ⚢ 07:04, 16 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Pyxis Solitary: In Preferences → Watchlist → Advanced options there's a checkbox to turn this on and off. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:49, 16 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@John of Reading: Yay! Thank you! I did it. Pyxis Solitary (yak). ⚢ 14:52, 16 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Create and assign labels box

A new large 'Create and assign labels' box appears every time the watchlist is clicked, please can someone get rid of this "new improvement" (a make-work idea from someone at the WMF?). The large box also obscures the Watchlist messages at the top. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:24, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Randy Kryn - click to the last screen and click "got it" (the only thing I got was annoyed). There is a Help desk discussion here. Best wishes - Arjayay (talk) 16:37, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Arjayay. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:39, 2 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]