Reading this post by Trent about the importance of third-party scripts, and I’m reminded of an older post of mine about how component libraries can be used to help surface invisible elements like third-party scripts.
The idea is that someone (or as Trent points out, some *thing*) could hypothetically crawl through all the included scripts on a site, and display them in the in style guide alongside all the color swatches, icons, UI components, etc. After all, they affect the end user experience just as much (if not more) than all those other design elements. You can visually weight them based on how gnarly they are and thus have thoughtful conversations with your team — especially those folks are carelessly chucking in all these performance-damning scripts — about the pros and cons of each script that gets included. That visibility is important. As I mention in my post:
In order to save the bluefin tuna and the rest of the planet’s marine life, we need to make visible the underwater world that is in critical danger. That’s why aquariums, documentaries, articles, conventions, etc are so important for bringing awareness to the issue. In the land of a thousand tracking scripts, it’s up to us to make visible these tracking scripts to ensure the Web stays healthy and fast.