Chris Keating wrote:
In particular, I find it difficult to take people
seriously when they're
suggesting "solutions" like "disabling the German Wikipedia". I am
more
than a little surprised this even needs to be said.
Magnus Manske wrote:
Strange. I seem to distinctly remember that, yesterday
on Wikimania, many
(most) of us agreed that Wikipedia is an incredibly valuable resource to
the world, and that it is our mission, as a community, to protect and
improve it, and to make it available to even more people.
Your suggestion to sabotage that resource, even if it's just (!) in
German, because a few long-time editors there now have to (once) click a
checkbox to *not* see the Media viewer, strikes me as somewhat
incompatible with that mission.
Just as a thought experiment, I wonder: if a group of German Wikipedians
rented office space in San Francisco, gathered in a conference room, and
recorded themselves as they cheered on the disabling of the German
Wikipedia, would that then be acceptable? There's certainly precedent:
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/67445170>.
I don't need to be sold on the value or virtue of Wikipedia and I labeled
the extreme options as such. The German Wikipedia discussed and evaluated
MediaViewer and decided that MediaViewer should not be enabled by default.
German Wikipedians followed the proper procedure to request a wiki
configuration change (cf. <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/69292>).
Does either of you or anyone else see a valid reason to deny this
seemingly reasonable and considered request? It's quite obvious that hacks
to achieve the same ends are far from ideal. Why not simply disable
MediaViewer by default on the German Wikipedia, as requested?
MZMcBride