(addition): tested some more wikis: es, nl, de, ar, fa, pt - first exception (centralNotice) is same on all those wikis.
continuation varies depending on wiki, but each of those had at least one exception.

tentative diagnosis: for all sane browsers, mediawiki.util is loaded before site-specific common.js.
for some perverted reason, not so for IE in compatibility mode.

(this pertains to the other exceptions - i have no idea where centralNotice is supposed to be initialized).

peace.

mwalker wrote:

Patch submitted - https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/32673

mwalker wrote:

Kipod: thanks for the report! Hopefully the above patch will fix things. A couple of things were happening that shouldn't have been.

I've removed the dependency on mw.util (it didn't need it). This in and of itself should solve the issue. If it doesn't I've also modified the CentralNotice skin hook to explicitly depend on the CN module. However, this skin change will take some time to propogate through the system (ie: it will only take effect on the page when the page is purged/edited.)

mwalker wrote:

*** Bug 41750 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Patch has been merged => can this be closed as RESOLVED FIXED?

@Andre, this really also needs to be deployed asap. I think we can close it then.

Done.