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.
<snip>
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.
--
Antoine "hashar" Musso