Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment--20150814190019/@comment-24473195-20150815164222

Dragonfree97 wrote:

The whole thing just reeks of over-protectivity. How many wikis use custom JavaScript? And how often do JavaScript incidents occur? To force all users to have their code submitted for review just seems like overkill. I think only people who don't really understand javascript can make claims that each "semi-colon" requires review. Even if one doesn't want to use the javascript console, one can still use greasemonkey or tampermonkey to make any changes without submitting them to a wiki. Making the username/user.js completely unnecesary. In fact, submitting every change to a wiki is a bad practice that will in some cases make certain wikia features stop working in the event of a script error breaking functionality and in some cases breaking the TOU.

There are apps like jslint and json lint that can quickly identify simple mistakes like that anyway.

If one really wants to take it to the next level, there's nothing stopping anyone from downloading the whole mediawiki/wikia's source code and debugging it locally. Anyone who changes javascript, is immediately forcing everyone in the wikia to trust them, based on nothing but the idea that an "admin"  who more often than not uses a "pseudonymn" is trustworthy.

Actually one could argue that the current way of changing javascript goes entirely against a wiki. In a true wiki every single change (including js) is peer reviewed and accepted or rejected. The reality is that unlike a normal article there are  fewer competent peer reviewers for js.

Ultimately, even mediawiki developers aren't allowed to merge code without peer review, and they are far more competent than any wiki user.