The sidebar is collapsed by default for anons as VectorDefaultSidebarVisibleForAuthorisedUser = true since T254230. It seems we missed this in QA and sign off. I think the "NOTE" there was confusing as it mentions both initial state and final state - I had to read it several times to confirm it doesn't reflect the outcome of that task. It appears when that task was implemented we implemented it using the final state.

Note changing this is problematic now that we have shipped to anons, as any config change will not impact cached HTML meaning some pages will show it open and some not.

Are we receiving feedback that this behavior is problematic? If we know this is the eventual final state, I wonder if we need to do anything here?

Change 614890 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdrewniak; owner: Jdlrobson):
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Enable desktop improvements by default for testing group (round 2)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/614890

Are we receiving feedback that this behavior is problematic? If we know this is the eventual final state, I wonder if we need to do anything here?

@Jdlrobson I believe the plan is to leave the sidebar expanded by default until we move the language links to the top of the page.

In T258588#6339242, @Jdrewniak wrote:

Are we receiving feedback that this behavior is problematic? If we know this is the eventual final state, I wonder if we need to do anything here?

@Jdlrobson I believe the plan is to leave the sidebar expanded by default until we move the language links to the top of the page.

We currently need it open due to the high use of languages within the sidebar. Once languages are moved to the top of the page, we can go ahead and collapse it.

Change 614890 merged by jenkins-bot:
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Enable desktop improvements by default for testing group (round 2)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/614890