Currently Special:Recentchanges is pretty muchless on most major wikis.

• 1) The options haven't been updated for a while (the api has much more options and database supports the indexes, yes almost none of these options are available in our own frontend). Just to name a few options (not all should be available in the front-end per se)
  • Username filter = there is Special:Contributions but that doesn't do any of the advanced filtering like "hide patrolled edits". There's no way to get a simple list of unpatrolled edits by a certain user (useful during the clean up of a vandal after block with multiple people, who did what ? Especially if there were edits after the vandalism on the same page, as "(top edit)" doesn't help either in Special:Contributions.
  • Timeframe filter = there is an offset-parameter, but there isn't a from-parameter) - Wikis like nl.wikipedia that rcpatrol anonymous edits must do limit=1000 and scroll to the very bottom in order to get patrol old edits. being able to do from="yesterday 5am"&untill="yesterday 6am" is very useful and the API supports this.
  • Related to the above: Order (asc|desc, newer|older)
  • Namespaces = only one can be choosen, 'invert' and selecting multiple ones should be possible. API allows this by doing namespaces=0|10|12 for example) - useful for patrolling only content namespaces (ie. not talk spaces, user space etc.
  • Type: Show only edits, newpages or logs = again useful for patrolling. There is Special:Logs and Special:Newpages[1] but no Special:Recentedits, patrollers must go through the mess of the block actions, page moves etc. and other unpatrollable stuff. passing type will make this much easier.

• 2) It goes too fast and/or annoying to keep refreshing. We can ajaxify this (perhaps as an extension though, since polling the API in core may not be a good idea. The extension would provide a way to get it with HTML5 WebSockets)
  • Although there is IRC channels to stay in, those are cluttered by too much other stuff and aside from that there is two other obvious down sides to irc:
    • What's said is said: You can't filter out unpatrolled edits
    • No links to block/undo/revert or access for gadgets to add/customize things

• 3) The Tag-filter is an input field. This doesn't make sense since there's a limited number of values. Should be a dropdown menu ?

• Perhaps you have other ideas ? I'll be creating seperate bugs for the individual tasks in a few days, but using this one as a tracker for the overal project.

Krinkle

[1] Supporting type in recentchanges might make Special:Newpages obsolete, any thoughts ?

Version: 1.18.x
Severity: enhancement