Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-08-06/Technology report

You'd think that, after all of these years and the supposed technological bias of Wikipedia contributors, we'd have an encyclopaedia around here somewhere that explained backhoe fade a.k.a. backhoe fading, including such things as warning label conventions that are supposed to mitigate it and explaining that despite the name it is taken quite seriously given that it's responsible for a significant fraction (a 1993 study said three-fifths) of physical layer outages in cable networks, wouldn't you? ☺ Uncle G (talk) 17:39, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

• post scriptum: The telecommunications-savvy reader might like to gaze in blank astonishment at the deletion log for backhoe fade. Uncle G (talk) 17:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Clarification on the major outage: Apparently we were supposed to be allocated bandwidth on two different fiber-optic cables from the Tampa data center. The data center, however, erroneously put our 2 bandwidth allotments on the same cable, so when the cable was cut, we had no redundant connection between Tampa and Virginia to fall back to. Kaldari (talk) 22:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

• Which inspires the question, why is there a countepart center in Virginia, if it is not able to take up the load when something goes wrong with the Tampa center or its cables? Do the wikis only work when both centers are alive, ticking properly, and properly connected together? Jim.henderson (talk) 09:53, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
• At the moment, Ashburn only works when both datacenters are connected together. The database masters all live in Tampa and the apaches need to talk to them in order to serve content. LeslieCarr (talk) 18:20, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
  • I suppose the old saying about a backup that doesn't get tested is no back up at all, rings true. Bawolff (talk) 19:26, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

• Will editors be forced to use Vector when the Curator is implemented? --Orange Mike | Talk 16:28, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
  • I highly doubt it. (If someone made a special page style feature dependant on what skin people were using, I imagine hissy fits would be thrown). Bawolff (talk) 19:26, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
    • The curation toolbar works in Monobook. Indeed, we wasted spent numerous hours making sure it would work in both skins. Kaldari (talk) 22:58, 12 August 2012 (UTC)