https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55905

--- Comment #6 from MZMcBride <[email protected]> ---
I understand the backstory here. I agree with Jon about killing this user
preference. I'll explain why below. :-)

(In reply to comment #5)
> Now every time I need to get to Special:SpecialPages, I have to click to open
> the damned "Toolbox" first.  When I had the user preference, my Toolbox would
> always be open, on every wiki.  Now every time I need something in my
> Toolbox, I find that someone has closed it.  Not only that, but I'm told I
> can't leave all my Toolboxes open anymore.  It's not allowed, for some strange
> reason.

Global user preferences don't exist, so presumably you needed to set this user
preference on every wiki?

The reality is that most power-users use Monobook, which doesn't collapse any
sidebar sections ever. But it's fine to use Vector, even though I personally
think the sidebar collapsing behavior is probably altogether mistaken.

You can override the default behavior using per-user CSS or JS. If you want a
global page, you can set one up on a wiki of your choosing (I set mine up on
Meta-Wiki) and then you can easily import it to other wikis, giving you a
customized user experience on any of the wikis you visit. A bit tedious, sure,
but probably less so than a user preference change on every wiki you visit.

We need global user preferences and global shared CSS/JS pages, however we also
have to recognize, when building user interface elements and attempting to
guard against user preference clutter, that most users don't hop around between
many sites. Your use-case, while completely valid, isn't a typical use-case.
There are others like you, to be sure, but power-users sometimes need power
tools (such as per-user CSS or JS).

> This might not seem like much to you, but it's extremely frustrating to users
> when they used to be able to configure something the way they want, and now
> they can no longer do that.

We allow on-wiki per-user CSS and JS. And we have local JavaScript gadgets. One
day we'll have global versions of all of these things. We definitely allow
users to configure the interface the way that they want to unlike nearly any
other site. I agree that this is frustrating, though.

> So... if we're not going to get a user preference to do this again, please
> tell me what I'm supposed to do to prevent the collapsing of the sidebar
> sub-menus.

Yes, we need to get better about this. We have [[mw:Snippets]] and we should
have done better to ensure that there was an appropriate snippet in place
before removing the user preference. Sorry about that.

Jon or Bartosz: can you help out with that, please? It should be pretty trivial
JS or CSS to restore the expand all behavior. Probably a single line.

> If there's something you need people to submit along with their bug reports,
> tell them about it on the bug submission page.

We use Bugzilla to track both feature requests and problems with the software.
With the former (though asking for restored behavior isn't _exactly_ a feature
request...), it's often incredibly helpful to offer a use-case in order to help
justify taking the time, energy, and other resources to make the change.

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