https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34778

Tim Starling <[email protected]> changed:

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--- Comment #33 from Tim Starling <[email protected]> ---
I recommend rejecting this.

Asking users to install a Firefox extension to make navigation easier is not
how I imagine a secure and user-friendly web would work. 

Perhaps if this were supported by unmodified browsers, it would be more
attractive for us. The browsers have a long history of introducing features in
advance of their use on the web, so I don't think it's a "chicken-and-egg"
problem.

TimeGate responses, as specified by the Internet-Draft, appear to be
effectively uncacheable with currently used HTTP proxy software. We have no way
to remove resources from a cache with a finer granularity than a URI. So when
the page is changed, we would have the choice of either:

* Purging the TimeGate URI when the page is changed, in which case all versions
of that resource would be simultaneously purged, reducing the hit rate for
rarely-accessed old revisions, or 
* Not purging it, in which case responses for recent Accept-Datetime values
would become stale. Also, there would be no way to purge revisions which are
removed from the database by RevisionDelete.

Additionally, the definition of the Vary header in the Internet-Draft appears
to conflict with the definition in HTTP (RFC 2616), as implemented by
MediaWiki, PHP, Squid, etc. It's unclear what the "negotiate" value is for or
how it will interact with the Vary header values that MediaWiki must send to
HTTP proxy servers.

The Internet-Draft seems to unnecessarily overspecify server and client
behaviour. For example, depending on the server software, it may be difficult
to implement the requirement that TimeGates respond to request methods other
than GET and POST with an HTTP 405 code.

(In reply to comment #29)
> That said it would be kind of a cool thing, provided the effort was minimal.

I don't think the effort would be minimal. The code quality is poor, and would
suffer from a high rate of bit rot due to poor integration with the MediaWiki
core. For example, mmAcceptDateTime() assumes $_GET['oldid'] will have a
certain interpretation by the MediaWiki core, and sends header values
corresponding to this interpretation, regardless of what MediaWiki decides to
actually do with that parameter. The assumption is already incorrect and will
become more incorrect over time.

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