Change Details

See also T258098 and T252812 === Problem The DBAs have expressed concerns about the ever-growing size of the `watchlist` table. In #community-tech's research for #expiring-watchlist-items, we discovered the accounts with the most watched items are almost always bots, and appear to be only because the "add pages and files I create to my watchlist" preference is on by default. It's not surprising that bots create so many pages, since naturally they operate at a higher rate than humans. === Proposed solution Automatically turn off auto-watch preferences when an account is added to a user group with the `bot` permission. This seems rather uncontroversial, as bots conceivably have little use for the watchlist. If they do need it for whatever reason, the operator could simply re-enable the preference. An Echo notification and an email could be sent when this occurs. This is important because some communities temporarily grant bot rights to humans for them to perform some large-scale task, and these humans should be aware of changes made to their preferences. **Some quick data** For perspective: * commonswiki: 14% (~22 million rows) of the watchlist table are owed to bots, which appear to be bots that upload files and simply have the default preference set to watch them * wikidatawiki: 1.1% (~91 million rows) -- probably bots that automatically create items after articles on Wikipedia are created * enwiki: 4.7% (~10.3 million rows) -- e.g. counter-vandalism bots that create User talk pages when issuing warnings * mgwiktionary: 99.8% (~13.2 million rows) -- a single bot mass-created nearly every entry on the wiki

See also T258098 and T252812 === Problem The DBAs have expressed concerns about the ever-growing size of the `watchlist` table. In #community-tech's research for #expiring-watchlist-items, we discovered the accounts with the most watched items are almost always bots, and appear to be only because the "add pages and files I create to my watchlist" preference is on by default. It's not surprising that bots create so many pages, since naturally they operate at a higher rate than humans. === Proposed solution Ignore auto-watch preferences when an account is added to a user group with the `bot` permission. This seems rather uncontroversial, as bots conceivably have little use for the watchlist. If they do need it for whatever reason, the need to hear the use-case. We should solicit input from the community before making any decisions. **Some quick data** For perspective: * commonswiki: 14% (~22 million rows) of the watchlist table are owed to bots, which appear to be bots that upload files and simply have the default preference set to watch them * wikidatawiki: 1.1% (~91 million rows) -- probably bots that automatically create items after articles on Wikipedia are created * enwiki: 4.7% (~10.3 million rows) -- e.g. counter-vandalism bots that create User talk pages when issuing warnings * mgwiktionary: 99.8% (~13.2 million rows) -- a single bot mass-created nearly every entry on the wiki

See also T258098 and T252812 === Problem The DBAs have expressed concerns about the ever-growing size of the `watchlist` table. In #community-tech's research for #expiring-watchlist-items, we discovered the accounts with the most watched items are almost always bots, and appear to be only because the "add pages and files I create to my watchlist" preference is on by default. It's not surprising that bots create so many pages, since naturally they operate at a higher rate than humans. === Proposed solution Automatically turn offIgnore auto-watch preferences when an account is added to a user group with the `bot` permission. This seems rather uncontroversial, as bots conceivably have little use for the watchlist. If they do need it for whatever reason, the operator could simply re-enable the preference. An Echo notification and an email could be sent when this occurs. This is important because some communities temporarily grant bot rightsthe need to humans foear them to perform some large-scale task, use-case. and these humans should be aware of changes made to their preferencesWe should solicit input from the community before making any decisions. **Some quick data** For perspective: * commonswiki: 14% (~22 million rows) of the watchlist table are owed to bots, which appear to be bots that upload files and simply have the default preference set to watch them * wikidatawiki: 1.1% (~91 million rows) -- probably bots that automatically create items after articles on Wikipedia are created * enwiki: 4.7% (~10.3 million rows) -- e.g. counter-vandalism bots that create User talk pages when issuing warnings * mgwiktionary: 99.8% (~13.2 million rows) -- a single bot mass-created nearly every entry on the wiki