We are now well into the fourth day since I originally expressed my
concern about the performance issues on en.wikipedia. While the
situation may have improved a bit, and some of the ugliest error
messages seem to be reduced, the situation is still far from being
resolved.
Attempting to do any useful work on Wikipedia has become futile.
Article view time has become sporadic, and frequently very bad to
intolerable. For any site other than Wikipedia, I would never know that
the site was working at all, since I would fairly quickly write it off
as "down".
I am committed to Wikipedia and its objectives. I will tolerate these
performance delays. But I believe that there must be many who will not
tolerate them, and will write-off Wikipedia. Is this what we want?
While it appears that the developers are very busy attempting to solve
the technical issues, there seems to be little actual progress. How
long will we allow this situation to continue without attempting
solutions of a different sort? A good operational definition of
insanity is "continuing the same actions expecting different results."
If our developers lack time, resources, or skill needed to resolve the
issues, then let us immediately hire a temporary consultant to focus on
this problem and resolve it.
We owe our developers great thanks, appreciation, and respect. But a
big part of that lies in recognizing when we are expecting them to
accomplish what is impossible. Given their restrictions on time,
resources, and skill, are we asking them to do the impossible?
With respect, concern, and frustration
Rich Holton
(en.Wikipedia:User:Rholton)
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