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