User:Cqm/gadgets

Many users are clueless when it comes to installing the many scripts here on dev wiki. They don't know what js is, much less how their .js pages work, e.g. w:Special:MyPage/global.js, Special:MyPage/common.js. What we need really is a way to make all this easier, to take them away from having to deal with code which they've usually found somewhere and blindly copied over to their own page - inevitably half the time it doesn't work and they have to ask on the forum what they did wrong. This happens with site-wide js pages too which is obviously an issue that should be addressed.

What MediaWiki have come up with is Gadgets, although it's current version deployed on Wikia is a bit lacking. However, what it does include is an interface (UI) to select gadgets you want to install. This is a giant leap in the right direction when it comes to making the process of installing scripts more manageable to the "clueless" users mentioned above. It simply allows a user to review a list of scripts available, each with a short description, and then install them with a click of their mouse. Why can't all script installations be this easy?

Gadgets is currently unsuitable as a direct replacement for MediaWiki (site module) js pages. On Wikia wikis there's numerous cases where scripts are in the site module because they include functionality that the admins require. For example, on RuneScape Wiki we have systematically disabled anything related to videos. Whilst staff have obliged in most places, it's still possible to upload a video through adding youtube tags. To combat this we edit the page source when the user clicks the publish button to move to. This is a relatively niche case, but illustrates how sometimes scripts are required to be loaded.