https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72209
--- Comment #4 from Mpaa mpaa.wiki@gmail.com --- (In reply to John Mark Vandenberg from comment #3)
(In reply to Mpaa from comment #2)
It tries to fetch only the number of elements left to reach 5. When 1 is reached, it stays there for 12000 queries ..
But MW doesnt return one row, as requested..?
I meant that it will keep sending request with geulimit=1. So to get to to 12000, it will send 12000 request. It returns one row at the time, containing just query-continue data: {u'exturlusage': {u'geuoffset': 24}} {u'exturlusage': {u'geuoffset': 25}} ...
Yes, pywikibot will need to detect that it is 'getting nowhere slowly', and exponentially increase the new_limit until it finds data or end of dataset.