kate wrote:
Phil Boswell:
Was this the set of changes which removed the "offset" parameter from [[Special:Whatlinkshere]]?
The new "from" parameter, which seems to work on datestamps, is intriguing but hardly conducive to "ignore the first N entries".
Can we have the "offset" parameter back, please?
i think it's unlikely any "offset" parameters will be added in the future (at least, i hope not).
the reason offset was removed from several pages (Contributions, Whatlinkshere) is that it requires the database to search though every entry to find the offset you want. a request for starting at a particular record is much faster because it can be found quickly from the index.
k.
Right, we've known for a while about the poor performance of offset clauses. The problem was fixed in several places already. I was doing some work on Special:Whatlinkshere while I was working on templatelinks, and took the opportunity to fix it there as well. Like Kate says, the offset parameters are gone for good.
-- Tim Starling