Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance
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The status of this policy or guideline is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. |
When making some improvement to Wikipedia's content, such as editing a page, reorganising a category, or modifying a template, the impact on Wikipedia's servers is the last thing you should be worrying about. When the time comes that some common practice is having a negative impact on the servers' ability to provide access, the developers will step in. They worry about the servers' performance so we don't have to.
Some quotes from developers:
Site operations and keep-alive stuff is our concern. "Our" refers to the development team and the system administration team, but I lump it all together for this. If something is *needed* in order to get on with the encyclopaedia-writing, or the dictionary-making, then do it. If it's unclean, let us know, and if there's an easier method we can implement to help, we will.
Adopt common sense, of course. If it's plain something could cause drastic problems, hold fire and check. But don't go running around screaming "teh servers, teh servers!!!" as an excuse to not do stuff, that's stupid.
Generally, you should not worry much about little things like templates and "server load" at a policy level. If they're expensive, we'll either fix it or restrict it at a technical level; that's our responsibility. . . .
As a technical matter, it's our responsibility to keep the system running well enough for what the sites require. In other words: it's not a policy issue. If and when we need to restrict certain things, we'll do so with technical measures. . . .
"Policy" shouldn't really concern itself with server load except in the most extreme of cases; keeping things tuned to provide what the user base needs is our job.
—Brion Vibber (Wikimedia Foundation Chief Technical Officer, ultimate authority on Wikimedia servers and software), Village Pump, 21 Jan 06
