Ariel T. Glenn wrote:
The reason these dumps are not rewritten more efficiently is that this job was handed to me (at my request) and I have not been able to get to it, even though it is the first thing on my list for development work. [...] The in-office needs that I am also responsible for take virtually all of my time. Perhaps they shouldn't, but that is how it has worked out.
Hi Ariel, I hope you find the time and peace you need for this development. It might be a bit worrying if this was handed to you (by Brion? when?) without also handing you the necessary resources. But the internal organization there is not my task.
However, quite independent of your development work, the current system for dumps seems to have stopped on February 12. That's the impression I get from looking at http://download.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html
Despite all its shortcomings (3-4 weeks between dumps, no history dumps for en.wikipedia), the current dump system is very useful. What's not useful is that it was out of service from July to October 2008 and now again appears to be broken since February 12.
Certainly, things do fail. But when they do, and I ask about this on #wikimedia-tech on February 20, a week after things stopped, I don't expect Brion to say "oops". I want him to know about it 12 hours after it happend and to have a plan. Apparently (I'm just guessing from what I hear), serv31 is broken and serv31 was not in the Nagios watchdog system. OK, will this be fixed? When?
Still today, February 23, no explanation has been posted on that dump website or on these mailing lists. That's the real surprise.
I have other issues I want to deal with: mapping extensions, new visionsary solutions, new ways to involve new people in creating free knowledge. But if basic planning, routines and resource allocation don't work inside the WMF, then we have to start with the basics. What's wrong there? How can it be helped?