New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Hidden skin preference, but still skins are being changed

6 Mar 2012


      In our MediaWiki 1.18.1 system, user skin preferences are mysteriously changing. Any advice?
Our admins set everybody to use the Vector skin and hid all the other skins in LocalSettings.php, like so:
$wgDefaultSkin = 'vector';
// We want the Vector JavaScript & CSS page links to show up in My Preferences, 
// so don't use $wgHiddenPrefs[] = 'skin'. Hide skins individually.
$mySkipSkins = array(
                     'chick',
                     'standard',
                     'cologneblue',
                     'modern',
                     'monobook',
                     'myskin',
                     'nostalgia',
                     'simple',
                     );
$wgSkipSkins = array_merge($wgSkipSkins, $mySkipSkins);
We also removed all "skin" rows from the user_properties table by database delete command. Nevertheless, some users get the monobook skin sometimes, and we are seeing rows created in user_properties, sometimes blank, and sometimes with up_value = 'monobook'.
mysql> select * from wp_user_properties where up_property = 'skin';
+---------+-------------+----------+
| up_user | up_property | up_value |
+---------+-------------+----------+
|     537 | skin        |          | 
|    1341 | skin        |          | 
|     559 | skin        |          | 
|    1327 | skin        |          | 
|     659 | skin        |          | 
+---------+-------------+----------+
Users are not setting their skin on purpose to cause this -- something is happening behind their backs. Does anybody have any idea why this is happening, and how to prevent anyone from getting other skins applied? Thanks.
DanB