Yeah, I still have no idea what this should mean (and if it means pre-NGS vs post-NGS, why I'd want to differentiate between the two?)

New means "newest first" as in nearest date, while old means "oldest first" as in the oldest edit

Hmm, that feels like a bit of a strange way to present a "sorting preference" type of option to me.

How about "Show me [edits] that [match] [all] of the following conditions: [conditions] sorted by [newest first|oldest first]"

or even just "Show me [edits] (sorted [newest first|oldest first|randomly]) that [match] [all] of the following conditions"

I also first interpreted it as open vs. closed and wondered why this was separate from the conditions below. Then I saw that it has "random" as well and was completely confused. The only other meaning I could come up with was pre-NGS and post-NGS but I really would never have guessed that this is the sorting. That's just not what the sentence says.

So yeah, I would do it as voiceinsideyou proposed.

Btw, what's the use case for a random oder?

http://codereview.musicbrainz.org/r/1797/