[Wikimedia-l] Breaking bots // HTTPS for logged in users on Wednesday August 21st

[Fae]

On 21 August 2013 07:49, Terry Chay <tchay at wikimedia.org> wrote:
...
> Luckily, the standard for the Movement is consensus, not catering to every extremist view with 100% buy-in.

As a Commons user responsible for over 2.5 million edits, I would hope
that the WMF do not label or quickly dismiss me as an "extremist" if I
raise some questions about this notification.

I am concerned about how many valuable bot activities a mandated move
to https might break. Some will be fixed by operators such as myself
changing account preferences to force an opt-out or re-writing code,
however many useful bot activities have semi-retired operators,
particularly on Commons, and some are bound to just never be fixed and
their value will be lost. In planning this change, has some support
effort been allocated to fixing or re-hosting the bots that break
(such as taking the option of 'remotely' setting community-identified
useful bots to opt-out of https, at least for a test period, rather
than forcing an opt-in) and has there been a survey of this impact?

Though I agree we don't expect "100% buy-in", as an active volunteer,
batch uploader and bot writer, I would have expected to have been
given a friendly, non-confrontational and relaxed opportunity to raise
and consider these issues in a RFC or other consensus building
discussion on my home project and engage in discussion there, rather
than, apparently, no buy-in needed from us unpaid volunteers and
content creators.

Thanks,
Fae
-- 
faewik at gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm