@Anomie I'm trying to reproduce this, are these the steps you took?

1. Have "Opt out of improvements" checked for RecentChanges and Watchlist preferences
2. Visit the link you provided, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked?hidebots=1&translations=filter&hidepageedits=1&hidecategorization=1&hideWikibase=1&target=Category%3ACommunity+Wishlist+Survey+2019%2FProposals&limit=50&days=7&enhanced=1&urlversion=2
3. Go to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist

Which preference in the UI changed? What steps did you take to get back to the state you wanted? Assuming these are the steps, I'm not seeing the problem. Thanks.

In T208868#4726379, @kostajh wrote:

1. Have "Opt out of improvements" checked for RecentChanges and Watchlist preferences

No, have "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" unchecked.

The one you were looking at is either 'rcenhancedfilters-disable' or 'wlenhancedfilters-disable', I believe, not 'usenewrc'.

What steps did you take to get back to the state you wanted? Assuming these are the steps, I'm not seeing the problem. Thanks.

Re-unchecking "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist".

I later found there's also a checkbox for it hidden in the popup when clicking the "250 changes, 30 days" button. There the checkbox is labeled "Group results by page".

Ah, I see, thanks. We'll look at this.

We decided that we want to fix this eventually, but we think this is a low-impact issue, because there aren't common use cases for sharing links to these pages.

I believe that this is a duplicate of T202916: Stop changing my "Group results by page" prefs based on a URL that I've clicked on.

@Catrope, the common use cases are:

1. This bug has bit me. Repeatedly.
2. Some links in the last column of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Tags
3. Discussions in technical forums or talking about RecentChanges (e.g., documentation on how to patrol pages)
4. Did I mention that this bug bit me? ;-)