On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Geoffrey Thomas wrote:
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 14:47:20 -0700 (PDT) From: Geoffrey Thomas geoffreyerffoeg@yahoo.com Subject: [Wikitech-l] Caching
A suggestion for caching: the home page, [[Main Page]], never should include links to nonexistent pages. Could that be cached (in standard stylesheet), e.g., as /index.html? I would think that page is accessed very frequently and that caching it would save some database work for other pages.
Actually, it seems to happen rather often that someone or something formerly rather obscure suddenly hits the headlines, or dies, and suddenly appears on the [[Main Page]]. Of course, usually at least a stub is made very soon after, but I don't think it qualifies as a "never". And it's good to be able to see whether or not the article does exist yet when you see the Main Page, of course. For instance, right now, the first two "Recent deaths" on the English Wikipedia, Bernard Katz & Nina Simone, both didn't have any page at all until they died.