David Gerard wrote:
It's been in the MediaWiki code base for months and we've been screaming for it to be switched on (see wikien-l in all that time).
I've directly asked on wikitech-l if there's some reason this feature is *never* going in and if I should just stop bothering, and been told that's not the case and that there are things that need fixing first.
But the original developer (Magnus Manske) *still* can't get any clear list of what needs fixing for it to go in.
I already told Magnus, if there's anything terribly wrong with it it'll get fixed after it's turned on (and if necessary, back off).
There's at least a half dozen people who could turn it on this very moment, but nobody's done it in all these months, probably because nobody on the server team thinks it's particularly important, useful, or high-priority. (If someone does think this and has refrained from turning it on for some other reason, they haven't told me so.)
It's a solution in search of a problem; it doesn't solve the validated-version-display issue in any way, it's just a survey form that might, in theory, produce data that might, in theory, be interesting or useful to someone one day.
Will it be worth the trouble of turning it on and possibly having to deal with fixing it when further problems become evident? Who knows.
So. What's up with Special:Validate?
It's on my list for this week, I'll see about getting it turned on and working.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)