Hi Sebastian, Good point... we will do better at this. There are times, though, where we get reports of a new extension have unexpected side-effects and, depending on the severity, we'll just turn it off as was done here.
As for notification, I was going to send out a notification today (to this list) about a change we'll be doing to skin cookies next week. Back when we introduced the V2 skin, we tried to be as careful as we could to keep established Wikians on their current skin choice (typically monobook) and so we were setting cookies so that you'd see what you expected to see whether logged in or logged out. The cookies also remembered, per user/visitor, if V2 was the skin to show or not. Now, though, these cookies can, in some cases, show you something other than what you expect when transitioning from logged in to logged out. So next week we're going to be cleaning this up so that the logic is more straightforward. Basically, we're going to eliminate all the skin cookies that we've kept and just reduce this down to one cookie that remembers your skin preference (whether logged in or logged out). That way people who choose monobook as their preference will still see monobook when they come to the site. Ditto for other skin and color theme choices. In doing this, we are erring on the side of trying to keep people who want monobook on monobook. However, there may be cases where you might seem something other than you expect and, if this happens to you, we ask that you please just go into your preferences and set it back. This isn't a nefarious plot to try to get monobook users over to V2. :) We just have identified a couple of scenarios in which it might happen... but we're working to reduce the effect as much as possible. Also ... not everyone is on this mailing list and not everyone even has an email address in our system... so we've been working on a way to broadcast messages (such as the above) to everyone to let them know about system issues, newly released features, etc. The idea is to have the equivalent of a site-wide notice that is dismissable ... but it only shows up on your talk page. That way you can dismiss these messages or keep them around for reference if you want. Other people do not see these messages on your talk page... only you. Early next week I want to send out the note about the skin cookie changes via this mechanism. We're testing it right now. Thanks, John Q. Sebastian Menge wrote: > Am Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:47:56 +1000 schrieb beesley-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w: > >> The problem was caused by an upgrade which was not compatible with >> previous version. >> > > Im sorry, but I must complain once more. Im not sure if our wiki was > affected by this, but it's the way of doing maintanance im not ok with. > > Im glad, you enhance the functionality, build better skins, make the > whole thing more stable. > > But I would really encourage you to send mails like > > " > Tomorrow between 03:00 and 04:00 GMT, we will upgrade to a new version of > skin/plugin/mediawiki v.0123, due to this and that effect. > > It might come to minor slowness of this and that server > > Please report if everything works as expected, and sorry for the > inconvenience. > > " > > **before** the actual upgrade. > > This is a system with dozens of users, wikis and admins, please do not > simply install things, without telling us. > > Thanks, Sebastian. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > _______________________________________________ Wikia-l mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l
