[Toolserver-l] Stable server, a few questions

[Simetrical]

On 11/22/07, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On
> the other hand, I am convinced that "check usage" is essential for the
> Wikimedia projects on a wide scale.

As long as anything has to share resources with untrusted and
unreviewed programs, it will probably not be possible for it to work
as well as the trusted and reviewed programs working off the main
clusters' resources, because the untrusted and unreviewed programs
will tend to be relatively numerous and inefficient.  Look at the load
on the toolserver, and the replication lag on its database.  Of course
you could budget more funds for more servers, but my suspicion is that
people would start using them more and lagging them more regardless.
You're certainly never going to have as much funding as the main
servers.

On the flip side of that, you can't just stick something like check
usage up on the main servers without review by the people who are
collectively available 24/7 to maintain those servers and the software
running on them.  Toolserver stuff is not centrally reviewed for
security or performance issues, and the core devs/sysadmins are
probably not familiar with how it works.  It also tends to be somewhat
tacked-on, and would be better if integrated properly into MediaWiki.

So I think the distinction between "carefully-maintained,
high-availability software" and "toolserver stuff" will remain to some
extent, and the goal needs to be to move the most valuable stuff to
extensions or even core and run it on the main servers.  But those are
just my thoughts.