Last modified: 2013-07-20 02:27:34 UTC
It would be nice if anonymous users (non-logged in users) could be able to define a basic set of preferences. This option is available on many websites, like search engines or encyclopedias (see for example http://www.google.com/preferences or http://www.eol.org/taxa/settings). I see at least two preferences that would be very useful: * Interface language This would be particularly useful on multilingual wikis (e.g. commons:) or on wikis where the registration is required or restricted (e.g. wikimedia:). It is possible to change the interface language by adding "?uselang=code" to the end of the URL, but it is not very practical to do this several times in a row. * Stable versions (Flagged revisions) If a wiki community chooses to display stable versions by default, readers or anonymous contributors should be able to choose to see current versions by default. Draft versions can be displayed on a per page basis, but it would be much convenient to set this just once.
Issue 1: would be great. Extension LanguageSelector provides this functionality. It will have serious implications for caching strategies, I think. Issue 2: WONTFIX, I'd say. FlaggedRevs was designed to purposely provide a particular flagged version to anonymous users. Should be a separate issue. Cannot be classified in the same domain, which is "MediaWiki extensions/FlaggedRevs".
This would require we provide such users with cookies, which in turn would fragment the Squid cache. If the ones who set these preferences are mostly the same ones who would have otherwise signed up, there's no issue. If lots of people start picking languages from handy buttons people kindly put up, there would be a performance issue here.
So... Where to go from here?
(In reply to comment #3) > So... Where to go from here? Force those people to register? Suggesting WONTFIX: people who want preferences and other fancy stuff should register, that's what accounts are *for*.
Closed as WONTFIX.
Discussion seems to only consider Wikimedia wikies. How about the wikies who don't allow just anyone to register?
If they want to allow user preferences, they can allow registration but set $wgGroupPermissions['user']['edit'] = false and manually promote actual editors. Or they might write an extension.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 20151 ***
