I strong disagree on your edit in Template:ExtensionInstall.
Please, provide a valid reason, or else I'd have to revert, because the minority of users are actually who could use the new wfLoadExtension function. See quantity of wikis using MediaWiki 1.25 vs others
If you want to update the template properly, that's great – go ahead. That means:
registration = yes, show the MW 1.25+ documentation in one block of description and a distinct block for MW 1.24- with very clear warning signs that this is the deprecated method that should only be used if people know the previous method doesn't work.registration = no, show the MW 1.24- documentation block with a note that it's still using the old method and will be replaced in the next few weeks (if they're using master) or in the next release (if not).In the next couple of weeks, we're going to switch the template over to assume that registration = yes by default, so… Remember that using a mixture of wfLoadExtension and the old, slow method is inefficient for users' servers, so we need to encourage people to switch over comprehensively.
Also, please do not threaten to revert people, and in general it's expected that you discuss the merits of edits on the discussion page of the relevant page, rather than hounding the individual who made it on their talk page.
You are right that my message isn't as polite as one would expect. Still, if you see the edit history of Template:ExtensionInstall, you'll notice the reason for it to be included, which was totally ignored by your edit, so I don't think opening a discussion would make any difference in this case.
Will do my best in editing that template to provide a clear idea that this new method is what needs to be used since MediaWiki 1.25, but older installations need to use the old version. The current situation is simply wrong and will generate lots of complains for users using MediaWiki 1.24 and before that will get a WSOD page.
I think you underestimate people. People using out-of-date code (like an MW 1.24.* branch) are generally aware that they shouldn't try adding or configuring anything new as the world has moved on.
People can just install MediaWiki 1.24, or 1.23 (that's LTS) instead of 1.25 for whatever reason (some specific extensions still not compatible with 1.25, system requirements or just because 1.25 is still too recent) and install extensions for them. You can't negate them the right to do so by obscuring documentation for them
LTS is a laughable lie – the 'S' in 'LTS' means support, and no-one supports them except WMF staff doing security patch releases from time to time. We need to stop pretending to people that they're likely to get much or any community support when they're using anything other than the latest release or so.
Talk to yourself, but thankfully, MediaWiki is not only Wikipedia and WMF staff, and there's a community -in which I'm part of it- supporting them in Project:Support desk. Pretending to drop that support is like pretending to ignore that MediaWiki is running in more than 25000 sites. And that's a disrespectful statement for a lot of developers that probably won't be contributing to MediaWiki if it were close-minded enough to only support WMF wikis
I think you two are talking about different types of support.
You're doing "tech support" at Project:Support desk—answering questions that people have about (for example) how to install it or troubleshoot it. That awesome community provides support for all versions, regardless of how old, so long as someone there knows the answer or is interested in finding out what it is.
The "S" in "Long-term support" isn't about tech support; it's about dev support. It's about things like porting new security patches back to older versions. There are very few people doing that, and I would not be surprised at all to learn that most (or even all) of them are employed by the WMF.
Or, to give an analogy, I have an old Mac Plus (with a whole megabyte of RAM!) in the basement, and I can certainly find a community online that would cheerfully provide "tech support" on how to set it up again. But it's no longer "supported" in the sense of new software or updates to old software being created for it. It is unsupported hardware, even if it's possible to get answers to my questions about it.
I don't see what's the point of your message to the whole conversation here, sorry.
There are a lot of MediaWiki installations out there that need longer terms for upgrading, because they rely on extensions that usually are broken on every new MediaWiki release and need some time for devs to fix them. Often because of problems with the release team (see phab:T66157).
Security fixes are not hard to backport, so I don't see what's the problem of maintaining LTS. If you ever remove LTS releases, I imagine the next step is to remove support for stable MediaWiki releases, only supporting current master or WMF branches. Who would put the limit, here?