Can anyone shed some light on why the en.wp recent changes RSS feed is only updating once every 20 minutes or longer? It used to be as often as every 2 or 3 minutes.
I use Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool to keep an eye on the recent change when I feel like vandal patrolling. It relies on the RSS recent changes feed (since it includes diffs as part of the feed), but it's practically useless if it only gets two or three updates an hour. Just now, the feed updated at 02:25 (UTC) and didn't update again until 02:49.
Yes, I checked my browser cache, and forced a reload of the feed, and even checked with a different browser -- it really isn't updating.
Thanks for any input y'all might have, --Darkwind
RLS wrote:
Can anyone shed some light on why the en.wp recent changes RSS feed is only updating once every 20 minutes or longer? It used to be as often as every 2 or 3 minutes.
I use Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool to keep an eye on the recent change when I feel like vandal patrolling. It relies on the RSS recent changes feed (since it includes diffs as part of the feed), but it's practically useless if it only gets two or three updates an hour.
Hmmm... I have some code in Wikiticker that would make it relatively easy for me to build a basic RSS feed for you:
http://dev.scissor.com/wikiticker/
But getting the diffs for every change would be enough hits on the server that I always assumed it was, well, gauche. So I never tried.
Looking at the feed, though, for me it was updating every 5-20 seconds.[1] So perhaps it was a transient problem?
William
[1] I checked visually, and then got some numbers by doing the following.
% while 1 while? echo -n `date`: " " while? wget --quiet -O - 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss' | md5sum while? sleep 1 while? end Sat Oct 20 20:16:17 PDT 2007: 06dd8a9155b846fd979d9ab175e72626 - Sat Oct 20 20:16:18 PDT 2007: 1995f1b682f6ae2e662445cf1e228aae - Sat Oct 20 20:16:20 PDT 2007: e87a1c94294fbfd29d83fb74a8ebfc4e - Sat Oct 20 20:16:22 PDT 2007: 1995f1b682f6ae2e662445cf1e228aae - Sat Oct 20 20:16:23 PDT 2007: 1995f1b682f6ae2e662445cf1e228aae - Sat Oct 20 20:16:27 PDT 2007: 1995f1b682f6ae2e662445cf1e228aae - Sat Oct 20 20:16:29 PDT 2007: 1995f1b682f6ae2e662445cf1e228aae - Sat Oct 20 20:16:31 PDT 2007: 1995f1b682f6ae2e662445cf1e228aae - Sat Oct 20 20:16:33 PDT 2007: 1995f1b682f6ae2e662445cf1e228aae - Sat Oct 20 20:16:35 PDT 2007: 1995f1b682f6ae2e662445cf1e228aae - Sat Oct 20 20:16:36 PDT 2007: 1995f1b682f6ae2e662445cf1e228aae - Sat Oct 20 20:16:38 PDT 2007: 90d1741faeafab6aed5e0a301d725c6d - Sat Oct 20 20:16:47 PDT 2007: 90d1741faeafab6aed5e0a301d725c6d - Sat Oct 20 20:16:50 PDT 2007: 264f10662a9eb06b1dee1f0f44193c4c - Sat Oct 20 20:16:51 PDT 2007: 264f10662a9eb06b1dee1f0f44193c4c - Sat Oct 20 20:16:55 PDT 2007: 264f10662a9eb06b1dee1f0f44193c4c - Sat Oct 20 20:16:57 PDT 2007: 264f10662a9eb06b1dee1f0f44193c4c - Sat Oct 20 20:16:58 PDT 2007: 264f10662a9eb06b1dee1f0f44193c4c - Sat Oct 20 20:17:04 PDT 2007: 264f10662a9eb06b1dee1f0f44193c4c - Sat Oct 20 20:17:05 PDT 2007: 264f10662a9eb06b1dee1f0f44193c4c - Sat Oct 20 20:17:07 PDT 2007: 264f10662a9eb06b1dee1f0f44193c4c - Sat Oct 20 20:17:09 PDT 2007: d71cffdb3ec0f364f9514b14cbf05ce5 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:11 PDT 2007: d71cffdb3ec0f364f9514b14cbf05ce5 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:13 PDT 2007: d71cffdb3ec0f364f9514b14cbf05ce5 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:14 PDT 2007: d71cffdb3ec0f364f9514b14cbf05ce5 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:16 PDT 2007: d71cffdb3ec0f364f9514b14cbf05ce5 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:18 PDT 2007: d71cffdb3ec0f364f9514b14cbf05ce5 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:20 PDT 2007: d71cffdb3ec0f364f9514b14cbf05ce5 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:23 PDT 2007: d71cffdb3ec0f364f9514b14cbf05ce5 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:32 PDT 2007: 132ffcd2dd8d4e261778d3f536e5af86 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:34 PDT 2007: 132ffcd2dd8d4e261778d3f536e5af86 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:35 PDT 2007: 132ffcd2dd8d4e261778d3f536e5af86 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:37 PDT 2007: 132ffcd2dd8d4e261778d3f536e5af86 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:39 PDT 2007: 8885d1f2f0c92cf24a6b777480776e80 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:42 PDT 2007: d45b080c2388bc3d8c10b7d5f6ef7e81 