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