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"way easier" depends on what you are familiar with.

If you are familiar with "querying the entirety of wikimedia server logs" and do it all the time (the word "entirety" makes it seem like a big deal, but they clearly have tools meant for this that they use all the time)... and have never learned to use "mitmproxy/Charles etc" before....

It sounds like the "querying the entirety of the server logs" for this task probably took them tens of minutes at most. It would probably take me at least an hour or two to learn how to use "mitmproxy/Charles etc".

So "way easier"?

If you have to do this sort thing all the time, it might be useful to install and learn how to use "mitmproxy/Charles etc", why not? Certainly worth considering. But if the tools you have are working for you...

I mean, what they did seems like it worked to get them the answer and was pretty efficient, using the toolset they use all the time for dealing with wikimedia ops... Seems like some good detective work to me. I get the desire to point out other tools that would be well-suited for this kind of task, but why the need to point it out as if they did something wrong or not "way easier"? Sounds like what they did was pretty easy for them, and they didn't need to learn new tools to make it "way easier".

I enjoyed hearing about how they tracked this down, and found it useful. Pointing out how they didn't use the "right" tools just makes it less likely people will be willing to share their processes.




You added way too many assumptions to a short non-accusatory comment.




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