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:43 PDT 2007: 902f59bec96fa4577b2647de08e385d7 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:47 PDT 2007: 8885d1f2f0c92cf24a6b777480776e80 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:49 PDT 2007: 8885d1f2f0c92cf24a6b777480776e80 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:51 PDT 2007: 902f59bec96fa4577b2647de08e385d7 - Sat Oct 20 20:17:58 PDT 2007: 09da0b1b16a2dae2a2c1c4293ba43671 - Sat Oct 20 20:18:00 PDT 2007: 09da0b1b16a2dae2a2c1c4293ba43671 - Sat Oct 20 20:18:03 PDT 2007: 09da0b1b16a2dae2a2c1c4293ba43671 - Sat Oct 20 20:18:04 PDT 2007: 09da0b1b16a2dae2a2c1c4293ba43671 - Sat Oct 20 20:18:06 PDT 2007: 09da0b1b16a2dae2a2c1c4293ba43671 - Sat Oct 20 20:18:08 PDT 2007: 09da0b1b16a2dae2a2c1c4293ba43671 - Sat Oct 20 20:18:10 PDT 2007: 09da0b1b16a2dae2a2c1c4293ba43671 - Sat Oct 20 20:18:12 PDT 2007: 09da0b1b16a2dae2a2c1c4293ba43671 - Sat Oct 20 20:18:39 PDT 2007: b46201cc7f0411b30b40b843753aa08c - Sat Oct 20 20:18:40 PDT 2007: b46201cc7f0411b30b40b843753aa08c - Sat Oct 20 20:18:41 PDT 2007: b46201cc7f0411b30b40b843753aa08c -
On 10/20/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Hmmm... I have some code in Wikiticker that would make it relatively easy for me to build a basic RSS feed for you:
http://dev.scissor.com/wikiticker/
But getting the diffs for every change would be enough hits on the server that I always assumed it was, well, gauche. So I never tried.
Looking at the feed, though, for me it was updating every 5-20 seconds.[1] So perhaps it was a transient problem?
That's why Lupin's tool uses the feed built-in to the MediaWiki software, it includes the diffs already, causing no further hits against the servers. If the tool were to use more reliable notification of *every* change, it could just connect to IRC and get those changes, but they don't include diffs (so the tool would have to ping the server to get the diff for EVERY change -- clearly an unacceptable performance drain).
I've had AVT running since about 02:00, and at the time you checked thee feed was indeed updating regularly. It does seem to be a transient issue -- it only updated 3 times between 02:00 and 03:00, but it's been updating on average about every 3 minutes since then, which is acceptable (in my opinion).
--Darkwind
On 10/20/07, RLS evendell@gmail.com wrote:
I've had AVT running since about 02:00, and at the time you checked thee feed was indeed updating regularly. It does seem to be a transient issue -- it only updated 3 times between 02:00 and 03:00, but it's been updating on average about every 3 minutes since then, which is acceptable (in my opinion).
And just now, it didn't update at all between 03:47 and 04:01, but then updated again at 04:04. It's beyond my ken.
--Darkwind
On 10/20/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
RLS wrote:
Can anyone shed some light on why the en.wp recent changes RSS feed is only updating once every 20 minutes or longer? It used to be as often as every 2 or 3 minutes.
I use Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool to keep an eye on the recent change when I feel like vandal patrolling. It relies on the RSS recent changes feed (since it includes diffs as part of the feed), but it's practically useless if it only gets two or three updates an hour.
Hmmm... I have some code in Wikiticker that would make it relatively easy for me to build a basic RSS feed for you:
http://dev.scissor.com/wikiticker/
But getting the diffs for every change would be enough hits on the server that I always assumed it was, well, gauche. So I never tried.
Looking at the feed, though, for me it was updating every 5-20 seconds.[1] So perhaps it was a transient problem?
Heh, I found the problem. It's caused by the server-side caching of the RSS feed for Special:Recentchanges. If you have Lupin's Anti-Vandal Tool running in one window, and it gets "stuck", visiting http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss and adding &action=purge will immediately cause the tool to update correctly on its next "pull".
Any possibility of disabling caching on the RSS feed? Is it even possible to disable server-side caching for one particular page or page format?
I'd rather not lose the benefit of server-side caching in general by disabling it in my preferences (not to mention that everyone who uses Lupin's AVT would have to do the same to guarantee that AVT would work correctly for them), and I can't edit the script to add the &action=purge as it's in someone else's userspace.
--en:Darkwind (cc: wikitech-l)