Last modified: 2014-09-15 06:47:04 UTC
Gadgets are great for experimentation and innovation but occasionally gain the status of global. When this happens we must ensure the code quality is kept to the highest possible coding standard. As a member of the developer community it is very unclear what gadgets are global and on what projects and how they might effect me and where the code lives and what the code looks like. How to do this is unclear (what tools/processes are needed), but ideally the process of enabling a gadget as global should 1) delay enabling a gadgets as global to give time for feedback 2) Allow members of the developer community to review these kind of gadgets beforehand to flag things like xss problems. 3) Provide greater transparency of which gadgets are enabled where and when See http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/74283 for broader discussion.
(In reply to comment #0) > Gadgets are great for experimentation and innovation but occasionally gain > the > status of global. The present tense of this sentence looks inappropriate: there is no such a thing as global gadgets yet. Is there any reason to think that global gadgets wouldn't automatically be at a higher quality thanks to centralisation?
Whatever the semantics: Gadgets can currently be turned on by default for all users. Whether that translates as global gadgets or something else feel free to clarify. Hopefully it is clear what I mean from the conversation linked to.
Besides the issue of global gadgets not being a thing, this seems like a social problem not a technical problem. Discussion on say meta (or mailing lists) seems like a more appropriate venue, and if the conclusion reached requires development effort, then file a bug about whatever needs to be implemented.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. (1) is called talk page, (2) doesn't currently have any assigned resources to perform such code review on community request and (3) is two feature requests which are a) probably impossible for MediaWiki:.+js pages and b) quite hard for the Gadgets extension which is (still) only local and both not yet filed as separate bugs even. Adjusting priority accordingly.
[[Special:Gadgets]] on every project will tell you what scripts and CSS every gadget uses and whether they are enabled by default. If you want to automate it, there's also an API module - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=gadgets&gaprop=id|desc|metadata&format=jsonfm I think this bug is a putting the cart before the horse. If the WMF wants to start requiring formal review of local code, there should be a wider discussion of that beyond wikitech-l and Bugzilla isn't really the place for that either (meta would be best, or a ML with a more diverse audience). And there should be some sort of formalized policy before we decide how to implement it, unless the WMF is just going to unilaterally impose their preferred solution regardless of what the projects say.
Not a while ago I have created a a page on meta for global overview of gadgets: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gadgets We can use the list on https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gadgets/wikipedia as priority list for review. It would be great if you could create guidelines (it doesn't have to be "formal" policy), under [[meta:Gadgets/guidelines]] and write some important points, or "checklist". Such guidelines would at least allow the gadget developers themselves (and to the admins that enable them) to be aware to common pitfalls and security issuses (such as XSS).
