On 27/06/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/27/06, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
If there's any reasonable purpose served by editing the template, there's no reason to hesitate. If something puts too much load on the servers, the devs will edit the software so that you can't do it or it's not a problem; see, for instance, recategorizing templates (which is handled in a job queue rather than being executed right away) or transcluding templates in sigs (they're automatically substed). Devs handle the backend, don't worry about it.
Could this be written up in red writing somewhere? It seems to be very common that non-devs tell each other not to do things because "it's bad for performance" etc.
Here's a quotable post, then.
Site operations and keep-alive stuff is our concern. "Our" refers to the development team and the system administration team, but I lump it all together for this. If something is *needed* in order to get on with the encyclopaedia-writing, or the dictionary-making, then do it. If it's unclean, let us know, and if there's an easier method we can implement to help, we will.
Adopt common sense, of course. If it's plain something could cause drastic problems, hold fire and check. But don't go running around screaming "teh servers, teh servers!!!" as an excuse to not do stuff, that's stupid.
Technical reasons not to do something will be met with technical enforcement. This position has been upheld by Brion Vibber before, and I have posted, including this, at least two messages to that effect to this mailing list.
Rob Church