The MobileFrontend extension currently tries to mimic the watchlist in core but fails due to the fact the special watchlist class mixes rendering with model generation. Ideally it should be possible to skin the data by creating this separation.
Recreating the watchlist for mobile is very wasteful.
The Watchlist special page handles various user preferences which are currently overlooked by the mobile version.
== Solution 1
Use a FauxRequest and skin the result.
It would thus be better to directly hit the API which should (TBC) take care of these.
Being driven by the API would also help resolve T111074
== Solution 2
We do the separation in [[ https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/master/includes/specials/SpecialWatchlist.php#L405 | SpecialWatchlist ]]. There should be a simple method render which is passed data or a model and renders it.
= acceptance criteria
The following user preferences should be honoured
[] Mobile watchlist should follow the same Show/Hide preferences as the desktop watchlist (see T69799 for more details)
[] Mobile Watchlist does not take into account preference value of expand/aggregation into account (see T70367)
[] Hide bot edits from the watch list not taken into account (see T70365)
= todo
[] add screenshots showing desktop watchlist skinned in Minerva and mobile watchlist
[] suggest architecture diagram
[] tag with mediawiki core team
[] rfc?