https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Edit_throttling is well worth reading, especially the warning that "Many users sharing the same IP address could kick in throttling". Which seems a pretty clear indication to me that this is working at the IP level and looking at all edits by newbies and unregistered editors, rather than treating each member of the workshop separately. Once you get to each trainee you find that previewing and trying to save again will usually solve the problem, but leave you unable to replicate the bug.
So I think we have found our problem! Now lets see how many months it takes to fix it.
One obvious workaround is to use multiple IPs in the same workshop. I think the cost of Satellite broadband is only a few hundred quid a year per subscription. I've already proposed a subscription for the UK as it would enable people to run editing sessions at big public events such as county shows, but it would also help counter this bug.
WSC
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Message: 1 Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 10:30:25 +0200 From: "Federico Leva (Nemo)" nemowiki@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Throttling (was: Re: Please can someone put 50p in the meter) Message-ID: 507BC9A1.7040305@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
WereSpielChequers, 15/10/2012 09:56:
60 edits a minute sounds high, and probably faster than most of these sessions run at, but not if it is as I suspect, calculated every few seconds.
It's not, as far as I can see. This is how it works: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgRateLimits (someone please expand it otherwise). And these are all the existing limits: < https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=operations/mediawiki-config.git;a=bl...
Does Andrew's experience not fit with this?
So if the tutor says "all save now" and ten people hit enter simultaneously the attempted editing rate is briefly rather more than 1
per
second - hence the throttle kicks in and the tutorial collapses in chaos with several students getting throttling errors at the same time. It
would
be nice to think that the WiFi we used was going through the same IP as
the
rest of the British library and that we merely lifted the normal editing rate above 60 edits a minute, but I suspect that the rate is calculated rather more frequently than every minute.
Presumably established users of some sort are whitelisted through this?
If
so it could explain a longstanding Cat a Lot problem. I frequently use
Cat
a lot to categorise images on Commons and my personal editing rate there has gone far above 60 edits a minute, however I'm pretty sure I'd be on
any
commons whitelist. But other editors have complained that Cat a Lot
doesn't
work for them and mysteriously hangs or fails, Is it possible that this throttling feature could be the cause of that problem as well?
noratelimit circumvents all such limits, but on Commons only the standard groups plus account creators have it, and you're just autopatrolled. The only group having serious throttling problems in the past were rollbackers on en.wiki; it shouldn't be too hard for Commons to add noratelimit via some group, if that's a problem.
If so perhaps it would be a good idea to analyse some of the recent incidents where this feature has kicked in, see how often it disrupts goodfaith editing and how often it disrupts badfaith editing that
wouldn't
have triggered the edit filter. Maybe this was once a net benefit, but
with
the edit filter dealing with most badfaith editing, and increasing
amounts
of editing workshops and tools like Catalot, perhaps this feature has transitioned from net positive to net negative? Alternatively could we
have
a process where we can whitelist the IP Addresses of places where we are running training sessions, and put note on
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.jsexplaini...
how to spot if your editing has been throttled and how to get yourself Whitelisted
Rate limits have never been a problem with some minimal preparation: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Mass_account_creation (in 6-7 years of WMIT workshops, I've never heard of big problems with this).
Nemo
Message: 3 Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 10:07:30 +0100 From: Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Throttling (was: Re: Please can someone put 50p in the meter) Message-ID: <CAE4f== fVJisFTYb20D8Vo6qsZfH1k-3saV+PHxOjMY0RmtXDWg@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On 15 October 2012 09:30, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
WereSpielChequers, 15/10/2012 09:56:
60 edits a minute sounds high, and probably faster than most of these sessions run at, but not if it is as I suspect, calculated every few seconds.
It's not, as far as I can see. This is how it works: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgRateLimits (someone please
expand
it otherwise). And these are all the existing limits: <
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=operations/mediawiki-config.git;a=bl...
Does Andrew's experience not fit with this?
These limits confuse me a bit, I have to admit. The key one seems to be:
'edit' => array( 'ip' => array( 8, 60 ), 'newbie' => array( 8, 60 ),
but per the manual, "ip" only applies to "each anon and recent account", and "newbie" applies to "each recent account" - surely "each" means the rate-limiting should be applied to the accounts individually, rather than being triggered by them all coming from the same location?
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Edit_throttling suggests it can also be configured as something on the enwiki edit filters, but I've had a look at those and couldn't immediately see one that seems to do this.
Rate limits have never been a problem with some minimal preparation: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Mass_account_creation (in 6-7
years of
WMIT workshops, I've never heard of big problems with this).
I want to emphasise again that I've pretty much never had problems with account creation rate limiting - everyone attending a workshop is asked to create an account as part of a little bit of homework three days earlier - it's only ever been edit throttling that's an issue.
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 103, Issue 28
On 15/10/12 16:15, WereSpielChequers wrote:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Edit_throttling is well worth reading, especially the warning that "Many users sharing the same IP address could kick in throttling". Which seems a pretty clear indication to me that this is working at the IP level and looking at all edits by newbies and unregistered editors, rather than treating each member of the workshop separately. Once you get to each trainee you find that previewing and trying to save again will usually solve the problem, but leave you unable to replicate the bug.
So I think we have found our problem! Now lets see how many months it takes to fix it.
That's right. The ip limit applies to both anon and newbie users. The newbie limit applies by action and user, and the ip limit by action and ip. So if you have many newbies going out through the same ip, they all aggregate in the same count.
Presumably established users of some sort are whitelisted through this? (...) But other editors have complained that Cat a Lot doesn't work for them and mysteriously hangs or fails,
If you are autoconfirmed, newbie and ip limits don't apply to you.
One obvious workaround is to use multiple IPs in the same workshop. I think the cost of Satellite broadband is only a few hundred quid a year per subscription. I've already proposed a subscription for the UK as it would enable people to run editing sessions at big public events such as county shows, but it would also help counter this bug.
WSC
When we whitelist an ip for a workshop, we should also be increasing the throttling limit for that ip.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org