Hello Erwin,
Thanks for bringing this on the wikitech-l list!
Erwin Dokter wrote:
It all started with revision 105280 (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/105280), where Hashdar commited a new color scheme for diffs based on the French scheme. When this generated some flack for making "green the remove-color", I submitted a patch that reversed the colors (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33139). This was met with general approval.
I am not sure why I posted r105280 in the first place. Must have been an online discussion about colorblind people and how the default diff colors were not fair to them. Or that might have been a bug report. Those colors (green/blue) have been in place on the french Wikipedia since 2007. Anyway, comments were about the green color being switched from right to left, thus you opened a bug and attached a patch (thanks for that).
During an internal tech meeting (I am a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation nowadays), I have asked for some help on this issue since I am neither a design nor a color expert. Luckily, Brandon Harris has that knowledge so I have asked for him to have a look at the issue.
Before it could be applied though, Brandon steps in with another patch (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/106884) that mixed the old yellow with the new blue, that looks absolutely horrible; a view in which I am not alone. I immediately submitted a new patch that adjusted the colors and levels, which is now under discussion.
Yeah I closed the bug report asking to get the colors swapped because the green just disappeared. So since the bug cause disappeared, I though we could just close that bug and move on.
I have looked at your patch this afternoon. Your colors are not that much different from Brandon one. It is clearly not worth it to spend hours and hours in discussion just to add 1% of red in a yellow color or 0.5% of green in the blue color.
Please note any project can alter those colors locally. What I really wanted was to get reasonably sane default for fresh MediaWiki install.
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I'm not one to complain fast, but I now understand why develpers without commit access just turn around and walk away; if submittd patches that have approval are summarily overruled by those with commit access, there is really no point in continueing to submit patches.
You should comments on code revisions. You should submits patches. Because in the long term, the only thing that matter is getting a better software that helps everyone spread knowledge. A good example is the classic diff gadget you have submitted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-ClassicDiff.css And without your comments, we would never have dropped green :-)
Anyway, I am taking a week long of vacations. Will be back in beginning of January. Lets get in touch then to fix the issue, I can give you a call if you prefer speaking over email exchange. :-)
Note: revisions are not definitives. We can always amend them later on.