(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > Simplest solution to this problem. :-)
> 
> an excellent case where "simplest" is very far from "correct" or "best".

I disagree.

> in addition to being a bad solution, this change only affects enwiki,

Not true.

> while the (original) bug is generic to all projects that install VE (and
> even non-projects, i.e., "3rd party" wikis).

The message is over-rideable, which is an entirely-adequate solution for most third parties. The initial request was, in my opinion, asking for a solution that didn't require a local over-ride, and met the intent of the team anyway (as part of removing VisualEditor as a local user preference, which was temporarily implemented for the opt-in alphas and is going away).

> as a side, together with this wrong and bad solution, James Forrester also
> changed the synopsis of the bug: from the original ("underlying text for
> VisualEditor in preferences [editing] tab & variable names?"), to "Make
> VisualEditor a hidden preference", i.e., instead of outlining the problem,
> the bug synopsis now spells the "solution".

This is perfectly standard practice here.
 
> this is wrong on several levels: it creates the impression that the bug
> originator (billinghurst) asked to hide the preference, which he didn't, of
> course,

Again, this is normal; comment 0 is the location to find what the originator wanted.

> and it hides the actual problem from someone reading this bug - only
> by digging in the history i was able to make sense of Comment #1, which looks
> now completely disjoint from the bug synopsis.

I'm sorry that you were confused.

> wrong or bad solutions to problems is something that can and does happen in
> every project. that's just life. 
> changing the synopsis the way it was changed is not something that can or
> should happen.

I strongly disagree.

> without digging too deeply, i'm going to revert the synopsis to the original
> one, and reopen -

Which I have reverted, and opened a new bug, bug 51411, for your concerns.

> presuming the problem affects more then just enwiki

Your presumption is wrong. Note that the title you over-ride explicitly mentioned "Mediawikiwiki" (i.e., MediaWiki.org).