Mailing List Archive

On mer, 2002-05-08 at 12:41, Chuck Smith wrote:
> Improving performance on English server: when the
> server reaches a certain threshhold of activity could
> we replace the text of all the Special pages with:
>
> "This page is currently inaccessible because of the
> immensive amount of traffic we're getting. Wikipedia
> is just too popular."

As others have said, I suspect that's not such a great idea -- it would
make editing the 'pedia virtually impossible instead of the realm of the
very very patient. :)

> Also, has the Lastaj Sxangxoj page on the Esperanto
> Wikipedia page been defaulted to 3 days yet?

Apparently not. I've attached a diff to the config file that does that,
and since while I was in there I noticed another setting, now tells it
to NOT delete old page versions after 14 days. Grrrggghg!!!!! I think
that's still going on on most of the non-English wikis -- that is a VERY
BAD THING that should be changed as soon as possible!


While we're mentioning applying patches etc; I've added a couple little
bug fixes to wikiTextEn.php (a couple missing/wrong entries in the intl
wiki language name table), special_recentchangeslayout.php (watchlist
entries are now boldened, but a bug was preventing those with
spaces/underscores in the names from working), and special_watchlist.php
(a little hack to cut down on the pain to the database -- every entry is
checked with a separate database query, and the new accept-any-namespace
version made it so slow as to time out on my long watchlist). Jimbo or
Jason, if you could update those three files from CVS, that'd be great.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

--- "Brion L. VIBBER" <brion@pobox.com> escribió: >
On mer, 2002-05-08 at 12:41, Chuck Smith wrote:
> > Improving performance on English server: when the
> > server reaches a certain threshhold of activity
> could
> > we replace the text of all the Special pages with:
> >
> > "This page is currently inaccessible because of
> the
> > immensive amount of traffic we're getting.
> Wikipedia
> > is just too popular."
>
> As others have said, I suspect that's not such a
> great idea -- it would
> make editing the 'pedia virtually impossible instead
> of the realm of the
> very very patient. :)

You saw that I said _Special_ pages, right?

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esperanta reta! http://eo.wikipedia.com/

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On mer, 2002-05-08 at 18:50, Chuck Smith wrote:
> --- "Brion L. VIBBER" <brion@pobox.com> escribió: >
> On mer, 2002-05-08 at 12:41, Chuck Smith wrote:
> > > Improving performance on English server: when the
> > > server reaches a certain threshhold of activity could
> > > we replace the text of all the Special pages with:
> > > "This page is currently inaccessible because of the
> > > immensive amount of traffic we're getting. Wikipedia
> > > is just too popular."
> >
> > As others have said, I suspect that's not such a great idea -- it would
> > make editing the 'pedia virtually impossible instead of the realm of the
> > very very patient. :)
>
> You saw that I said _Special_ pages, right?

Yes, of which special:RecentChanges is one. I don't know about you, but
my Wikipedia regimen centers around the recent changes list: without it,
there's no good way to see what other people are adding to the wiki that
may need to be edited/corrected/expanded/commented on.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

--- "Brion L. VIBBER" <brion@pobox.com> escribió: >
On mer, 2002-05-08 at 18:50, Chuck Smith wrote:
> > --- "Brion L. VIBBER" <brion@pobox.com>
> escribió: >
> > On mer, 2002-05-08 at 12:41, Chuck Smith wrote:
> > > > Improving performance on English server: when
> the
> > > > server reaches a certain threshhold of
> activity could
> > > > we replace the text of all the Special pages
> with:
> > > > "This page is currently inaccessible because
> of the
> > > > immensive amount of traffic we're getting.
> Wikipedia
> > > > is just too popular."
> > >
> > > As others have said, I suspect that's not such a
> great idea -- it would
> > > make editing the 'pedia virtually impossible
> instead of the realm of the
> > > very very patient. :)
> >
> > You saw that I said _Special_ pages, right?
>
> Yes, of which special:RecentChanges is one. I don't
> know about you, but
> my Wikipedia regimen centers around the recent
> changes list: without it,
> there's no good way to see what other people are
> adding to the wiki that
> may need to be edited/corrected/expanded/commented
> on.

Ah, I meant all the Special pages *but* Recent
Changes. Read what I mean, not what I write! :) Now
how does the idea sound...?

Chuck

=====
Come to my homepage! Venu al mia hejmpagxo!
http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.org/
====
Venu al la senpaga, libera enciklopedio
esperanta reta! http://eo.wikipedia.com/

_________________________________________________________
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Chuck Smith wrote:
> Ah, I meant all the Special pages *but* Recent
> Changes. Read what I mean, not what I write! :) Now
> how does the idea sound...?

Why are we discussing ideas on wikitech-l, when we should discuss
technology? Guessing belongs in metaphysics, engineering should be
about knowing. This is not Big Brother where we vote on what to
exclude. We should go out and find numbers from which we can make
informed decisions on how to improve the performance, not sacrifice
functionality. I'm suggesting ways to find such numbers, but I don't
have access to update the source code.


--
Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik
Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden
tel +46-70-7891609
http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

> Why are we discussing ideas on wikitech-l, when we
> should discuss
> technology? Guessing belongs in metaphysics,
> engineering should be
> about knowing. This is not Big Brother where we
> vote on what to
> exclude. We should go out and find numbers from
> which we can make
> informed decisions on how to improve the
> performance, not sacrifice
> functionality. I'm suggesting ways to find such
> numbers, but I don't
> have access to update the source code.

As far as I know it, in the world of IT sometimes you
have to use work-arounds instead of finding the
problem *temporarily* to make sure systems don't fall
below a reasonable performance level. It's not the
best idea, and it's not pretty, but it keeps the
systems running. This new functionality is great, but
if it's hurting the project (I think we're probably
losing about 100-200 new articles/day), then it needs
to be disabled until a fix can be found so we can at
least stay as productive as before the upgrade.

Should I be posting to Wikipedia-L instead?

My thoughts,
Chuck

=====
Come to my homepage! Venu al mia hejmpagxo!
http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.org/
====
Venu al la senpaga, libera enciklopedio
esperanta reta! http://eo.wikipedia.com/

_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Información de Estados Unidos y América Latina, en Yahoo! Noticias.
Visítanos en http://noticias.espanol.yahoo.com

> I'm suggesting ways to find such numbers, but I don't
> have access to update the source code.

I agree that it would be useful to get numbers. Why don't you prepare
and test your patch and post it here (or get commit access from
Magnus).

I think it would be best to simply report the times in an HTML comment
attached to every served file, as you suggested earlier. This way we
can all perform our own tests from home and no artificial bottleneck
slowdowns are introduced (which could occur if the time data were logged in
a central file).

Axel

I like Axel's idea. It is a slight pain to parse the comments to gather
statistics, but the benefits of not having a central bottleneck are enormous.

Axel Boldt wrote:

> > I'm suggesting ways to find such numbers, but I don't
> > have access to update the source code.
>
> I agree that it would be useful to get numbers. Why don't you prepare
> and test your patch and post it here (or get commit access from
> Magnus).
>
> I think it would be best to simply report the times in an HTML comment
> attached to every served file, as you suggested earlier. This way we
> can all perform our own tests from home and no artificial bottleneck
> slowdowns are introduced (which could occur if the time data were logged in
> a central file).
>
> Axel
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