" I remember a situation when I posted a fix for a script in the
MediaWiki namespace
as an {{edit request}}, and a well-meaning administrator tried to "improve"
my line of code and forgot a comma, breaking all JavaScript for all
logged-in as well as not logged-in Wikipedia editors and readers for some
painful minutes"
Everyone makes mistakes. I presume that under this revised proposal, that
administrator would still have had JS edit permission, and might have still
made the mistake. I mean, they apparently knew JS well enough to have been
able to pass whatever test would have been required to get that permission
added to their account.
Perhaps we need a real test environment of some sort, so that changes like
that must be run on the test server for X [time period] before being pushed
to live? Changes can't happen on live until there's some sort of consensus
that the test code actually works as run -- any additional changes reset
the test time period counter before it can be pushed to live.
Bart Humphries
bart.humphries(a)gmail.com
(909)529-BART(2278)
On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 7:40 AM, Thiemo Kreuz <thiemo.kreuz(a)wikimedia.de>
wrote:
Is there any
historical evidence that sysops being able to edit JS / CSS
caused some serious
issues?
Oh yes, this happens more often than I feel it needs to. I remember a
situation when I posted a fix for a script in the MediaWiki:…
namespace as an {{edit request}}, and a well-meaning administrator
tried to "improve" my line of code and forgot a comma, breaking all
JavaScript for all logged-in as well as not logged-in Wikipedia
editors and readers for some painful minutes.
I believe such can be avoided with more clear roles that are visible
for everybody. A separate "tech admin" role would also allow
volunteers to apply for exactly that, and not be asked why they don't
do enough "administrator actions" with their privileges.
Sure, this is anecdotal evidence. Please forgive me, but I currently
don't have the time to find the pages documenting these situation.
Best
Thiemo
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