I agree with this. I found the instance on the Russian Wikipedia extraordinarily useful to learn what I was looking for in recent changes despite not knowing the language. Such a legend would be useful to all Wikimedia projects.

tehalmightyscimonster wrote:

Just to say i've claimed this task on GCI. Gonna set up MediaWiki on my local server and start hacking. Even though since last month i prefer Node to PHP. :)

tehalmightyscimonster wrote:

I uploaded my changes to includes/specials/SpecialRecentchanges.php and languages/messages/MessagesEn.php to Melange. I still have to do the watchlist.

What about Special:RecentChangesLinked while we're at it?

tehalmightyscimonster wrote:

@ #3: Oh, oops, didn't check Special:RecentChangesLinked. MW already added it. :)

Yes, that's because SpecialRecentchangeslinked is a subclass of SpecialRecentChanges. (SpecialWatchlist should probably be a subclass of it, too, but it's currently not – that's tracked as bug 48641.)

Change 96584 had a related patch set uploaded by Bartosz Dziewoński:
Add legend to Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/96584

Change 96584 merged by jenkins-bot:
Add legend to Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/96584

Fixed by Scimonster as a GCI task. Thanks!

(In reply to comment #8)

Fixed by Scimonster as a GCI task. Thanks!

Link?

(In reply to comment #9)

Never mind, I found it: https://www.google-melange.com/gci/task/view/google/gci2013/5805348917084160.

Isn't it possible to edit those tables locally? On fi-wiki we have on RC page following text:
"Merkkien selitykset: +/-(luku) = sivun merkkimäärän muutos, U = uusi sivu, p = pieni muutos, b = botin tekemä muutos, [arvioimaton] = arvioimaton sivu."

And the new table does not include "[arvioimaton]" (=unchecked page) text. This text should be in those wiki's where is pending changes extension enabled.

We have a new option we do not need
https://ce.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%BD:%D0%9A%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%B0_%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%88

We now have two of them.

(In reply to comment #12)

We now have two of them.

You can add ".mw-changeslist-legend { display: none; }" to your MediaWiki:Common.css to hide the new one.

Like this?
https://ce.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3ACommon.css&diff=150447&oldid=137981

No quotes like https://ce.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&diff=next&oldid=150448&setlang=en, but you need a . in front

Thank you very much got close. Issue has been resolved.

I've heard a fair amount of noise on the wikis from users not appreciating the usefulness of this. I'll try to summarise the concerns and suggestions below. I've translated some of them to different angles as I believe the response was exaggerated due to the visual footprint (a legend on itself should be useful, and should remain I believe).

I don't dispute its usefulness, but I understand the concerns. The main issue here is that this new legend is too large and quite "in your face" and way too prominent on the top of a page active editors use very frequently. I don't think such a big box is justified.

Encouraging CSS modifications as a first response is imho not an acceptable solution for this, but can work as a temporary work-around for tech-savvy users.

It adds clutter to an already over-populated system and can make it just that extra bit of overwhelming that I think this is a user experience regression.

It looks like design input was requested on this issue, did this change end up getting design input?

As a first aid, I would recommend moving it to the bottom of the page (similar to how recent changes used to have, where did that one go by the way?).

Also note that most of these icons have tooltips that do provide some information (though that's not a great UX either).

Created attachment 14078
Screenshot of the legend

Attached:

number24602 wrote:

Why is "Pages that have been changed since you last visited them are shown with a green bullet." not part of the same legend box?

On mobile, the layout takes up a lot of space. I guess that could be enhanced pretty easily though by removing some linebreaks. I attached a screenshot on how it looks on my phone right now.

Created attachment 14086
On mobile, not even the entire legend is visible

Attached:

Another suggestion from [[WP:VPT]]: to add a space for additional information to the legend box.

(In reply to comment #17)

I've heard a fair amount of noise on the wikis from users not
appreciating the usefulness of this.

I've heard both kinds of feedback, but most of it positive. (And I
can't think of a single change which was commented on, and only
commened on positively.)

The main issue here is that this new legend is too large and quite
"in your face" and way too prominent on the top of a page active
editors use very frequently. I don't think such a big box is
justified.

