diff --git a/RELEASE_NOTES b/RELEASE_NOTES
index 9fa1383ace2f..48ed27387736 100644
--- a/RELEASE_NOTES
+++ b/RELEASE_NOTES
@@ -18,6 +18,21 @@ CHANGES
 Example contents.
 [/rasection]
 
+[rasection="New user files location on Windows by default"]
+[b]Short version:[/b]
+
+The installer no longer provides a choice between storing user files in the installation dir and [c]Documents\My Games\WesnothX.Y[/c], forcing the latter instead (which no longer requires a command-line switch to be added to the game shortcut).
+
+[b]Long version:[/b]
+
+Up to Windows XP, mostly owing to the lack of user and process access control facilities on the mainstream Windows 9x series, applications would freely write user data into their installation paths without restriction. NT-based versions of Windows (including Windows XP) still supported this when running processes as accounts with administrator privileges, albeit at the risk of breaking things horribly in a proper multi-user environment. However, since Windows Vista, this practice is no longer recommended (and rightly so). Because there are too many applications that rely on the aforementioned broken scheme, Vista introduces User Access Control Virtualization to support legacy applications, by redirecting their writes to restricted paths to a user-dependent Virtual Store location.
+
+Until now, the official Wesnoth installer has included the option to store user files either in the user’s Documents folder, or in the installation dir; the latter option forces Wesnoth to rely on UAC Virtualization if Wesnoth has been installed system-wide and then is run with normal user privileges. This has resulted in confusing documentation and countless forum threads on the matter of finding the actual location of Wesnoth’s user files on disk, mostly due to people choosing the install dir option [u]without a real need to do so[/u].
+
+From this version onwards, the installer no longer provides the option to store user files in the installation dir, and the game itself defaults to using the Documents folder (more specifically, [c]Documents\My Games\WesnothX.Y[/c] where [c]X.Y[/c] represents the major and minor version numbers, such as [c]1.13[/c]) unless specifically instructed to do otherwise with the [c]--config-dir[/c] option in the command line. Additionally, [c]--config-dir[/c] paths can be either absolute, relative to [c]Documents\My Games[/c] (to support the previous installer approach to storing files in Documents), or relative to the process current working dir (usually the install dir) if either . or .. are provided as the first path component; this latter option is provided so that people can still install and run Wesnoth from removable media if they wish.
+
+See also bug [bug]23753[/bug].[/rasection]
+
 [rasection="New game version dialog"]
 Describe how awesome the new game version dialog is and how it replaces the old game paths dialog from 1.12.x
 [/rasection]
diff --git a/changelog b/changelog
index 3daf2602dded..07510fe3b3aa 100644
--- a/changelog
+++ b/changelog
@@ -153,6 +153,12 @@ Version 1.13.1+dev:
  * Editor:
    * Added Category field and color sliders to the Edit Label panel.
  * Miscellaneous and bug fixes:
+   * Made Documents\My Games\WesnothX.Y the default user config+data dir on
+     Windows to replace the broken <current working dir>\userdata default that
+     has never been acceptable practice. Portable installs are now required to
+     explicitly use . or  .. (e.g. `--config-dir .\userdata`) to force the
+     user config+data dir path to be relative to the current working dir (see
+     also bug #23753).
    * Removed legacy filesystem API implementation.
    * Fixed Generate Map dialog bug that caused last choice of map
      generator to not be actually selected (bug #23711).
diff --git a/players_changelog b/players_changelog
index a2785396af6a..723f343711da 100644
--- a/players_changelog
+++ b/players_changelog
@@ -32,6 +32,12 @@ Version 1.13.1+dev:
      this using the above interface.
 
  * Miscellaneous and bug fixes:
+   * Made Documents\My Games\WesnothX.Y the default user config+data dir on
+     Windows to replace the broken <current working dir>\userdata default that
+     has never been acceptable practice. Portable installs are now required to
+     explicitly use . or  .. (e.g. `--config-dir .\userdata`) to force the
+     user config+data dir path to be relative to the current working dir (see
+     also bug #23753).
    * Fixed OOS on random maps, where clients placed sides in different castles.
    * Fixed possibility of corrupting saved games in certain instances,
      eg if an add-on tries to set an invalid variable