@JSengupta-WMF this is just a stub, I'm sure there is more to figure out, please edit as you see fit.

I'm not sure that adding the top level item in Vector is a good idea (it seems like it uses a lot of screen space). One idea might be that it only gets shown when there is actually data stored, which saves space but I think is normally not the done thing.

What do you think?

Change 976365 had a related patch set uploaded (by Samwilson; author: Samwilson):

[mediawiki/core@master] Edit Recovery: Add Special:EditRecovery link to personal menu

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/976365

@Samwilson thanks for thinking about this. Yes it should show only when there is anything to be recovered. The link looks good otherwise. I will propose using an icon (on the 3rd screenshot) to keep it consistent with the other menu items. For the time being you can use the history icon from Codex.

Thanks @JSengupta-WMF, I've added that icon. I've started work on hiding the link when it's not needed, but have a couple of questions:

• Should it re-show once the user starts editing and a page's edit recovery data is stored? I've added this to the above patch already, and it seems to make sense, but in skins other than Vector-2022 it means the links before it (contributions, echo, etc.) jump across a bit.
• Also, if we re-show it then should we also re-hide it when there's no data again? E.g. the user started editing a page, data was stored, but then they deleted their edits and so the stored data was removed.
• Rather than re-showing, maybe it's okay to just leave it hidden as it'll be shown any time a page loads and there is recovery data available? That's certainly the easier option, and I'd suggest that be the first step and any extra behaviour be added subsequently.

As per our discussion on Slack, let's go with the following

• We will show an inactive link (greyed out) when there are no pages saved
• We will show a badge next to the link to denote how many pages are saved (this I need to do a little design QA on, cause potentially it might make the UI jump too)

Great, sounds good!

We will show an inactive link (greyed out) when there are no pages saved

Should this be done with @opacity-medium? Or actually set the colour to grey (in which case, which grey)?

We will show a badge next to the link to denote how many pages are saved (this I need to do a little design QA on, cause potentially it might make the UI jump too)

We could do this in the tooltip, that might be neater, e.g. "You currently have no Edit Recovery data saved" and "You currently have Edit Recovery data saved for $1 {{PLURAL:$1|page|pages}}".

@Samwilson in Codex there is a color called Content/disabled. You can use that grey.

Defined in src/codex-base.json

Refers to color.gray500

#72777d

Tooltip option sounds good!

Thanks. Tooltip added to the patch.

But this menu isn't using Codex; the nearest colour looks to be @color-disabled which is #767676, is that okay? Will this be okay for all skins?

Also, I guess the icon should also be greyed out?

Yes that is fine. The icon should be greyed out too.

The core patch above is ready for review. I'll fix up the Vector-2022 icon display separately (so after reviewing the above, please put this back to in-development).

As I mentioned on the patch, I feel like this might be better served under the "Tools" (toolbox) menu?

Change 976365 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/core@master] Edit Recovery: Add Special:EditRecovery link to personal menu

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/976365

When this goes live, we should be sure to inform users they can hide the link in their personal CSS with #pt-editrecovery { display: none } (and also the equivalent for Vector-2022, if applicable).

Special:EditRecovery isn't that hard to remember, and many users really don't like their "personal" menus becoming too cluttered.

I don't question Special:EditRecovery itself -- it's very useful. But how often are people really going to use it? I envisioned edit recovery as mostly an invisible feature that "just works". The toast notification already allows you to discard it (T342721) on the fly, and that seems like how most people would be removing IndedexDB rows.

As sort of an advanced feature, maybe a better spot for the link is at Special:Preferences on the "Editing" panel, something like "Manage edit recovery data".

But I'm probably overthinking all of this!

In T351781#9383308, @TheresNoTime wrote:

As I mentioned on the patch, I feel like this might be better served under the "Tools" (toolbox) menu?

Yes, I agree that might be a better place, though "Toolbox" is usually page-specific actions, where this would be a link to something regarding multiple pages.

I still think Special:Preferences is best, but actually, now I'm wondering if we need to link it at all? It should (if it's not already) be listed at Special:SpecialPages, so people already have a means to get there.