I dunno, I'd say it's pretty compact – smaller font, offset to the side…

It looks like design input was requested on this issue, did this
change end up getting design input?

I don't remember any. Hardly any changes ever get design input even
when it's asked for.

As a first aid, I would recommend moving it to the bottom of the
page (similar to how recent changes used to have, where did that one
go by the way?).

I don't remember ever seeing such a thing, and I joined in 2009. This
might not be a bad idea, when somebody joins a wiki their watchlist
will at the beginning be rather short, so they should see this.

Also note that most of these icons have tooltips that do provide some
information (though that's not a great UX either).

Yeah, this was noted in comment 0.

(In reply to comment #19)

Why is "Pages that have been changed since you last visited them are
shown with a green bullet." not part of the same legend box?

Good question; I'd say it's out of scope of this bug and the box. The
entire top area of watchlist should be redone from scratch, but that's
not easy to do, especially given how often the page is used by
power-users. (Also, note that this text is a custom en.wp
modification, by default such pages are shown in bold.)

(In reply to comment #20)

On mobile, the layout takes up a lot of space. I guess that could be enhanced
pretty easily though by removing some linebreaks. I attached a screenshot on
how it looks on my phone right now.

(In reply to comment #21)

Created attachment 14086 [details]
On mobile, not even the entire legend is visible

This looks like a mobile bug: the styles are stripped. No idea why,
and I don't have a mobile device to test on, sorry.

Attached:

Change 101446 had a related patch set uploaded by Bartosz Dziewoński:
Make legend on Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist collapsible

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/101446

My patch above would make the legend box collapsible (it would remember the state across page refreshes). I think that's the most reasonable compromise; I chatted with some Wikipedia editors on IRC and we came up with that. :)

7rt1j wrote:

(In reply to comment #23)

I dunno, I'd say it's pretty compact – smaller font, offset to the side…

Before I added some user CSS to hack it down a bit, it was using about 40% of the content width (at 1024×768). This caused the watchlist options to wrap to more lines, hence increasing the used vertical space too.

The main problem is that the text is too verbose – for example, the first line shows "This edit created a new page (also see list of new pages)". This could be cut down to "New page created". A similar case applies to the rest of the lines (except "Wikidata edit", which is fine).

The verbosity is fine for tool-tips, though. I suggest having the tool-tips and legend text use different messages.

I have reverted the changes:

1. There already exists MediaWiki:Rclegend which is optionally used for such purposes.
2. All flags contain tooltips, so the information *is* present.
3. Poor design anyway - in narrow resolutions (i.e. 1024*768) it causes enormous shift of the content out of the viewport. Also no way how to get rid of it, because it is hardcoded.

See also bug 16171.

En...
Can it add a option in Special:Preferences to hide the legend because Maybe some user don't need it?I was surprise for it when I saw it at the first time，but It make me confuse.And It looks incongruous for other things.

No more options in preferences please.

Re: design input. This whole page needs an entire redesign a legend should be needed. But in this case with the deign of the page how it is I can see how a legend could be helpful. The current tooltip help doesn't seem to work for me (chrome Dev build/Mac OS 10.8)

(In reply to comment #28)

I have reverted the changes:

No, you didn't, you only submitted a revert for review. (For the record, that is https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/101603/ and https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/101604/ .)

2. All flags contain tooltips, so the information *is* present.

This was noted in comment 0 and is insufficient.

(In reply to comment #28)

3. Poor design anyway - in narrow resolutions (i.e. 1024*768) it causes

enormous shift of the content out of the viewport. Also no way how to get rid
of it, because it is hardcoded.

(In reply to comment #29)

En...
Can it add a option in Special:Preferences to hide the legend because Maybe
some user don't need it?I was surprise for it when I saw it at the first
time，but It make me confuse.And It looks incongruous for other things.

There is a patch pending that would make it collapsible: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/101446 . Nobody bothered to review it yet.

Change 101446 merged by jenkins-bot:
Make legend on Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist collapsible

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/101446

The collapsibility patch was merged and is slated to be deployed on all wikis tomorrow; I will mark this bug as resolved again when that happens.

I think it would be better to file any other requests as new bugs :)

Deployed. I hope we're all as happy about this as I am now :)