> Hitting MediaWiki:Common.js is the absolute nightmare scenario for MediaWiki deployments because that script gets executed by literally every single visitor
...except for us security wonks who have js turned off by default, don't enable it without good reason, disable it ASAP, and take a dim view of websites that require it.
Not too many years ago this behavior was the domain of Luddites and schizophrenics. Today it has become a useful tool in the toolbox of reasonable self-defense for anybody with UID 0.
Perhaps the WMF should re-evaluate just how specialsnowflake they think their UI is and see if, maybe just maybe, they can get by without js. Just a thought.
> and see if, maybe just maybe, they can get by without js.
Unless it changed recently (it's too slow right now for me to check), Wikipedia has always worked perfectly fine without JS; that includes even editing articles (using the classic editor which shows the article markup directly, instead of the newer "visual" editor).
Edit: I just checked, and indeed I can still open the classic edit page even with JS blocked.
It warms my heart that there's basically a 0% chance that they ever approach this camp's viewpoint based on the Herculean effort it took to switch over to a slightly more modern frontend a few years back. I'm glad you don't think of yourself of a Luddite, but I think you're vastly overstating how open people are to a purely-static web.
Also, FWIW: Wikipedia is "specialsnowflake". If it isn't, that's merely because it was so specialsnowflake that there's now a healthy of ecosystem of sites that copied their features! It's far, far more capable than a simple blog, especially when you get into editing it.
It would not have hurt to make a version of wikipedia, that will work without JS for the most part, including all that is important. However, that requires a mindset for supporting static pages, which is mostly what W should consist of, and would require a skill set, that is not so common among web developers these days. Such a static version would be much easier to test as well, since all the testing framework would need to do is simple requests, instead of awaiting client-side JS execution resulting in mutation of content on the page.
Ok, fair point. I presumed that this crowd would be far more familiar with the capabilities of HTML5 and dynamic pages sans js than most. (Surely more familiar than I, who only dabble in code by comparison.)
No, I'm not suggesting we all go back to purely-static web pages, imagemap gifs and server side navigation. But you're going to have a hard time convincing me that I really truly need to execute code of unknown provenance in my this-app-does-everything-for-me process just to display a few pages of text and 5 jpegs.
And for the record, I've called myself a Technologist for almost 30 years now. If I were a closet Luddite I'd be one of the greatest hypocrites of human history. :-)
...except for us security wonks who have js turned off by default, don't enable it without good reason, disable it ASAP, and take a dim view of websites that require it.
Not too many years ago this behavior was the domain of Luddites and schizophrenics. Today it has become a useful tool in the toolbox of reasonable self-defense for anybody with UID 0.
Perhaps the WMF should re-evaluate just how specialsnowflake they think their UI is and see if, maybe just maybe, they can get by without js. Just a thought.