On 15/01/12 06:33, MZMcBride wrote:
Hi.
Skimming <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Action>,
it seems inevitable that some kind of banner (or "blackout" banner, which is
apparently equivalent to an extra-large banner) will be implemented.
The question becomes: how will this be implemented? I assume some kind of
CentralNotice banner with some CSS absolute positioning or something? Is
that right? Or will it be part of a separate extension?
I am not aware of any such discussion. I suppose the underlying
content could be hidden by just overlaying a blackout div with a high
z-index, but that would cause the content to appear while the site is
loading, to be removed later, and the scrollbars would be visible.
The admins of the Italian Wikipedia did overlay a div for their
protest, but they additionally hid the content div and adjusted some
overflows to avoid scrolling, using site CSS. This avoided flickering
of the underlying content.
There's a number of other ways it could be done. For example the Squid
configuration could be changed, either to display alternative HTML as
a 403 error message, or to redirect the whole site to some specific page.
I think the SOPA discussion pages (including Jimmy's talk page) should
be visible throughout the protest. With the Italian Wikipedia protest,
it was fairly difficult for non-technical users to find out who was
responsible for the protest and what level of support it enjoyed.
Whichever way it's done, $wgGroupPermissions should be changed to
disallow editing, similar to what we do with closed wikis
(closed.dblist). If we're going to tell all the editors to have a day
off, it's important that the we don't leave any holes allowing
vandalbots to edit.
Read-only mode ($wgReadOnly etc.) should not be set since it may cause
unintended server issues, affecting wikis other that the English
Wikipedia.
Primarily I'd like to know if "#siteNotice
{display:none !important;}" will
continue to work. If so, there's no further action that needs to be taken.
If it's going to be put into a weird extension or something, I'd personally
favor an edit count check or a "leave me alone" user preference. The
regulars really don't need to be bothered by this obnoxiousness.
And, click-through banner or not, I think obscuring Special:UserLogin is a
poor idea.
You should raise this on the wiki. I don't see any discussion there
about whether logged-in users should be allowed to view the site.
-- Tim Starling
