Jon Robson wrote:
I raised a new bug which is hopefully more focused about the issues here: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58462
Thank you for filing this bug.
Improving gadget code may be outside the scope of Bugzilla as it's more of a policy/social question rather than a technical question, per se, but I'll leave it to Andre and others to consider the bug's validity. As I mentioned previously in this thread, I think a better approach would be to figure out which gadgets are so popular that users want to make them enabled by default (i.e., opt-out) and find ways to implement the same functionality in MediaWiki extensions or in MediaWiki core.
As general guidance, please be careful when using the word "global" in Wikimedia-related discussions. In Wikimedia's context, "global" generally means "across all public Wikimedia wikis." (Compare Special:GlobalUsers or the GlobalUsage MediaWiki extension.) "Global gadgets" are JavaScript gadgets that can be enabled (or disabled) across all public Wikimedia wikis (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/20153). The bug you filed (58462) is actually seemingly about site-wide (_not_ global) gadgets that are enabled by default. The bug's summary has been updated accordingly.
MZMcBride