Several things:
1) The copyright message is moved up, between the main edit area and the summary/checkboxes/buttons. This is to ensure that it is visible; presently on a smallish screen it's possible to make thousands of edits without ever seeing the notice.
This should also encourage site admins to keep the message short and legible.
2) A new message, MediaWiki:Edittools, is created which can hold those extended character insertion boxes that some wikis use (currently hacked into the copyright message). This message is now also displayed on the Special:Upload form, so it can be used when composing file descriptions.
This displays below the buttons, so it's out of the way but not too far away.
3) The list of used templates is moved to the bottom, so it can grow as long as it gets without pushing other things down.
This is online to try out on the test wiki at:
http://test.leuksman.com/edit/Main_Page http://test.leuksman.com/view/Special:Upload (Log in to see the upload form.)
Avar has expressed objection to putting the notice above the buttons, but I think it really *needs* to be if we want to pretend it means anything. Any final comments, and preparation for the change (splitting bits out from the copyright message) would be good to do; I plan to commit this change in the next day or two.
cf. http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4100
Note: the charinsert stuff doesn't currently seem to work in Safari. Have to see about fixing that...
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)