Thread:Talk:MediaWiki 1.19/Reference tooltips

(This might not be the best talk page for this. If someone knows of a more appropriate talk page, please move this post.)

A few months ago, a design idea for Reference Tooltips was posted on this wiki. Thinking that this would be useful to have on Wikipedia, I proceeded to make the JS and CSS for it, and then I proposed that it be made available as a gadget on the English Wikipedia, as I had been informed the RT was "not an official project". I intended to then propose that it be added to the ENWP Common.js (whether or not it had gained consensus for being made an opt-in gadget yet).

More recently, I was looking at the WMFLabs MW1.19 test wikis, and was surprised to see that a RT functionality (although with the tooltips in a different location, with a different design, and lacking the ability for users to click on the reference content) in use. Despite the fact that many communities might not want to have RT on their wikis, it appears that all wikis are to have this version of Reference Tooltips enabled upon upgrading to MW1.19, assuming that the Labs wikis are an accurate portrayal of what the wikis will look like after the upgrade. As far as I know, the Wikimedia communities were not consulted in this decision, nor were any of them even informed in any way of this change. I am fairly certain that this change was not announced in any Village Pump, mentioned anywhere on the entire Mediawiki wiki, or at all mentioned in any mailing list. Nor is it mentioned in the MW1.19 release notes. It appears to me that the community consensus process was bypassed, and the possibility of any previous discussion was eliminated. I am also rather annoyed that all my work toward the RT script turned out to be useless, and that this came about as a result of just not being informed about any plan for the WMF to build Reference Tooltips.

So here's some questions:
 * Did the design document Reference Tooltips become an official project afterwards and end up as the current version after some heavy modification, or was the official implementation an entirely separate project created independently?
 * Is there any intention to inform the communities of this rather major change before it gets implemented on the live wikis, or will nobody be informed until it's actually running?
 * Will there be any way at all for individual wikis to disable this feature?
 * Where, if anywhere, did discussion take place? (Is there an entire communication channel I'm unaware of?) This wasn't just a decision taken by one individual, was it?
 * How is the box containing the reference content being in the lower right and unclickable supposed to be an improvement?

(PS: Sorry for the critical tone, I'm just really annoyed right now. If I actually misunderstood the whole thing, or just somehow missed discussion/announcement of RT, sorry again.)