[tantalor]

Page Previews is a great example of leveraging "web app" that solves many problems at once:

- quickly inform on a topic without clicking through (lower latency)

- increase scanability (hence readability)

- decrease expensive whole page loads

- eliminate need to open many tabs

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Page_Previews

[vorpalhex]

Page Previews, specifically Hovercards can be implemented in a very simple way with plain JS [^1] and is clearly an enhancement - everything works just fine if hovercards don't load.

But most features on Wikipedia aren't like that, and would be really hurt if you had to a JS bundle or otherwise deal with the usual bloated webapp nonsense. Wikipedia primarily needs to load quickly and be semantic with preferably simple infrastructure to help their budget.

[^1]: See Gwern.net for an example of an easy pure JS hovercard - https://www.gwern.net/DNB-FAQ

[majewsky]

Each such feature individually can be implemented in a very simple way with vanilla JS. All such features taken together create a horrible unmaintainable mess. Speaking from experience.

[enriquto]

Whatever, but if wikipedia somehow becomes unusable without javascript, it will be a real tragedy.

[jdlrobson]

You dont need to be worried about this. Our morales and principles are not changing.

I built the Wikipedia mobile site and there's a reason our hamburger menu, lazy loaded images and editor actually work without JS. We are for everyone regardless of internet connection speed, device value and internet stability.

That's a a hill at least I as an employee am prepared to die on.

[enriquto]

I cannot express how reassuring your words are, and how happy I am to hear them. Thank you very much!

Well; it turns out that I can: just made a donation.

[belval]

If that's the case then I am sorry for my earlier comment, Wikipedia is a treasure and you are doing amazing work!