While new users will of course benefit from Edit Recovery, I think it's important to not bloat the UI with more links as it's notoriously already very confusing (i.e. this is why Vector 2022 hides most links from readers). Since we have the toast notifications, it seems like most people won't need to go to Special:EditRecovery at all. Is there a concern with the IndexedDB rows building up? They eventually expire on their own, correct?

I just worry that the "Edit recovery" link, especially in the personal toolbar, is going to be seen as "oh, here's this other thing I have to manage now…", you know? To me, if done correctly, Edit Recovery doesn't need to be managed -- you just let it do its thing and use the "Discard changes" on-the-fly if it's not desired.

Yes, I must admit I've been wondering if this link was a good idea! The first plan was to add it to the Tools or More menu, or perhaps the sidebar's toolbox (which are sort of the same thing now, in Vector-2022). But then it's more similar to Contributions, and in Vector-2022 that's a dropdown menu and so things in it feel more hidden — but of course in lots of other skins it's not a dropdown, and Edit Recovery ends up in a very visible position.

You're right @MusikAnimal, the special page shouldn't really be all that needed in general use. I think it's mainly that the feature is new, and people want to be able to easily see what it's up to, that a more easily accessible link might be a good idea.

I'm very happy to remove it, if that's what is decided.

@JSengupta-WMF What are your thoughts?

Thanks for bringing this up. It's always hard to predict if entry point to a new feature at a prominent place on the UI is required or not as we don't have much analytics on how important this feature is. We try to estimate it based on how popular the wish is. If both of you (being much more experienced editors) feel that it is not necessary, we can launch it without a dedicated entry point from anywhere. I wouldn't be in favor of turning the feature on/off from user preference as it's just a matter of click to discard the saved edit and launch the current version. If we don't have a direct link to Special:Editrecovery, including this in the user preference might confuse users even more. wdyt?

As discussed yesterday with @Samwilson, can we implement any kind of tracking on how often people visit Special:Editrecovery page from the searchbar? Maybe that will give us some answers if we need a direct entry point to it?

In T351781#9386145, @JSengupta-WMF wrote:

I wouldn't be in favor of turning the feature on/off from user preference as it's just a matter of click to discard the saved edit and launch the current version. If we don't have a direct link to Special:Editrecovery, including this in the user preference might confuse users even more. wdyt?

Sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean an actual preference to turn off Edit Recovery, but just a link to Special:EditRecovery on the Special:Preferences page. Another example is under the "Internationalisation" preferences: there at the bottom you see a link "More language settings". Similarly, we could have a link under "General options" or "Editor" in the "Editing" panel of Special:Preferences that reads something like "Manage edit recovery data". That should be harmless to add, but I'm questioning if we even need that. I think exposure at Special:SpecialPages should be enough for a page that (in theory) will rarely be used. I see the link is currently listed under Recent changes and logs. I think that might better be placed under Data and tools.

It seems like it might be best to revert the addition of the link, at least for now.

We haven't added any tracking for any part of Edit Recovery yet, so we don't know how used Special:EditRecovery will be (although we can perhaps just use access logging for that, rather than complicating things client-side). I hope that people won't feel like they need it much, but also if it's not linked from anywhere then no one will know to go looking for it. How used is Special:SpecialPages? I wouldn't expect anyone to find anything new there, at any rate. (Does Pageviews track it? It seems odd that it would only have 2 views in a year!)

As for which section of Special:SpecialPages, I still think Recent changes and logs (recent changes, watchlist, new pages and files, etc.) is more relevant than Data and tools (version, statistics, gadgets, etc.). It just feels more user- and edit-focussed. But happy to change if there's consensus!

And perhaps a link in Special:Preferences could go near My account data from this project, because it's sort of related to that (although we still have to make clear on Special:EditRecovery that this is all stored client-side; that'll happen in T347673).

Change 981194 had a related patch set uploaded (by Samtar; author: Samtar):

[mediawiki/core@master] Revert "Edit Recovery: Add Special:EditRecovery link to personal menu"

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/981194

In T351781#9392499, @Samwilson wrote:

It seems like it might be best to revert the addition of the link, at least for now.

I agree, revert created, let's get that merged before the train :-)

Change 981194 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/core@master] Revert "Edit Recovery: Add Special:EditRecovery link to personal menu"

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/981194