Wikipedia:Don't watch articles that you care about

It may be best to simply set your edits adrift and not pay attention to wherever they end up, or who finds them.

On Wikipedia, there is a handy feature called a watchlist which allows you to "watch" pages, so long as you have an account. Through this functionality, your watchlist lets you track pages that you have an interest in, providing you with a feed of new changes made to the page (and its associated talk page). This can be helpful if you are collaborating with other users on improving the page, there is an active discussion and you want to see if replies are made, the page is a frequent target of vandalism, brigading, or otherwise unhelpful edits, and so on.

However, you may want to think carefully before using this feature indiscriminately. While it is an undoubtedly useful and often essential tool with which to maintain Wikipedia, it is also the single aspect of Wikipedia that comes closest to resembling a social media site. As anyone with a Twitter account knows, it can be very stressful to read a constantly updating feed of everything, which may make all these things look much more important or urgent than they truly are.

This principle is already deftly summarized in another essay on the subject of the healthy use of watchlisting, Wikipedia:Don't overload your watchlist! In general, that essay's arguments and suggestions are rather sound, and it is generally useful advice for many new editors.

However, there is one point of potential disagreement to be had with it: the recommendation of watching articles that you created, edited, or have an interest in. This may not actually be advisable.

Why you may not want to watch "your" articles

The aforementioned essay states several examples of articles that are recommends and not recommended to watch. The first on the list is pages that you created or made significant contributions to. This may be a good idea, if you're the ideal Wikipedian: someone good at collaborating and interacting with others, who doesn't feel ownership over their contributions and won't be bothered whatsoever if their contributions are reverted. However, if this does not describe you, then the following scenario may play out:

Bob, a new or intermediately experienced editor, has just written a new article. Bob believes that they understand the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia, that they have done their due research and ensured the topic is notable, added reliable and verifiable sources, written it neutrally, and adhered to all other relevant norms. Or, the article might be an article (or several related articles) that already exists, on a topic that is close to Bob's heart about which they care quite a lot, and they have noticed that they feel it is missing some key information, so they go and find the best available sources, and add it themselves. Pleased with their work, Bob provides an appropriate edit summary explaining their rationale for their changes, moves it from draftspace or userspace to article space if necessary, clicks "Publish", and gets on with their day.

Meanwhile, Alice, an experienced contributor, finds Bob's edits. Alice might be patrolling new pages or recent changes, or checking a list of new pages added to her favorite WikiProject, when she comes across Bob's new article, or bold new edit to the existing article. While she recognizes that Bob acted in good faith, Alice firmly disagrees with Bob's edits. The information might appear questionable, or biased, or undue, the sources might seem dodgy, or contain a source or two that Bob didn't know wasn't reliable. So Alice goes ahead and reverts Bob's changes, or tags the article with a {{Notability}} template or other such notice, removes the unreliable sources and information depending on them, and/or rewrites or reworks the article as needed to comply with Wikipedia's content policies as Alice understands them.

When Bob edited or created the page, it was automatically added to their Watchlist. There, Bob sees that Alice has edited their article, removing information or sources that Bob felt were essential to the page's coverage of the topic. Although Bob is aware that no one owns articles on Wikipedia, they immediately jump to defend their contributions. Bob reverts Alice's changes in turn, starts a talk page discussion about the perceived content issues, or attempts to explain their rationale in their edit summaries, citing various policies, guidelines, and essays which they feel justify their preferred changes. Alice re-reverts Bob, and seeks to explain what is wrong, but at this point Bob is already so heated that they are incapable of keeping cool. An edit war may brew, an argument may occur, or the incident may escalate to a noticeboard, or, if nothing else, Bob is left feeling bitter about the experience and less enthused about editing Wikipedia.

A perfect Wikipedia article that was collaboratively improved by the community and left to sit peacefully after its creator unwatchlisted it.

All this could be avoided, if at any point in this story, Bob simply removed the disputed article(s) from their watchlist and forgot about it. It's also worth noting that this may happen even if Bob never edited the page, or may have only made minute contributions, but simply cares a lot about the subject and might have a strong emotional attachment to the information on it.

If you disagree with further edits to a page and feel it's not worth the trouble to challenge those edits, then you may want to unwatchlist the page instead. Or, you may want to unwatchlist the page pre-emptively if you anticipate your contribution being controversial. Or even if you don't anticipate it being controversial, but just don't want to be bothered thinking about it. Once you've put the page at a suitable distance, you can at any point return to it later after you've calmed down, and then respond to or refine the changes sensibly with a clear mind. Or, if you do not think you'll be able to collect yourself and contribute constructively, you can leave the page alone indefinitely, and let more experienced editors take or leave what you added, as they see fit.

Besides this, while it may indeed be helpful to watch a page for updates, discussion replies, vandalism, or questionably sourced edits, as already mentioned, you may decide that the page is already seeing enough attention to it, and you don't have much of value to contribute, so it's best to move on.

In short, if you are the sort of person who gets stressed out by major changes to pages you edited or care about for other reasons, or feels compelled to check Every Single New Diff that is introduced, you may want to unwatchlist the following:

• Articles you created or made significant edits to
• Articles you have a strong attachment to for other reasons
• Articles that are the subject of a content dispute, where you are not able to constructively contribute to dispute resolution
• Articles that get edited a lot and already have plenty of active editors watching them

And of course...

This is all just preference, and you might not want to abide by this advice, if this doesn't sound like it would improve your WikiLife to any worthwhile degree.

However, if you do ever come to regret your watchlisting decisions, you can of course flush your watchlist in your preferences at any time.

See also

• Wikipedia:Watchlistitis
• Wikipedia:Revert notification opt-out
• Wikipedia:Don't overload your watchlist!, the other point of view
• Wikipedia:Why you should watch redirects, another supplementary opinion