Dear developers,
I've been doing RC patrolling on de.wikipedia this morning using the
great CrytoDerk's Vandal Fighter 2.1. I find myself in a difficult
situation.
From 1 to 2 out of 10 clicks on diffs of recent changes, I get an error
stating that the version I just clicked on does not exist. The reason
seems to be obvious, it's the replication lag on some servers.
While the technical issues are I guess fully present in your minds, I
would like to point to to a different side effect of this software
behaviour: I am loosing any motivation for RC patrolling.
This morning, I more or less made 50 reverts to vandalism in
de.wikipedia. I am sure there were more vandal edits but I was unable to
keep myself concentrated on that topic.
It's not about losing 5 seconds for the replication to keep up, it is
simply a frustrating experience. When I do rc patrolling, I like to idea
of "doing good work".
Whatever you do, please keep in mind to avoid situations where an klick on
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lucas_Cranach_der_%C3%84ltere&…
reveals that:
Fehler
aus Wikipedia, der freien Enzyklopädie
Der Text für den Artikel „Lucas Cranach der Ältere (Diff: 6123802, 0)“
wurde nicht in der Datenbank gefunden. Wenn es sich um eine alte Version
eines Artikels handelt, kann es sein, dass sie wegen einer Verletzung
von Urheberrechten gelöscht wurde. Es ist auch möglich, dass es ein
Problem mit dem Zugriff auf die Datenbank gibt. In diesem Fall versuche
es später bitte noch einmal.
I am unable to provide a technical solution for that (why don't you
delay rc messages until the replication is done?) but I am willing to
give any feedback nescassary to help to abolish this situation where
vandalizing something is easier than fixing it.
Thanks,
Mathias