User blog comment:Sannse/Sneak Peek at the New Look - Your Personal Toolbar/@comment-227331-20100908064920/@comment-227331-20100915175242

Sadly the user modules are a big draw for me. As a GM I want to keep my information localized so they don't have to check an offsite twitter, calendar, map, or anything else that could be updated in realtime while they're looking at the wiki. Currently I have the map plugin for my wiki and that's fine, those should be on a page and not in a sidebar. But at this point many other wikifarms offer similar gadgets and implementation. Even wikispaces has managed this so far, and they allow for importing your own widgets via copypasting javascript/iframes. I can understand the security risk and why you'd want to keep someone from doing whatever they wanted with java, but allowing users to have some access to a form of this would keep them from bugging the support staff for modules that replicate those features, and it allows for greater flexibility when the next nifty gadget comes along that people migrate to and want to have on their wiki.

It creates a nasty problem "why don't we have this? dev team make a plugin for this! Why can't you implement this bit of code that's supposed to work with wikimedia?" excexc. If the userbase has the option to create their own api to a IRC chat or something similar, it gets rid of all the people complaining about the chatbox. As a bonus then you can go ahead with your plans for the new layout with fewer complaints and petitions.

Edit: Aaand that was meant for Sannse in response to the thread. not meant to be a new thread.