On 20 January 2012 08:24, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 20 January 2012 01:06, Ryan Lane
<rlane32(a)gmail.com> wrote:
No, there
isn't a difference. A blackout where everyone sees a page
with a particular message instead of the article they wanted is
exactly the same as unscheduled downtime where everyone sees a page
with a particular message instead of the article they wanted. If
search engines and caches can survive one of them, they can survive
both, since they are identical from an external perspective.
I'm sorry. but this is silly. I have a hard time believing that you
aren't simply trolling here.
How is it silly? I'm not trolling, I just think the way the blackout
was implemented looked really unprofessional and I can't see any good
reason for not having done a better job. All we wanted was for anyone
viewing any page on the site to see a particular static page rather
than what they would usually see. That isn't difficult to do, as
evidenced by the fact that it happens automatically whenever the site
breaks.
But that wasn't what was wanted, Thomas. There was a specifically voiced
desire to make *certain* pages accessible - such as the articles about SOPA
and PIPA - and they were exempted from the blackout. That presented a
different operational challenge than a total blackout would do. Given
that priority one will always be "don't break the site", I think the team
did about the best they could in the time they had, keeping in mind the
impossibility of testing alternate solutions. It was just as important to
be able to confidently bring the site back up after 24 hours as it was to
go dark for those 24 hours.
Perhaps folks with additional recommendations might want to add them at the
post-mortem page on Meta.[1]
Risker/Anne
[1]