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# Why Wikipedia is so slow

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Note by LA2 on May 16, 2001: A few days ago, the HomePage was updated to tell us that WikiPedia now has more than 6,000 pages. Maybe another thousand has been added since. At the same time, it feels slower than ever. Right now, searching is so slow it is useless. Submitting a new edit takes tens of seconds. Is there a scalability problem? With the number of pages? With the number of users? How many users are there, anyway? Can we see some statistics? Popularity could kill a service like this if there is no money to upgrade the server hardware.

  I'd be interested in knowing how many other people are experiencing slowness. For me, Wikipedia is running faster than I expected. A preview (which does much of the work of an edit) takes less than a second, and searches take about 5 seconds. (Searching is surprisingly fast considering that it opens, unpacks, and searches every single page. Eventually this will change.)

  The Wikipedia code was designed to handle at least 20,000 to 30,000 pages, and I suspect it could handle 50,000 pages as long as they were reasonably distributed by their first letter. Scalability beyond that is a high priority for me. --CliffordAdams

It's been pretty slow for me the last couple of days. --Pinkunicorn

Right now, 4pm GMT, it is a lot faster than just two hours ago. Did anybody change anything? --LA2

I haven't noticed any changes whatsoever -- WojPob

Seems to be running reasonably fast for me, except for the search, which naturally doesn't scale very well in its current form. Of course, I only have a 28.8 dialup... -- STG

I am experiencing this kind of slowness. Searches takes 25 seconds, saves take one or two seconds. LinusTolke

I was experiencing some slowness and I reported it on the mailing list. Then it turned out that it was almost entirely on the Recent Changes page, other pages loaded acceptably. Now the new server behaves almost as good as the old one. -- Kpjas

  The slowness on the "RecentChanges" pages is due to the large number of recent modifications. For it to be faster, modify your Preferences so that RecentChanges shows less days, not the default 7. -- AstroNomer

  Quite understandable but on the old server it was quicker. -- Kpjas

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Last edited July 20, 2001 12:41 pm (diff)
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