GuildWiki talk:Welcome PvXwiki

Why do we care?
Question: Why do we care? It's their wiki. Let them manage themselves.--Łô√ë îğá†ħŕášħ 01:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I have a poll option for you. I think there is considerable overlap between PvXwiki and GuildWiki users, and those that visit both wikis may care. I am hoping the poll will express their opinion. -- ◄mendel► 01:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Where's the option "Close down PvX so PvP has more creativity, and PvE has less elitism"?--Darksyde  01:47, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with Giga. This is GuildWiki, why not let the "considerable overlap" discuss the issue, say, on the wiki that actually has this as an issue?[[Image:Entrea Sumatae.png|Entrea Sumatae]] Entrea   [Talk]  03:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking something similar at first. I mean, why does GuildWiki care to do a site notice for this (could have been linked somewhere on the main page instead of every page).

But i voted that it's a good idea because since long before requesting fr.guildwars, when no french wiki existed, i would have started one if i had the kind of money a wiki hosting need. I said it to the guildwiki.fr community and main admin (when their URL was gwiki.fr) ; i think that nobody should pay themselves for a wiki that might go dead (like the first guildwiki.fr) when money goes short or the person owning the hosting and domain name disapear somehow (see my talk for infos on this). Sure, the community can get together and to some fund rising but ads are not alway a bad thing. I would never put ads on my personnals websites, but when it comes to free services like Wikia or ForumActif, in my opinion it's normal to have ads. There was ads on hotmail since it's first days (no?).

And without an ad that was on fr.guildwars a few months after it's creation, i wouldn't have found a better hosting service for my websites. Lol.

That been said, it's true that it's their call on this. The PvXwiki community is the only one wich shoulddecide wether they want to survive no matter what or... But, we all know that many users of GuildWiki are also part of the PvX community. I myself could say that because i recently created an account there but i'm not really contributing to the wiki (except sometimes fixing minors code problem and typos).

I'm suddently thinking about something ! What will happen with the wiki extension they use to make popups of skills descriptions while hovering build bars ? I have some interest in this because fr.guildwars could have some use of this (but the french version). I never asked Wikia about it because i though i needed too much upgrading everytime a skill change in the game (we already have plenty to do with skills pages on fr.guildwars).

I will surely follow developments in this story. — TulipVorlax 09:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * They apparently already have set up the extension . — TulipVorlax 10:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I asked Angela about it, they just need to find a way to make it easilly upgradable by the community.
 * Anyway, GuilWiki wont have any use of it... — TulipVorlax 11:19, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * We could merge PvX wiki's content with GuildWiki, and have a builds section, I don't see anything wrong with that Random Time  12:51, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * PvX has no interest in merging with your wiki for any reason. The welcome is fine and dandy but wiki content is not changing. - Auron 13:53, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah but PvX WAS once part of gwiki, but split because the builds didn't say "Great", "Good", or "Terribad"--Darksyde  15:51, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You don't have the first clue what you're talking about. Nice try though. - Auron 18:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Auron missing the point as usual Random Time  23:59, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Nobody on PvX wants your help or your content. Do I have to translate that into a different language before you understand it? "We could merge PvX wiki's content with GuildWiki, and have a builds section" is the stupid suggestion I was responding to. If anyone is "missing the point as usual," it's you. - Auron 11:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * [ You are a lemon.] -- ◄mendel► 12:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Wikismiley.svg|19px]] A lemon, lol. Anyway who cares about their community. They could already come here, so nothing really changes. Wondering if they will have to start abiding by certain wiki rules though, I mean currently they ignore most of them. Seems people here do the same thing though so again no change. [[Image:Spikeicon.png]]  Tenetke Mekko    My Talk 19:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The majority of people on PvX are either trolls, or borderline trolls like a certain someone above, -cough cough-. If you look at the comments on the PvX chat, it's mostly "FF is noobly, use this, noob" "noob build is noob". On here it's like "Moo @ warrior armor". Wikia will probably be harder on the rules than the current mods there, so i'm guessing PvX will either smarten up or dry up.--Darksyde  23:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * At the very least we try not to have really lolsy comments like "A quick counter to an enemy Minion Master is to put Scourge Healing on several of his minions. Blood of the Master triggers Scourge Healing for each minion that has it on." Pika Fan [[image:chrismaspika_sig.jpg|19x19px]] 00:00, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikia doesn't police wikis that have an active sysop team, in my experience. -- ◄mendel► 00:01, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Why are people talking as though PvX is becoming a part of GuildWiki? PvX is no closer to us than SmashWiki, TransformerWikia, or Club Penguin Wikia. Or even Conservapedia. Wikia is a big site, and PvX people could get here just as easily before the merge as they can now. We're not neighbors or any of that any more than we were before... now we're just on the same servers. Woo. -- Shadowcrest  00:05, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Because it is human nature to make a mountain out of a molehill. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so much drama in this world and it wouldn't be interesting to live anymore.Pika Fan [[image:chrismaspika_sig.jpg|19x19px]] 00:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

