[Wikipedia-l] Call for a vote (was: Moving the wikis)

[Brion VIBBER]

Lightning wrote:
>>It was suggested in the first place because many people (including
>>Cunctator) are begging for the abilities to:
>>
>>* Have a single username and login for the encyclopedia in all languages
>>and meta
>>
>>* View things like Recentchanges for the encyclopedia in multiple
>>languages and/or meta combined.
>>
>>These demand a single server.
> 
> umm.. not really.. you can make domain wide cookies that work accross
> subdomains

Cookie, schmookie. I'm talking about the backend; if a login is to work 
painlessly across all languages, you have to create the account in the 
database(s) for all languages, keep the password consistent, etc. So 
either these other servers are dependent on a central user account / 
recentchanges server, or they are on the same server and use a common 
database in the first place.

If the supposed benefit of having separate hostnames is that you can use 
separate servers, but we're doing things that mean the separate servers 
are dependant on a central server to function, the benefit seems rather 
weak indeed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)