The assumption for this bug looks wrong:

1. usenewrc can successfully affect Special:RecentChanges with no need to change watchlist,
2. one may prefer the bullet view for Special:Watchlist even with a single change per page shown.

Considering this is a potentially disruptive change, I suggest WONTFIX.

Any more opinions? In the meanwhile I don't think this is a blocker for bug 35785, just readd if you think the contrary.

(In reply to comment #1)

1. usenewrc can successfully affect Special:RecentChanges with no need to

change watchlist,

I don't see how this is relevant. True, 'extendwatchlist' only affects watchlist, but how is that an argument against turning it on?

2. one may prefer the bullet view for Special:Watchlist even with a single

change per page shown.

Oh come on, this is just silly. Options for the sole purpose of changing a minimal element of interface shouldn't exist.

I'll make it block bug 51942 instead for now.

(In reply to comment #3)

(In reply to comment #1)

1. usenewrc can successfully affect Special:RecentChanges with no need to

change watchlist,

I don't see how this is relevant. True, 'extendwatchlist' only affects
watchlist, but how is that an argument against turning it on?

It isn't. I'm just saying that usenewrc does not "look silly" without extendwatchlist: it works perfectly.

2. one may prefer the bullet view for Special:Watchlist even with a single

change per page shown.

Oh come on, this is just silly. Options for the sole purpose of changing a
minimal element of interface shouldn't exist.

And usenewrc is not one such option.

But this is just nitpicking on the language of comment 0... the point is, I don't understand what you want to achieve by merging extendwatchlist into usenewrc, could you elaborate on what's the use case?

Note that extendwatchlist also has its own downsides, in particular it activates wllimit i.e. it limits the number of days you can see. On mediawiki.org, it reduces my Special:Watchlist from 30 to 7 days; on en.wiki, to 5 days (and that's after I've increased wllimit to 1000, which is the max, and removed some very active pages).

(In reply to comment #4)

(In reply to comment #3)

(In reply to comment #1)

1. usenewrc can successfully affect Special:RecentChanges with no need to

change watchlist,

I don't see how this is relevant. True, 'extendwatchlist' only affects
watchlist, but how is that an argument against turning it on?

It isn't. I'm just saying that usenewrc does not "look silly" without
extendwatchlist: it works perfectly.

Yes it does: if "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" is disabled, the option to "Group changes by page in (...) watchlist" is confusing for the users who whants to improve their Special:Watchlist:
There is no improvement at all since there is nothing to group!

(In reply to comment #5)

Yes it does: if "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most
recent" is disabled, the option to "Group changes by page in (...) watchlist"
is confusing for the users who whants to improve their Special:Watchlist:
There is no improvement at all since there is nothing to group!

That's just a confusion in the new description of the preference commonly known as "enhanced recentchanges", not a confusion in the functionality.

The old description was even worse: it didn't mention the Watchlist at all:
https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=MediaWiki:Tog-usenewrc/en&diff=4977075&oldid=4253820

Any objection to reversing the bug? I think (and bug 23288 comment 6 suggests) that "extendwatchlist" should logically imply "usenewrc", because the standard view is really unbearable when you have many edits from few hyper-active pages.

With the new RCFilters feature being deployed to Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist and now being the default experience as well, this makes the "new" aspect of this "new rc" feature somewhat confusing.

From what I understand we now have:

1. The original flat list version (OldChangesList). This is the oldest version and was until recently the default.
2. The enhanced list version (EnhancedChangesList). This was once "new" and has been and still is an opt-in alternative.
3. The extendwatchlist mode of the enhanced list version (EnhancedChangesList + extendwatchlist).
4. The RCFilters version. This is the most recent addition and now the default.
5. The "Latest and not latest" (extendwatchlist) preferences for RCFilters.

As I understand this, this task was basically proposing we remove extendwatchlist and make it part of what EnhancedChangesList does in general. However with RCFilters this might no longer make sense given there is now a use case again for having it off or on. In that RCfilters with extendwatchlist off is still quite useful compared to the other options. Unlike "enhanced list" which really only made sense when extendwatchlist is enabled.

Perhaps the preferences checkboxes about these features should be rethought?