As far as I can tell, the feature works fine. It's just that enwiki admins added rules to MediaWiki:Common.css to unbold the titles in the watchlist, but did not also modify [[MediaWiki:Wlheader-showupdated]] or include rules to hide #mw-watchlist-resetbutton (until a few minutes ago).

I recommend this bug be closed as an issue with site-specific CSS rather than anything in MediaWiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&oldid=493205983#Watchlist_-_bold_letter_article_titles.21

Money comment: at least provide a switch in My Preferences to turn it off.

We implemented the change because enwiki asked for it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Archive_83#Enable_.22Show_changes_since_last_visit.22_on_watchlist) but didn't provide any way for them to keep the old way.

Final comment ATM: enwiki asks for a change, gets consensus for it and we implement it. Then people (who weren't aware of the previous discussion?) get changes made in CSS to revert to old behavior.

I can't tell right now if this is better or the same as the old situation.

It seems like this shows a big problem with the process.

dan wrote:

How is an inaccurate message and a functionless button possibly a good thing? Most users don't want or use css code to remove/enable these. Fix them or remove them.

So what is this bug about?

1. The screwed-up situation on enwiki, where the feature is partially hidden by site-level CSS?
2. A request for a user preference to pretend $wgShowUpdatedMarker is off?
3. A complaint about the way the enwiki community mostly ignored the initial request for $wgShowUpdatedMarker to be turned on and then wildly overreacted when it was?

Or some combination of the three?

dan wrote:

Simple. In the default state of enwiki:

1. There is a message on the user's watchlist "Pages which have been changed since you last visited them are shown in bold". This is untrue because nothing is shown in bold.
2. There is a button "Mark all pages visited". It does nothing.

Yes, if you play around with CSS you can fix this. But the vast majority of users won't do this. And why should they have to?

So the bug is either: unnecessary text and button; or non-functional bolding and non-functional button.
Fixing either of those would be great.

Discussion is ongoing on-wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Watchlist_survey.

dan wrote:

And until that survey is concluded (which could be a while), we are still left with a broken button and meaningless text. I have no strong opinion on how the Watchlist should look, as long as it works!

(In reply to comment #7)

Simple. In the default state of enwiki:

1. There is a message on the user's watchlist "Pages which have been changed

since you last visited them are shown in bold". This is untrue because nothing
is shown in bold.

2. There is a button "Mark all pages visited". It does nothing.

Yes, if you play around with CSS you can fix this. But the vast majority of
users won't do this. And why should they have to?

The problem is that enwiki admins have '''already''' been playing around with the site-level CSS, and have refused to hide the "Mark all pages visited" button along with the bolding for some inexplicable reason.

The "Pages which have been changed since you last visited them are shown in bold" message appears to have been hidden since 2008 for the default ("en") language. If you're using en-gb or another language, request that enwiki admins edit the message for your language in the same way.

So the bottom line here is that for your complaints, talk to the enwiki admins about it. It's not a bug in MediaWiki.

(In reply to comment #7)

So the bug is either: unnecessary text and button

I think that at least this can be fixed by setting the following in site's CSS:

#mw-watchlist-resetbutton { display: none; }

I've asked for this to be done: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AR%27n%27B&diff=493676965&oldid=493380380

EN.WP.ST47 wrote:

So, currently it looks like enwiki's default is button shown and no bolding of changes. This is clearly a poor default. There seems to be an RFC in progress, but is there any reason why we can't set the default in the interim to hide the button, not bold the changes, and create a simple CSS gadget to restore the default-for-mediawiki action?

(In reply to comment #12)

but is there any reason why we can't set the default in the interim to hide the
button, not bold the changes, and create a simple CSS gadget to restore the
default-for-mediawiki action?

Just enwiki admins being difficult. Hiding the button was just tried again and reverted again. See [[MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Please undo the last change. It breaks functionality for one group for the aesthetic appeal of another]].

No bugs anywhere, just local configuration issues.