Last modified: 2014-10-17 03:41:24 UTC
Currently the collapse/expand state for the centralnotice banner is stored in a domain-specific browser cookie. For those not using the secure.wikimedia.org interface (which puts all wikis on a single domain), this means they have to click the collapse thingy for every wiki they visit. Further, if you visit the wikis from multiple computers or multiple browsers, the collapse state doesn't come with you. :( For people who are logged in with a global account, it ought to be possible to stick the collapse/expand state into some kind of global preference that goes with the account; thus once logged in you'd stick with the option anywhere. This however would be dependent on having an infrastructure for maintaining such preferences, *and* some way to save it. :P (bug 14950?) I'm pretty sure we won't get to this in the next couple weeks, but this would be good to target to have done before the 2009-2010 fundraiser. At a minimum, setting the cookie at one level up might be nice (eg *.wikipedia.org instead of just en.wikipedia.org).
Do we have any use for NOT collapsing it across all sites? If not then it should not be too hard to do.
(In reply to comment #1) > Do we have any use for NOT collapsing it across all sites? If not then it > should not be too hard to do. > Other than propagandizing/annoying users as much as possible, no. I'm not sure that's a goal we should have though :D
Setting a domain-wide cookie is easy; doing it cross-domain is a bit harder (like how we do the login/logout cookies with images to hit the 3rd-party cookies).
We should also include the GeoIPLookup info used by CentralNotice in the same cookie if possible.
As a workaround (until bugs 27968 and 27448 are fixed), I am using Privoxy (http://www.privoxy.org) proxy filter and the rule: { +block{wikimedia}} meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php\?title=Special:Banner.* geoiplookup.wikimedia.org After the abovementioned bugs are fixed, the above will be fetched using SSL and not will not be within proxy's reach. Privoxy, has, however ability to independently send a cookie to a site on behalf of the browser, so something like { +add-header{Cookie: mediawikicentralnotice=0} } .wikipedia.org .wikimedia.org .wikiquote.org .wikisource.org .... .... could solve half of the problem (accepting a cookie) but not setting it cross-wiki.
Please also see bug 17108 which says the reverse - each notice should have its own cookie.
Theoretically, we could do both. Each banner has its own cookie(s) that hide it globally once set. Of course that puts us about at the same place we are now as far as how much close box clicking each editor has to do. Without any clear guidance from either the community or the WMF I'm reluctant to implement either of these, however.
Right now the domain parameter isn't set for the banner-hiding cookie, so it just defaults to the full hostname (e.g. 'en.wikipedia.org'). To fix this we would need to have it set to the domain name only, preceded by a dot (e.g. '.wikipedia.org'). See SpecialBannerController line 195.
I'm retitling this bug to focus its scope on changing the cookie domain, as this is the most reasonable solution until bug 14950 is fixed.
Actually, on second reading this isn't blocked on 14950; I just need to modify Special:HideBanners.
This is being discussed in: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2013-October/thread.html#459 Does the approach https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Template:HideBanners still work? If so it might be feasible to link to some variant of this page as a global-hide for non-fundraising banners until we have a better solution.
Change 92777 had a related patch set uploaded by Mwalker: Crosswiki Banner Hiding https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/92777
Change 92777 merged by jenkins-bot: Crosswiki Banner Hiding https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/92777
Change 92817 had a related patch set uploaded by Mwalker: Enable CentralNotice CrossWiki Hiding https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/92817
Change 92817 merged by Mwalker: Enable CentralNotice CrossWiki Hiding https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/92817
Seems to be working -- marking as resolved.
Change 126065 had a related patch set uploaded by Mwalker: Enable CentralNotice CrossWiki Hiding https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/126065
Change 126065 merged by Mwalker: Enable CentralNotice CrossWiki Hiding https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/126065
Ouch, killed the cluster https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126998/
Heh; that's true; but then we re-enabled it here: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126998/
