Sj (2.718281828(a)gmail.com) [050508 00:53]:
The primary use I was thinking of was as a failover
option, even if
all normal servers blow up, go down, etc. But as long as such a system
is set up, however, why shouldn't it be available all the time? For
instance, if I were to design a game that involved regularly querying
WP content (and needed quick response times for it not to slow down
gameplay)... it would be much easier to do that through a central
static site than by setting up an incrementally-updating local mirror.
No need for us to rely on third parties like factindex to provide fast
static mirrors of Wikipedia content when that is what 90% of our
visitors want to see. (Or perhaps there is such a need? Depending on
said potential issues.)
You know, it occurs to me that serving the static version to anon visitors
by default might also be a nice way to implement that time-delay that Jimbo
asked for when our [[2004 Indian Ocean earthquake]] article became so
popular.
- d.