@Tchanders when you say

A clearer, customized explanation for what a temporary user must do in order to access a feature that requires creating an account.

are you thinking about a custom message for each feature that they are unable to access? If so, is it possible to have a list of features that will lead to a similar experience for temp users?

If we need some generic wording I think we can say something like: You are currently using a temporary account which does not allow access to this feature. Please sign up to create a permanent account in order to access it.

@Tchanders thoughts?

Follow up question:

For example, SpecialPage::requireNamedUser throws a UserNotLoggedIn error, which redirects to the login page. E.g. if I visit Special:Preferences as a temporary user, I see:

Is it possible to not redirect them and instead show them an error on the same page? Similar to the permission error an account gets when it cannot access a special page.

Thanks @Niharika, this sounds great.

Yes I was thinking of a generic message (just tailored to temporary users as opposed to anyone).

Yes we can also make sure the error page doesn't redirect and just shows a message.

Change 951878 had a related patch set uploaded (by AGueyte; author: AGueyte):

[mediawiki/core@master] WIP: Update SpecialPage::requireNamedUser with error message for temp users

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/951878

Change 951878 abandoned by Tchanders:

[mediawiki/core@master] Update SpecialPage::requireNamedUser with error message for temp users

Reason:

I think we should consider some kind of UserIsTemp error page, similar to UserNotLoggedIn

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/951878

Moving to the backlog while other work is prioritised

@KColeman-WMF As promised, here's some more info about the messages you found:

Message	How it looks for IP user	How it looks for temporary user	When shown
watchlistanontext		Same as for IP user	Shown to an IP/temp user when they try to visit Special:Watchlist
sp-contributions-blocked-notice-anon			Shown to anyone looking at Special:Contributions for a blocked IP/temp user. Temporary user's message is the same as a registered user's message
sp-contributions-blocked-notice-anon-partial			Same as above, but the block is a partial block
softblockrangesreason		Same as for IP user	Shown to an IP/temp user trying to edit if their IP address is blocked because it is listed in the $wgSoftBlockRanges config
tooltip-pt-anonuserpage, tooltip-pt-anontalk, tooltip-pt-anoncontribs		Same place, but uses the same messages as a logged in user	Shown as tooltips when hovering over user links in the top right or the page (or top left in RTL mode)

The final message, tog-watchlisthideanons is shown in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist, where watchlist settings are configured:

How these filters will work for temporary users depends on decisions made about the Watchlist, which will probably be closely related to similar decisions for RecentChanges. @KStoller-WMF Are Growth-Team working on Watchlist as well as Recent Changes?

In T339874#9386514, @Tchanders wrote:
@KStoller-WMF Are Growth-Team working on Watchlist as well as Recent Changes?

So far we have added an Unregistered filter to Watchlist and Recent Changes: T343322: IP Masking: Update Recent changes filters user registration filters for IP Masking.

We don't have further changes planned for Watchlist and Recent Changes, please let me know if you believe further Growth team work is needed.

@Niharika @KColeman-WMF I'm not sure if we need to do anything here. I'd suggest resolving this and opening if there is specific feedback to make adjustments.