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
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 10:30:25 +0200
From: "Federico Leva (Nemo)" <nemowiki(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Throttling (was: Re: Please can someone put
50p in the meter)
Message-ID: <507BC9A1.7040305(a)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=b…
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.jsexplain…
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(a)dunelm.org.uk>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Throttling (was: Re: Please can someone put
50p in the meter)
Message-ID:
<CAE4f==
fVJisFTYb20D8Vo6qsZfH1k-3saV+PHxOjMY0RmtXDWg(a)mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On 15 October 2012 09:30, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)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=b…
> 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(a)dunelm.org.uk
------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list
Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 103, Issue 28
********************************************