On Mar 4, 2004, at 09:24, Timwi wrote:
What is this all about? What is the caching problem?
Can it not be
solved by technical means?
The problem is that pages are purged from the cache when *that page* is
updated, but the Main Page on
en.wikipedia.org has been restructured in
a way that its content isn't *in* the page. The actual content is
imported from other pages, and when those pages are edited, *those
pages* are purged from the cache, but the Main Page isn't.
It's easy not to notice this if you're logged in or doing editing,
since you'll have engaged a mode that only uses your browser's own
cache and it's easy to reload, but visitors who have never logged in
and not edited in this session will see the old cached version from the
site-wide cache, which gets more and more out of date until somebody
edits the page or does something else to purge it.
Tim's been working on a fix for this which will record the inclusion as
a specially-marked link and then including pages can be purged when
included pages are edited. I'm not sure if this is ready to go yet.
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)