realistic?
Is German GuildWiki and PvXwiki receiving comparable visitor traffic? -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 01:41, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * German GuildWiki receives 8 million page views and serves 125 million files per month. I mention them to illustrate that my price quote doesn't come from some el-cheapo fly-by-night provider. I believe guildwiki.de runs on a single server. gcardinal writes that currently pvx runs on two servers and uses 1 TB per month, so that's what I based my calculations on. -- ◄mendel► 03:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Quick move

 * 11:40, 17 February 2009, GCardinal posted this news item to Template:Main Page/Top: Tuesday 17 February, Potential move to Wikia
 * 11:55, 19 February 2009 Gcardinal writes in MediaWiki:SiteNotice: PvXwiki will be read-only until 05:00 (UTC) in preparation for the move to Wikia

To me, the speed of this shows that either there was never anything "potential" about this move, or Wikia turned the heat on. Who knows? -- ◄mendel► 14:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Me. It was "potential" about a year ago, when we were first wondering about hosting, but since so many people were still butthurt about the gwiki buyout, we decided to see if ads and sponsors would work. We did a few contests with razer but that fell through, so IMO gcard was pretty desperate to find a hosting solution. As soon as wikia said okay a week or so ago, it was "confirmed," but the notice was just there to placate the community :p - Auron 15:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

A retarded idea
This is one. PvX wiki has developed a supreme troll community. Mixing them with another community is just a bad idea.--72.189.85.14 14:59, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Nah, 'cause if they troll while they're part of wikia, they'll get banned much faster.--Darksyde  15:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You may not be aware that there are some people on PvXwiki that were originally from Guildwiki :)--Relyk 16:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * And that some of us still go on both of them solely to revert vandalism... [[Image:Zefirsig.jpg|19px]] God Zefir  16:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, depends. Since PvX have a compatible license, they can at least grab our monaco skin mods and stuff, and we can have their skill templates and skill bars once they've been ported to wikia. Editors will be able to edit either wiki without having to register again, we'll see how that one works out. -- ◄mendel► 16:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * ^That's one thing I'm looking forward to.--Relyk 16:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * They won't get banned faster. PvX's administration isn't changing at all. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 17:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * PvX bans quickly enough anyway. [[Image:Zefirsig.jpg|19px]] God Zefir  18:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Last time i checked it took 3 days to ban a guy who changed 2/5 the wiki.--66.192.104.10 19:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikia has a few tech people who may pop in randomly to stop vandalism, but overall it won't change anything really. And I don't think anyone here is going to spend their time patrolling PvX. :p [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 19:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I spend quite some time camping RC there (probably more than GWiki, because of the fact Gwiki RC is rather dead and PvX's isn't completely). That is, if I camp RCs, which has diminished lately. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  21:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what to think, I need someone like Felix to tell me what think about this one. On one hand, maybe there will be MOAR crossover LuLz from Shard. On the other hand, isn't this just going to cause problems for my nice clean Running Guides I put so much effort into fixing up? Meh... and I have mixed reactions to UNFUNNY PvP dramaz --ilr(19,Feb.'09)
 * You want ME to tell you what to think? Think about pirate poodles. All the other pirates dogs probably laugh at them because they look ridiculous, but they're very dangerous, because the effeminate pirates are always the cruelest.


