On 6/3/15, Steinsplitter Wiki steinsplitter-wiki@live.com wrote:
Most operator are volunteers and don't have time to change the code every month because there is a change in the api. Because of this devs should keep the api backward-compatible. Also wondering why wee need this "new" api. The old one was imho perfectly.
Was the new api coded by WMF or by volunteers?
I feel that bot operators should actively pay attention to the technical aspects of the community and the mailing lists.
Sorry, i disagree. Bot operators are volunteers and not payed staffers. Most of them having a job and real live.
-- Steinsplitter
My understanding is that most of the people who were using the original continuation, were using it wrong, causing subtle bugs in their script. Thus the existing implementation was wasting considerable amount of volunteer bot developer time. In the long run this change will hopefully reduce the total amount of time spent by volunteer bot makers chasing weird bugs, at the expense of some short term pain.
Its always a challenge to balance backwards compatibility with fixing things that are causing problems. I think the API team is keenly aware of the frustrations that changes to the api cause, and try to make sure that intentional breakage only happens when the benefits truly outweigh the cons.
-- Bawolff