A heads up about a new extension (Gather [1]) being deployed to the cluster on Thursday [2]. We are aiming to deploy to testwiki on Thursday 26th March and English Wikipedia on Monday 30th March.
We're not expecting this to cause any problems since traffic is limited to the mobile beta mode of the site which accounts for 1/70th of mobile traffic and approximately only 500 of those users are logged in (and this feature is primarily for logged in users).
The extension makes use of the API, firing an API query request when
1) the special page is loaded (available to all users including anons). The special page is only linked to within the beta site (in the main menu) for logged in users so all traffic. However traffic is expected from social networks and links from wiki pages.
2) when the watchstar is clicked by a logged BETA user
I'm not expecting any problems with this deployment, but in worse case scenario since this is an experimental feature and we can disable the extension in the unlikely event that we hit any issues.
Please let me know if you have any further questions and please complain to me if notice any issues.
We've announced this on en:vp [3]. For anything non-ops related feel free to engage in the conversation there.
Thanks!
Jon R, mobile web team