On 20 January 2012 08:24, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 20 January 2012 01:06, Ryan Lane rlane32@gmail.com wrote:
No, there isn't a difference. A blackout where everyone sees a page with a particular message instead of the article they wanted is exactly the same as unscheduled downtime where everyone sees a page with a particular message instead of the article they wanted. If search engines and caches can survive one of them, they can survive both, since they are identical from an external perspective.
I'm sorry. but this is silly. I have a hard time believing that you aren't simply trolling here.
How is it silly? I'm not trolling, I just think the way the blackout was implemented looked really unprofessional and I can't see any good reason for not having done a better job. All we wanted was for anyone viewing any page on the site to see a particular static page rather than what they would usually see. That isn't difficult to do, as evidenced by the fact that it happens automatically whenever the site breaks.
But that wasn't what was wanted, Thomas. There was a specifically voiced desire to make *certain* pages accessible - such as the articles about SOPA and PIPA - and they were exempted from the blackout. That presented a different operational challenge than a total blackout would do. Given that priority one will always be "don't break the site", I think the team did about the best they could in the time they had, keeping in mind the impossibility of testing alternate solutions. It was just as important to be able to confidently bring the site back up after 24 hours as it was to go dark for those 24 hours.
Perhaps folks with additional recommendations might want to add them at the post-mortem page on Meta.[1]
Risker/Anne
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout/Post-mor...