Hi all,
I'm curious to know exactly what the risk is from editing highly used templates. There are several archive header templates on enwiki which could potentially be used on many, many pages, and I want to ensure that if I make a modification to one of them that it doesn't have any ill effects.
If I make one edit to a template used on many infrequently visited pages, would that cause issues?
~Mdd4696
On 6/27/06, mdd4696@gmail.com mdd4696@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I'm curious to know exactly what the risk is from editing highly used templates. There are several archive header templates on enwiki which could potentially be used on many, many pages, and I want to ensure that if I make a modification to one of them that it doesn't have any ill effects.
If I make one edit to a template used on many infrequently visited pages, would that cause issues?
Depends how many times it's used. Basically, every page where it's used has to be regenerated. A few hundred pages is ok, probably a few thousand too. Above 10,000 you'll probably want to think carefully before doing it. Above 100,000 seek expert advice :)
Steve
On 6/27/06, mdd4696@gmail.com mdd4696@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I'm curious to know exactly what the risk is from editing highly used templates. There are several archive header templates on enwiki which could potentially be used on many, many pages, and I want to ensure that if I make a modification to one of them that it doesn't have any ill effects.
If I make one edit to a template used on many infrequently visited pages, would that cause issues?
In principle, the worst possibility is a bit of extra slowness for a little while, as some pages have to be recached. If the pages are infrequently visited (as the vast majority of non-article space stuff is, comparatively--remember that there are far more readers than editors), then this slight extra slowness will be spread out over a longer period of time, becoming less noticeable. How much this extra slowness amounts to has never been calculated, to my knowledge; it could be so small as to be unnoticeable. And certainly an isolated edit is no problem: at worst, it's the load equivalent of making an edit to every page the template is included in, which wouldn't realistically increase the load on servers that handle something on the order of ten thousand page views a *second*.
If there's any reasonable purpose served by editing the template, there's no reason to hesitate. If something puts too much load on the servers, the devs will edit the software so that you can't do it or it's not a problem; see, for instance, recategorizing templates (which is handled in a job queue rather than being executed right away) or transcluding templates in sigs (they're automatically substed). Devs handle the backend, don't worry about it.
On 6/27/06, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
If there's any reasonable purpose served by editing the template, there's no reason to hesitate. If something puts too much load on the servers, the devs will edit the software so that you can't do it or it's not a problem; see, for instance, recategorizing templates (which is handled in a job queue rather than being executed right away) or transcluding templates in sigs (they're automatically substed). Devs handle the backend, don't worry about it.
Could this be written up in red writing somewhere? It seems to be very common that non-devs tell each other not to do things because "it's bad for performance" etc.
Steve
On 6/27/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
Could this be written up in red writing somewhere? It seems to be very common that non-devs tell each other not to do things because "it's bad for performance" etc.
I wish it would be. For the time being I have to make do with quoting http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&diff=36029520&oldid=36025274 all the time, but for some reason some people think that "'Policy' shouldn't really concern itself with server load except in the most extreme of cases; keeping things tuned to provide what the user base needs is our job" somehow doesn't mean what it says except for meta-templates.
On 27/06/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/27/06, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
If there's any reasonable purpose served by editing the template, there's no reason to hesitate. If something puts too much load on the servers, the devs will edit the software so that you can't do it or it's not a problem; see, for instance, recategorizing templates (which is handled in a job queue rather than being executed right away) or transcluding templates in sigs (they're automatically substed). Devs handle the backend, don't worry about it.
Could this be written up in red writing somewhere? It seems to be very common that non-devs tell each other not to do things because "it's bad for performance" etc.
Here's a quotable post, then.
Site operations and keep-alive stuff is our concern. "Our" refers to the development team and the system administration team, but I lump it all together for this. If something is *needed* in order to get on with the encyclopaedia-writing, or the dictionary-making, then do it. If it's unclean, let us know, and if there's an easier method we can implement to help, we will.
Adopt common sense, of course. If it's plain something could cause drastic problems, hold fire and check. But don't go running around screaming "teh servers, teh servers!!!" as an excuse to not do stuff, that's stupid.
Technical reasons not to do something will be met with technical enforcement. This position has been upheld by Brion Vibber before, and I have posted, including this, at least two messages to that effect to this mailing list.
Rob Church
On 6/27/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Here's a quotable post, then.
Site operations and keep-alive stuff is our concern. "Our" refers to the development team and the system administration team, but I lump it all together for this. If something is *needed* in order to get on with the encyclopaedia-writing, or the dictionary-making, then do it. If it's unclean, let us know, and if there's an easier method we can implement to help, we will.
Adopt common sense, of course. If it's plain something could cause drastic problems, hold fire and check. But don't go running around screaming "teh servers, teh servers!!!" as an excuse to not do stuff, that's stupid.
Ta. I couldn't help myself, I made [[Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance]].
Comments, expansion and legitimisation welcome.
Steve
From a non-load related perspective though, if a template is HIGHLY USED, it
is likely that people now using it have laid out articles around it (e.g. an infobox) and making a alrge change to it could change the look and feel of tons of articles. For that reason alone, remember it never hurst to bring it up on the talk page, there's always the chance you also may be trying to reinvent the wheel with your change as well.
xaosflux
----- Original Message ----- From: mdd4696@gmail.com To: wikitech-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 10:26 AM Subject: [Wikitech-l] Editing highly used templates
Hi all,
I'm curious to know exactly what the risk is from editing highly used templates. There are several archive header templates on enwiki which could potentially be used on many, many pages, and I want to ensure that if I make a modification to one of them that it doesn't have any ill effects.
If I make one edit to a template used on many infrequently visited pages, would that cause issues?
~Mdd4696 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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