XZise added a comment.
I don't know in which commit but previously all items in the params were either bytes or unicode (or that were the types `__setitem__`'s value was expecting). But then it was changed so that each parameter contains a list which was generated by splitting the value along the pipes. And with that it allowed devs to already add lists themselves to allow any type but those weren't modified (it converts only bytes/unicode into the list).
Also `__setitem__` doesn't “convert“ any values anymore with my change but instead now only `_encoded_items` and that is not modifying the dictionary `Request` is using to hold the parameters. So yes the docstring is not up to date but there is a reason behind all of that.
TASK DETAIL https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T99450
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To: XZise Cc: jayvdb, XZise, valhallasw, Aklapper, pywikipedia-bugs