James Forrester wrote:
This is based on a mis-understanding of
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Turning_off_outdated_skins/stats.
Specifically:
>One limitation of the data is that we could only retrieve users who had
> actively set a preference for their skin; users who had not done this
> displayed with a null value in the relevant table. Such users are not
> included in the numbers for Vector in the next section, which leads to
>an underrepresentation of Vector. Based on an approximate
>calculation, this may exclude up to 85 per cent of users.
I'm having difficulty understanding how this point would matter for
power-users. Can't we presume that every power-user has set his or her
skin user preference? If so, we can see that roughly 63% of power-users
use Monobook. Given the reality of who largely maintains and protects the
wikis (i.e., power-users), the number of Monobook users certainly seems
significant to me. Perhaps I just need to think further on this, though.
Updated stats might help here, but Trevor is probably right that the
proper solution is a skins API. Whether that means it's a good idea to kill
Cologne Blue and Modern in the meantime, I don't know. It'll likely just
engender more ill will and not provide that much of a savings. It's not as
though anyone is currently prioritizing bug fixes and feature requests
related to skins other than Vector and Monobook. In other words, the de
facto support standard has long been only Monobook and Vector. Shrug.
MZMcBride