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