At a first sight, it make sense. There is some technical problem (in particular, it's not really starting a new wiki project, but developing a new functionality), though, and it may create new problems. - Laurentius (talk) 14:02, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Armbrust and PiRSquared17: indeed it does. MediaWiki preferences include signature, language settings, timezone, gender, view/edit UI, and experimental features. They all are wiki-independent and would be 'globalized' flawlessly. Global gadgets would instead need some additional work on ResourceLoader V2. --Ricordisamoa23:55, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For Project, Help and userpages it would be nice. For firts two using wd and for latter just per name. Global preferences and watchlist is also a dream of a kind. The proposal could solve global.css and global.js problem - if it would be possible to store them without using a bot for running in all wikis it will be very cool. --Base (talk) 19:08, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well that sounds way more interesting then the parallel userwiki proposal. A fallback is definitely a better option than complete substitution. It should be only for userspace and perhaps for ns4 and ns12 though. As to ns12 it's also possible that some of pages on Mediawiki.org should be moved to this globalwiki model - i'd love not to have 700+ pages with exactly the same info how to e.g. create a table using wikimarkup as it's now (with exception that in tiny wikis help-pages are yet to be created) - and people like do links within project so as long as it'd work as with filedescs from commons it's cool. As to Extension Translate mentioned some adjustments should be made: we dont want all these pages listed in translation stats, so they should be "forbidden" to translate from the start. And an issue more: now it's we, Translate admins, who handle translation of pages. But on such a project it seems impossible to have it this way: I don't want to babysit everybody who likes to put his every thought on his userpage. Nor it'd be too cool to give everybody TA rights - it'd cause real mess. Nor it'd be cool to have those pages not localizable as e.g. I don't want to see my pages on Ukrainian and Russian (that's langs I'm -N and -4) wikis in English. Also it'd needed to the extension to support per page set of translatable page's lang. --Base (talk) 12:27, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
So like a Commons for userpages? Assuming that this isn't rendered redundant by some of the modules that the WMF is working on, this is a good idea. I'd check with jorm first though, because I think I remember a centralized user page in his 2012 Wikimania Echo&Flow presentation. Sven Manguard (talk) 18:37, 14 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Armbrust: I can understand that but wouldn't it make more sense for each user to have one userpage and one talkpage, irrespective of which wiki they are more active on? As an example, let's say I decided to poke my nose in at Catalan or Arabic wiki (where I've barely edited), it would be more useful to have those messages posted directly on a single talkpage, instead of those users posting the message locally, and then an email being sent to my inbox. Green Giant (talk) 13:39, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Would there be a way to set up a different default for each of several languages? I don't think I would care if it used selective transclusion or some other method. PC-XT (talk) 10:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would love this, especially the GlobalTemplates suggestion and the idea that the User pages would be centralized into one location. It could create a number of problems, but would be worth it in the end. --Nicereddy (talk) 03:30, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I saw this linked from the discussion about UserWiki, and reading through both of them, I definitely think a fallback is better than a single one for everything. Global preferences, talkpage, etc with the option to have local ones have their own would definitely improve editing for me. Supernerd11 (talk) 17:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]