Last modified: 2013-01-29 22:38:14 UTC
Currently the personal tools menu uses the following order in the two most common skins, Vector and Monobook: Username, User talk, Preferences, Watchlist, Contributions, Log out With the assumption that, in English and many other languages, users read/scan from left-right, the order above makes little sense. Preferences is far from the most common or useful link in MediaWiki when used on a regular basis. Therefore, I propose the following order: Username, User talk, Watchlist, Contributions, Preferences, Log out (I don't think this an urgent enhancement, and am happy to discuss on-wiki or on the appropriate mailing list further.)
I think there's a lot of muscle memory for a lot of users. And ultimately this is one of those subjective areas where there's no right or wrong order, really. I'd say no to changing the order as I think there's almost no gain and it'll just needlessly annoy people. I think if you're going to change the order, you should do so with accompanying large changes to the interface itself. For example, putting all of those links in a drop-down menu, switching the links to be icons (I think one of those wheel gears or a wrench is universal for settings [preferences]), or moving the personal tools to a different area of the page. Smaller tweaks like the one proposed in comment 0 are a bad idea, I think.
It would mess with muscle memory. The question is whether it's worth it. I agree with Steven that Watchlist should go to the left of Preferences for LTR languages (I assume we can do them in "logically" the same order for RTL). I think Watchlist is clearly used more frequently by most users. Contributions we could debate, since some users might not "get" the use of it (e.g. how (top) is sometimes useful). Also, Sandbox has since been added, which is also a tricky one (but probably should remain left of Preferences). https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44448 is a drop-down proposal for this.
(In reply to comment #2) > It would mess with muscle memory. The question is whether it's worth it. I see the detriments. I still don't see the benefits. I re-read my comment from November 2012 and (surprisingly) still agree with everything I wrote there. Annoying users is a pretty high cost to overcome. For better or worse, I believe the current order has been in place for about eight or nine years. This isn't insignificant, so a change in the order requires a solid justification. I still don't see that here, other than it being arguably more logical. I'm personally in favor of marking this bug as resolved/wontfix, in favor of other bugs such as bug 44448.
(In reply to comment #3) > I'm personally in favor of marking this bug as resolved/wontfix, in favor of > other bugs such as bug 44448. Agreed. Bug 44448 is a better direction to head in.
