Author: osiris_wikipedia

Description:
The other day, at about 07:00 11 December 2012 (UTC), the Simple English Wikipedia database went down, apparently due to a high server lag. Before it did, trying to view RecentChanges resulted in some serious slowness, often followed by an error message. The following was reported by an editor at the time:

[31a32497] 2012-12-11 04:00:26: Fatal exception of type MWException

I believe the error messages and the server lag started after the following edit, which should show you the error message when you try to view it:

https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=4013188

The database was restored several hours later, and everything is working normally again. Except that any Special page showing revision 4013188 will come up with that error message. This includes (as of the time of this report) the following pages...

https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ANewPages&namespace=10
https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500&namespace=10

...as well as the Special:Contributions page for the author of that edit:

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Clarkcj12

If you work around that edit, you can see all other edits as normal. For example, on the contributions page, the edits before and after revision 4013188:
Before: https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Clarkcj12&offset=201212102130&limit=4
After: https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Clarkcj12&offset=201212102127&limit=5

However, once you go that one edit further to allow revision 4013188 to be shown, it fails and results in the same error message:
Before: https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Clarkcj12&offset=201212102130&limit=5

Version: wmf-deployment
Severity: major
URL: http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=4021755&oldid=4020183