On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 08:41:38PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
At one point, LiveJournal introduced a system whereby you can choose to use either the latest stable code (the default for everyone), or the beta-test code (users had to explicitly set this). They did this by setting a cookie, and the cookie would cause their internal proxies to choose the right server with the right version of the code. Do you think something like that could be implemented on Wikipedia? This has two huge benefits:
- It would work for all Wikimedia sites, not just Wikipedia, much less just the English Wikipedia; and
- People wouldn't get so upset anymore about seeing problems because they have explicitly opted in for beta-test, and (ideally) would be aware that the general public isn't seeing the problem, while at the same time being encouraged to report the problem so that it can be fixed before the general public gets to see it.
Does this make sense to you? Please ask if anything about the above is unclear.
Sounds perfectly sensible to me... until something creeps into the beta that trashes the databases. But as you note, the code we'd be running on the beta is the code we now just push to production, so the danger level can't be any higher.
Except that conscious beta-testers may hammer harder and therefore be more likely to break stuff, I guess...
Cheers, -- jra