Chris Keating wrote:
In particular, I find it difficult to take people seriously when they're suggesting "solutions" like "disabling the German Wikipedia". I am more than a little surprised this even needs to be said.
Magnus Manske wrote:
Strange. I seem to distinctly remember that, yesterday on Wikimania, many (most) of us agreed that Wikipedia is an incredibly valuable resource to the world, and that it is our mission, as a community, to protect and improve it, and to make it available to even more people.
Your suggestion to sabotage that resource, even if it's just (!) in German, because a few long-time editors there now have to (once) click a checkbox to *not* see the Media viewer, strikes me as somewhat incompatible with that mission.
Just as a thought experiment, I wonder: if a group of German Wikipedians rented office space in San Francisco, gathered in a conference room, and recorded themselves as they cheered on the disabling of the German Wikipedia, would that then be acceptable? There's certainly precedent: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/67445170.
I don't need to be sold on the value or virtue of Wikipedia and I labeled the extreme options as such. The German Wikipedia discussed and evaluated MediaViewer and decided that MediaViewer should not be enabled by default. German Wikipedians followed the proper procedure to request a wiki configuration change (cf. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/69292).
Does either of you or anyone else see a valid reason to deny this seemingly reasonable and considered request? It's quite obvious that hacks to achieve the same ends are far from ideal. Why not simply disable MediaViewer by default on the German Wikipedia, as requested?
MZMcBride