In a little over a month I will have been a MediaWiki developer for a full year. Some unpleasantness earlier today provided a good occasion to reflect on some of what I've learned since last spring. I have decided to do so publicly, in my characteristic obnoxious and attention-seeking manner.
The upshot of MediaWiki being so thoroughly crufty is that there is never any shortage of places that need some love. There is no shortage of opportunities to have an impact. It is entirely possible to work at a rapid clip and get a lot done, as long as you are prepared for the possibility that any specific project could hit a blocker and be stalled for a while.
When the path forward is blocked, let the matter drop for a while and turn your attention to something else. Come back to it with a fresh and open mind. That is how you win: not with overwhelming firepower, but with lots of patience and a light touch. Having a sense of humor helps, too.
-- Ori Livneh
Ori Livneh wrote:
When the path forward is blocked, let the matter drop for a while and turn your attention to something else. Come back to it with a fresh and open mind. That is how you win: not with overwhelming firepower, but with lots of patience and a light touch. Having a sense of humor helps, too.
Amen. :-)
When I look at the people who manage to stay around for a long time, they're the ones who are capable of assuming good faith and occasionally walking away when things get heated. Wiki diplomacy happens at about the same rate as non-wiki diplomacy, I've found. Sometimes you have to be a little bit more non-profit and a little bit less tech. ;-)
Congrats on your first MediaWiki developer birthday! To many more birthdays in the years to come.
MZMcBride
P.S. mailman: there's a non-ASCII character in the subject line. Attack!
On Tue, 19 Mar 2013, MZMcBride wrote:
P.S. mailman: there's a non-ASCII character in the subject line. Attack!
Why? It's correctly encoded:
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Gerrit =?UTF-8?B?V2Fyc+KEog==?=: a strategy-guide
On 03/20/2013 10:43 AM, Jasper Wallace wrote:
On Tue, 19 Mar 2013, MZMcBride wrote:
P.S. mailman: there's a non-ASCII character in the subject line. Attack!
Why? It's correctly encoded:
Because the way the subject line is displayed 3 different ways on the archive page:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-March/thread.html#67742
There we have:
Gerrit =?utf-8?Q?Wars=E2=84=A2=3A_?=a strategy-guide Gerrit =?UTF-8?B?V2Fyc+KEog==?=: a strategy-guide Gerrit Wars™: a strategy-guide
I wouldn't be surprised if my message creates a fourth way.
Ori's advice rings true with me. It's something I need to get better at.
On the email titiel sidetrack, it should not create a 4th way. Without verifying them those all look like valid representations of the same data. MIME encoded word syntax only has two possible encodings, quoted printable and base 64. The one with the Q after UTF-8 should be the quoted printable version. The one with the B after UTF-8 has been encoded as base64 instead.
Of course it's possible somebody's client or MTA has munged them but the point of encoded word is that even if you only speak RFC2822 and not RFC2047(?) you can still transmit them correctly.
Luke Welling
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Mark A. Hershberger mah@everybody.orgwrote:
On 03/20/2013 10:43 AM, Jasper Wallace wrote:
On Tue, 19 Mar 2013, MZMcBride wrote:
P.S. mailman: there's a non-ASCII character in the subject line. Attack!
Why? It's correctly encoded:
Because the way the subject line is displayed 3 different ways on the archive page:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-March/thread.html#67742
There we have:
Gerrit =?utf-8?Q?Wars=E2=84=A2=3A_?=a strategy-guide Gerrit =?UTF-8?B?V2Fyc+KEog==?=: a strategy-guide Gerrit Wars™: a strategy-guide
I wouldn't be surprised if my message creates a fourth way.
[We are] immortal ... because [we have] a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. -- William Faulker, Nobel Prize acceptance speech
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 03/21/2013 11:45 AM, Luke Welling WMF wrote:
On the email title sidetrack, it should not create a 4th way.
The pedant in me says there are at least two more ways -- different capitalization for "UTF-8". But your subject line shows another way.
My client displays all of the subjects the same.
Jasper, Mine: =?utf-8?q?Gerrit_Wars=E2=84=A2=3A_a_strategy-guide?= Yours: =?windows-1252?q?Gerrit_Wars=99=3A_a_strategy-guide?= MZ's: Gerrit =?UTF-8?B?V2Fyc+KEog==?=: a strategy-guide Ori: Gerrit =?utf-8?Q?Wars=E2=84=A2=3A_?=a strategy-guide
Maybe mailman doesn't understand when the encoding doesn't start at the first character since those are the ones that don't display correctly.
Heh, if clients randomly change character sets than I guess there are a very large number of possible values.
Given that RFC2047 came out in 1996 it's reasonable that people use non-ascii characters in titles given that the means to do it in a compatible way has been around for 17 years.
Luke
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 12:04 PM, Mark A. Hershberger mah@everybody.orgwrote:
On 03/21/2013 11:45 AM, Luke Welling WMF wrote:
On the email title sidetrack, it should not create a 4th way.
The pedant in me says there are at least two more ways -- different capitalization for "UTF-8". But your subject line shows another way.
My client displays all of the subjects the same.
Jasper, Mine: =?utf-8?q?Gerrit_Wars=E2=84=A2=3A_a_strategy-guide?= Yours: =?windows-1252?q?Gerrit_Wars=99=3A_a_strategy-guide?= MZ's: Gerrit =?UTF-8?B?V2Fyc+KEog==?=: a strategy-guide Ori: Gerrit =?utf-8?Q?Wars=E2=84=A2=3A_?=a strategy-guide
Maybe mailman doesn't understand when the encoding doesn't start at the first character since those are the ones that don't display correctly.
[We are] immortal ... because [we have] a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. -- William Faulker, Nobel Prize acceptance speech
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 10:43 AM, Jasper Wallace jasper@pointless.netwrote:
On Tue, 19 Mar 2013, MZMcBride wrote:
P.S. mailman: there's a non-ASCII character in the subject line. Attack!
Why? It's correctly encoded:
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Gerrit =?UTF-8?B?V2Fyc+KEog==?=: a strategy-guide
Actually, that one is not. There must be a space between the "?=" and the colon.
The same goes for Ori's "[Wikitech-l] Gerrit =?utf-8?Q?Wars=E2=84=A2=3A_?=a strategy-guide", there must be a space between the "?=" and the "a".
RFC 2047, section 5.
Ori, now you can add another point to the concise strategy-guide:
Deeper posts tend to generate superficial and tangential replies. The answer is Silence.
PS: thank you for the post, I enjoyed it.
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