A. 'Enabled' user preference
Provide a preference checkbox with Media Viewer enabled by default (e.g.: 'Show images in Media Viewer'). To disable MV, users can uncheck this preference.

• Pros: preferable from a UX point of view, indicates this is our recommended option, more user-friendy than JS gadget option below

• Cons: this approach has caused problems before, users may not want this option to be selected for them, adds to preference bloat issue

B. 'Disable' user preference
Provide a preference checkbox where Media Viewer can be disabled (e.g.: 'Disable Media Viewer'). To re-enable MV, users can uncheck that preference.

• Pros: addresses user concerns about pre-selection, more user-friendy than JS gadget option below

• Cons: unclear what Media Viewer is, confusing because you have to uncheck the preference to re-enable Media Viewer, adds to preference bloat issue

C. Javascript gadget or script
Provide a site-wide gadget (or personal JS script) that would let users disable Media Viewer.

• Pros: no preference bloat, no cache fragmentation, can simply ride on #263 and provide example JS code.

• Cons: not user-friendly (the gadget has to be installed manually), the bootstrap script would still get loaded.

Notes

• If we implement a user preference, the recommended location would be in the 'Appearances' section, under 'Files'.

• We should also let power users know that they can easily use Ctrl-click or Shift-click to bypass Media Viewer and access images the same way they used to before this feature was introduced. So even with Media Viewer enabled, there are shortcuts you can use to go directly to Commons if you like.

We would appreciate your advice on which of the options above would be most helpful for the majority of our users (not just power users).