https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61412
Bug ID: 61412
Summary: Misleading starttimestamp documentation in Edit API
Product: MediaWiki
Version: 1.22.0
Hardware: All
OS: All
Status: NEW
Severity: normal
Priority: Unprioritized
Component: Documentation
Assignee: wikibugs-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Reporter: robinhoo...@live.ca
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
I believe that the internal documentation in ApiEditPage.php is misleading for
the starttimestamp parameter, particularly in light of the newer action=tokens
scheme.
Specifically, it states that you need to specify the time when you last
retrieved the edit token. Given that edit tokens don't change across pages
provided you're in the same session, a bot left running could conceivably have
an edit token that's hours (or a whole lot more) old. The page being edited,
however, may have just been read moments ago. From what I understand of the
EditPage.php code, I believe that providing the timestamp from when the edit
token was retrieved could lead to an incorrect page-deleted challenge if the
page were deleted and then restored at any point after retrieving the edit
token.
The text should be changed to something similar to
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php, since the API
edit is just a wrapper around EditPage.php anyway.
Now, assuming that everything I said above is correct, this then leads to the
question: why have starttimestamp at all, since it should really be the same as
basetimestamp in all cases, unless I've grossly misunderstood something. I'll
leave that assertion to be confirmed (and posted?) by those more familiar with
MediaWiki than I am.
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