[Wikipedia-l] Most Wanted Refresh

[Brion L. VIBBER]

Chuck Smith wrote:

>Hey Programmers,
>
>How about running a cron job every 30 minutes or so
>that refreshes the Most Wanted page instead of having
>a Refresh link (and tell users the page updates every
>30 minutes)?  I have this feeling that some unkind
>person will find that and run a script to load that
>page every minute or so to really slow down the
>server...  I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't already
>happening!
>
Someone who wants to load the server can do so just as easily by 
reloading RecentChanges with the number of changes set to a gazillion or 
running searches with lots of wildcards.

However an automatic refresh is a good idea. That's not really something 
we can do *inside* the script though; what we *can* do is:

1. Provide a URL which can be called to initiate the refresh (we have 
that now). Jimbo could easily slip a call to the refresh URL (via wget 
or lynx) into the server's crontab to be run on a regular basis if 
that's so desired. Jimbo?

2. Limit the frequency with which a refresh is allowed (hmm, good idea, 
I'll add that)

3. Hide the manual refresh link from the page (probably not necessary 
with #2 implemented; I can see where somebody's just linked up a bunch 
of wanted pages and wants to see the new list, but doesn't want to wait 
20 minutes for the next auto refresh)

>I had A LOT of trouble connecting today and I'm
>thinking it would be best to follow our general rule
>to do whatever would best benefit Wikipedia.  I mean
>Most Wanted is great, but not if it keeps people from
>editing and writing articles...  I know I would've
>written a rather lengthy article today, but it was
>down (of course I could've done it offline, but
>hey...)
>
It's improving, slowly. :) The cacheing should help, as should the 
Alternative PHP Cache that Jimbo installed. We're also about to try 
rewriting the Recent Changes code to be much much more efficient.

Oh, and Chuck, are you still having problems logging in? Unfortunately 
both Magnus and I are having trouble replicating the login problems, so 
we're not quite sure what it's doing wrong...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)