r41958 MediaWiki - Code Review archive

Instead of reverting something that already worked quite well, why not just change it for the better (or ask someone else to)? This kind of attitude means that nothing will ever get done with "bad" code. Besides, the code you reverted was still much better than the extension code (does not have a dependency on javascript in order to even display the sitenotice, among other things). Surely even though it doesn't meet the "standards" of core, it is still loads better than the extension and should have just stayed there until the code could be made "up to standards."

Onwards to the three points that you mentioned, and an easy way to fix each:

• Instead of a sitenotice_id, why not use the date of the last revision of the MediaWiki:Sitenotice / MediaWiki:Anonnotice page? Either one requires querying the database, so it should not be any performance loss, plus it would make the re-displaying of the notice automatic -- just edit the page and it reappears. If null edits should make it reappear, then use the last touched date instead of the last revision date.
• "Automatic message expiry"... do you mean the cookie or the message itself. If it is a latter, that is no issue with this merged extension but rather an issue with how the Sitenotice is used, which would mean a major overhaul of the sitenotice code in general. If it was referring to the cookie, that already happens. All one needs to do is change the cookie settings and the expiry time can be shortened or lengthened. If you want to maintain a separate time, a different wg could be used instead of wgCookieExpiration.
• "spite the anons"... easily accomplished by adding another permission to the wgGroupPermissions array, which also allows it to be restricted more on wikis that don't want logged in users to be able to hide the notice either (and it makes the special page code shorter as well). We could even make that permission true by default, although that means that wikimedia will need to modify that to false.

Skizzerz, make improvements to the extension. If we some day wish to merge it to core, that can be done in the future. However, DismissableSiteNotice will probably end up largely replaced entirely...