I suspect this is useful for accessibility purposes. Marking as low as this has always been the case and marking as enhancement as we tend to mark things this way when they are not hindering the current editing/reading experience in any way
(note if this is a big accessibility problem please feel free to alter!).

http://www.rnib.org.uk/professionals/webaccessibility/wacblog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?id=38 this suggests we would be better not doing this and killing all our other uses..

After chatting with Ryan and Juliusz we decided:

• By default we should make the label visible rather than using a title attribute. (In this case we may want to show the edit label under the edit icon on a browser with a wider screen
• When not possible we shall as a last resort use a title attribute only on icons that have no labels and it is impossible for them to have labels. The purpose of this is to allow readers to understand what the icons they do.

For example the icon for the random button in the menu item in the 'hamburger menu' has a label so doesn't need a title attribute on the link itself.

The user button to the right of search would.

Please update if you disagree with this summary of our discussion.

(Ideally icons should be so clear and intuitive that there is no need for a tooltip...)

Sounds good.

Should be fixed as part of icon standardisation project.

Change 163277 had a related patch set uploaded by Jdlrobson:
Add tooltips to all standalone icons

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/163277

Change 163277 merged by jenkins-bot:
Add tooltips to all standalone icons

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/163277

Change 165035 had a related patch set uploaded by Jdlrobson:
i18n the nearby refresh icon

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/165035

Change 165035 merged by jenkins-bot:
i18n the nearby refresh icon

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/165035