On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 7:56 AM, S Page spage@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Brian Gerstle bgerstle@wikimedia.org wrote:
I guess it comes down to is this: if we're going to continue supporting old behavior, they should be accessible via the same old requests. *This removes the need for existing clients to be updated in the first place*. If we eventually want to delete the old code keeping the old behavior separated from the new will make it clear & explicit what's being dropped and what to use instead. ...
Lastly, changing the default behavior to make things sane for new developers is, IMO, a bad trade-off
That seems the crux of it. Because the MediaWiki API isn't versioned (and there are good reasons for it), the recommended "best practices" form of an API request evolves, something like
api.php?continue=& formatversion=2 &utf8= &*your_actual_params*
Why doesnt formatversion=2 assume continue= and utf8= ?
-- John Vandenberg