Hi, See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Etiquette. I think that doesn't matter much. What does matter is how many API requests you make. It's better if you use smaller amount of requests, by combining them into one query. For example, to get the text of two pages in one query, you would use URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvpro… I think you should always use compression if the server supports it. And MediaWiki API does. That depends on why are you retrying. If it's because of maxlag, the recommendation is at least 5 seconds. But I think exponential backoff is even better. The API shouldn't redirect you, as far as I know. They probably don't matter much. But as the Etiquette page notes, you probably shouldn't be making request in parallel. Petr Onderka [[en:User:Svick]]