Erik Moeller wrote:
Brion-
Database server is down; it really, _really_
didn't like being asked
how many rows are in the old revisions table for the English Wikipedia.
Who did that? And if it was a sysop query, why the hell are we still/again
allowing those? That's like putting a big red "DoS me" sign on our server.
It came out of an IRC conversation. Roughly reconstructed:
Pakaran: Why are SQL queries disabled
Tim: Erik turned it off because someone ran "select count(*) from old"
*time passes*
Brion: Hey, that query really is slow
Reports of Wikipedia being down, not responding by SSH etc. then followed.
-- Tim Starling