On 02/15/2010 05:54 PM, Domas Mituzas wrote:
Hi!
from now on specific per-bot/per-software/per-client User-Agent header is mandatory for contacting Wikimedia sites.
Two questions:
Was there some urgent production impact that required doing this with no notice?
Was any impact analysis done on this? Given Wikipedia's mission, we can't be as casual about rejecting traffic as a commercial site would be. If a commercial site accidentally gets rid of some third-world traffic running behind a shoddy ISP, it's no loss; nobody wants to advertise to them anyhow. But for us, those are the people who gain the most from being able to reach us.
William