[Wikimedia-l] Throttling (was: Re: Please can someone put 50p in the meter)

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

WereSpielChequers, 15/10/2012 09:56:
> 60 edits a minute sounds high, and probably faster than most of these
> sessions run at, but not if it is as I suspect, calculated every few
> seconds.

It's not, as far as I can see. This is how it works: 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgRateLimits> (someone please 
expand it otherwise).
And these are all the existing limits:
<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=operations/mediawiki-config.git;a=blob;f=wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php;h=f814f3b46e996d6cb33d64c43965e807dfaec810;hb=HEAD#l6437>
Does Andrew's experience not fit with this?

> So if the tutor says "all save now" and ten people hit enter
> simultaneously the attempted editing rate is briefly rather more than 1 per
> second - hence the throttle kicks in and the tutorial collapses in chaos
> with several students getting throttling errors at the same time. It would
> be nice to think that the WiFi we used was going through the same IP as the
> rest of the British library and that we merely lifted the normal editing
> rate above 60 edits a minute, but I suspect that the rate is calculated
> rather more frequently than every minute.
>
> Presumably established users of some sort are whitelisted through this? If
> so it could explain a longstanding Cat a Lot problem. I frequently use Cat
> a lot to categorise images on Commons and my personal editing rate there
> has gone far above 60 edits a minute, however I'm pretty sure I'd be on any
> commons whitelist. But other editors have complained that Cat a Lot doesn't
> work for them and mysteriously hangs or fails, Is it possible that this
> throttling feature could be  the cause of that problem as well?

noratelimit circumvents all such limits, but on Commons only the 
standard groups plus account creators have it, and you're just 
autopatrolled.
The only group having serious throttling problems in the past were 
rollbackers on en.wiki; it shouldn't be too hard for Commons to add 
noratelimit via some group, if that's a problem.

> If so perhaps it would be a good idea to analyse some of the recent
> incidents where this feature has kicked in, see how often it disrupts
> goodfaith editing and how often it disrupts badfaith editing that wouldn't
> have triggered the edit filter. Maybe this was once a net benefit, but with
> the edit filter dealing with most badfaith editing, and increasing amounts
> of editing workshops and tools like Catalot, perhaps this feature has
> transitioned from net positive to net negative? Alternatively could we have
> a process where we can whitelist the IP Addresses of places where we are
> running training sessions, and put  note on
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.jsexplaining
> how to spot if your editing has been throttled and how to get
> yourself Whitelisted

Rate limits have never been a problem with some minimal preparation: 
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Mass_account_creation> (in 6-7 
years of WMIT workshops, I've never heard of big problems with this).

Nemo