Background
Many years ago, the mobile site added the Watchlist feature. Presumably, due to the use of a star, many readers interpreted this as "favorite" an article and we saw large amounts of logged in users who were not editing but were creating reading lists. As a result the watchlist experience on mobile has always been a bit confusing catering both to an editing and reading audience.
Since then, the mobile watchlist code has effectively become unmaintained. We have accummulated a large amount of technical and design debt in our backlog to address, for example: T266065, T115013
If this continues, there is an increasing risk we will need to one day disable the feature without any action.
It is proposed we link to the reading list version of the watchlist and remove all MobileFrontend code.
Extension:ReadingList which is built in Vue.js provides a modern equivalent of the mobile watchlist feature:
See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ReadingLists/<your username>/-10
On the long term, strategically this provides us an entry point to exposing the reading list feature already on apps.
| Existing unmaintained EditWatchlist experience | New proposed reading list extension based experience |
 |  |
User story
- As an editor who patrols Wikipedia I want easy access to my watchlist feed showing me recent edits
- As an logged in user who keeps lists of articles I care about I want a list of my saved pages.
Requirements
- The MobileFrontend Watchlist code is decomissioned.
- The desktop watchlist is used on mobile, just as we use desktop code for history, contributions and recent changes.
- Change is made in the ReadingList extension. Updates are made to MobileFrontend to ensure the link shows in the correct places.
- Reading lists that a user has saved other than "Watchlist" are disabled (this is already handled by Extension:ReadingList)
Design
AMC disabled:
AMC:
Acceptance criteria
- The mobile menu links to "Watchlist" and "Saved"
- When clicking Saved I am taken to the Special:ReadingList/<username>/-10/Watchlist page.
- When clicking Watchlist I am taken to Special:Watchlist