wojtek pobratyn wrote (on wikipedia-l):

same here, the 'pedia is dead. Funnily enough when I try to ping the server I get an 80% packet loss.

The technical discussion is taking place on wikitech-l@nupedia.com. This is a short summary and unofficial status report.

In the last few weeks, the Wikipedia webserver has been very slow, depending on new functions being added without enough concern about their performance under high load.

At 5 pm on Thursday May 9, Jimmy disabled some of the functions that consumed too much time, and there was an instant improvement in response time. The removed functionality include the "talk" links. The implementation is studied right now, and an improved version will probably be installed in the next few days. At this point, I don't think more programmers are needed, but if you want to stay informed, you can join the wikitech-l to follow the reports and discussions.

It is good to see that so many are concerned to have Wikipedia back in full operation, with all the necessary functionality. However, it does surprise me that so few were complaining about the absurdly slow response times in the week before.

There are still periods when the server seems totally unavailable, and the last hour seems to be one such case. In the preceeding 24 hours, the response time for the front page ranged from 0.95 to 12.31 seconds, with an average of 2.18 seconds. This could still be improved, but it is actually very fast for Wikipedia.

The problems are with the English Wikipedia, which receives most of the traffic. The international versions run on the same server, and are slowed down by the poor overall performance of the system.