Wikipedia:Historical archive/Lag

Lagging Problem

Often the Wikipedia server gets into a mode where it does not respond for periods of over one minute -- a huge amount of time in the Internet world.

Effects of lagging

Readers are frustrated in their ability to see pages.
Readers are frustrated in their ability to edit pages. Sometimes they lose their work.

Possible Causes

Saving pages with many links is slow
Someone running a long query?

Proposed Solutions

Note: if a solution isn't keyed to a cause, it's not likely to really solve anything.

lagging Does anybody know why the site is lagging so bad? 129.186.80.116 17:53 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC) Yes someone plz direct me to or create a tech page which explains the lag. Lir 17:59 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC) Don't remove this until somebody tells me where else I can go to put things like this. Lir 18:11 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)

I've noticed it too. Try Talk:Main_Page. Its been going on for days. Sometimes causing me server not found errors. But how do you know what it is? I assume just too many people online at the same time. It goes away at night. Rlee0001 18:19 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)

MySQL has really crappy table locking, and blocks everything when certain slow operations are being done. We're looking into replacing it with Postgresql, which is said to scale better. But, first I have to adapt the code, change the table definitions, make sure it works on my home server, set up a test installation here before we go converting hundreds of megabytes of databasey goodness willy-nilly. --Brion 21:16 Oct 29, 2002 (UTC)