Board Thread:Technical Updates/@comment-26339491-20191203204132/@comment-3218221-20200713221029

Mm. Although the Forum here generally operates on a "Please don't revive old threads" basis, surely Technical Updates at minimum are exceptions to that practice. These are official changes (major, minor, the gamut) that impact all users across the board; major changes continue to impact users weeks, months, years down the line, and so it would be disingenuous to say all Technical Updates become 'irrelevant' or that the debate or discussions they spawn have an expiration date.

Why, the other day I brought up this Technical Update (and linked the thread) to a recently-active again bureaucrat--only for a fellow admin to exclaim, "OH I had noticed that but didn't know why it was happening / I had assumed it was a mobile thing but now it makes sense."

Clearly people are still being directly impacted by this update, even if they aren't aware the cause is this update in particular. (As a side note, the fact the admin assumed this was another issue with mobile is fairly telling in its own right. That she thought it was a technical issue in and of itself, and that her instinct was to fault the mobile experience...) And this thread continues to be discovered by anons who have bothered to locate and look behind the wizard's curtain for the sake of an explanation.

And, upon realizing it is the wizard's doing, for the sake of lodging a complaint.

The reaction here shouldn't be, "It's been months, fellas...necro much?"

The reaction should be, "It's been months and we still have people assuming this is a bug, not a feature; we still have people post-epiphany voicing their disbelief and discontent. Mayhaps this hasn't blown over like we hoped for a good reason."

The majority of feedback in this thread remains relevant. Snapper2's about gallery neutering, practically everything 452 has said, Jak Himself & Vicarage's comments re: image descriptions, et cetera - alongside, of course, the valuable opinions of anons + former anons who have taken the time to chime in. My own feedback I suppose was 'technically' late, but I don't believe the points I made were trivial.

Honestly, I'm considering emulating 452's custom notice on lightboxes informing anons how to access file pages. If FANDOM does want anons to create accounts (as has been previously brought up), the absence of an explanatory notice re: inaccessibility is as puzzling as it is disheartening.