[development] multisite shared table upgrade enhancements (was what would be more useful)

[John Handelaar]

Daniel Convissor wrote:
> Just because a
> database's default character set is UTF-8 doesn't mean the necessary 
> tables have that default and that the columns in said tables are that 
> character set.  It seems the process should run no matter what.
> 
> Thoughts?

This is something that's been driving me nuts for a week,
so I'll pitch in.

Altering the table and columns does not reliably prevent
foreign characters from being irretrievably mangled.

If we change tables like this, we also need to change their
contents.


jh