Okay. Since watchlist on en: is disabled I have to think.
I suspect the problem is that when User checks her watchlist, mediawiki
gets the list, and
searched through all the articles to see the recent changes. Right?
If not, discard my email.
If not....
I suspect there are 150000+ articles to check against 10-500 entries on
the watchlist.
I do not know how many watchlist entries are there (brion?), but I suspect
at least a
magnitude less. Let's say 10000 entries.
What if the entries have:
watchlist db:
the user id
watched article #
article last changed (date, submitter, comment)
And every time an article gets updated, it updates all the _watchlist_
entries
for itself.
Checking the watchlist from then on is one simple lookup and print.
Nothing.
Updating is a _simple_ update (UPDATE watchtable SET changed=NOW() WHERE
artnum=666; etc.)
on article change.
Well?