 * In regards to PvXWiki, we (GuildWiki) get one advantage- it will be a bit easier to link to pvx builds now. There are a few extra things, though. People who have the same username on Wikia and on PvX get one more advantage- we'll be notified of new messages on one wiki while browsing the other. On the other hand, people who have DIFFERENT account names on Wikia and on PvX get screwed because they have to be constantly logging in and out, unless they choose to essentially start over on one wiki or the other.


 * So all in all, this barely matters, and I don't know why anyone would make a fuss over it. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 21:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * "On the other hand, people who have DIFFERENT account names on Wikia and on PvX get screwed" - I have multiple Wikia accounts. I use different browsers (when I'm at work I typically have Firefox, Chrome, SeaMonkey, and Opera open) to avoid the need to keep logging in and out. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 22:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Exception to the rule etc. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 22:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * So that's who Charitwo is socking for. ;-) (Just kidding.) Felix, I don't see how it is going to be any easier to link to pvx: you prepend pvx: just like before. It is actually possible to watch both RCs together on irc (or maybe other tools), especially if Wikia release some of the tools that have been brewing. -- ◄mendel► 22:17, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It'll be an internal link, so anons won't have to capcha. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 23:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * anons never had to capcha to link to PvX links using the interwiki syntax. So the main point of the above post is about anons who didn't know about interwiki syntax. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 23:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That would be approximately all of them. Heck, most registered users don't know about interwiki syntax. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 23:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * But *I* don't have to captcha gw: links on pvx any more, woohoo! -- ◄mendel► 23:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * *raises hand* ...It's not exactly readily available in any of the main menus. Plus I'm pretty sure there's a few templates where even inter-wiki linking wasn't working → but maybe that was on GWW, I don't recall --ilr
 * Read Editing guide ftw. But maybe we ought to break it up and put that and our style and formatting guides on the Monaco flyout menus. -- ◄mendel► 08:17, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * So can we presume ppl using Monobook skin don't need helps? d-: -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 08:22, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * We can still transclude the small subarticles on a big edit guide? -- ◄mendel► 09:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well I meant something more comprehensive but that works too --ilr

Skill Links etc
I know that currently, links that refer to Guild Wars content that does not directly belong on PvX, such as skill pages, direct the user to the official wiki. It makes sense that the content be split, however, is it possible that PvX would choose to use this wiki rather than the official wiki because of this split? Ariena 19:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * There was a discussion about it. The links will still go to GWW. [[Image:Zefirsig.jpg|19px]] God Zefir  19:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Tbh, there was little discussion. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  21:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not so simple as just choosing which wiki to take the skill data from (if you are talking about the pvxbig tags); the whole code would need to be changed if GuildWiki were to be used over GWW, so it's just a lot simpler and such to leave it with GWW. Besides, they update stuff there faster, and it makes more sense to link to an "official" wiki anyway. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 21:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * PvX has a database off which the skills are ripped, which has nothing do to with GWW. For a couple of days, PvX even got the skill descriptions from Wikipedia >.> I doubt it's hard to change it back to Gwiki. This also makes the "they update faster" point moot. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  21:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Huh? Some pages do have only links to the official wiki, but some pages use links here to GuildWiki. All the skill bars have links to GWW, but that's about it. Cress Arvein [[Image:Cress sig.JPG]] 04:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

...
Um. I was going to type a lengthy response as to why this is the most risky idea ever, but it looks like I'm too fucking late (and tired, I just got back from a ski trip), so. Normally it wouldn't affect us, but you must be aware this essentially mixes the userbase together. Yes, they can still stay on their respective wikis, but the userbase can and will mix, and shit will happen. I'm lacking on a good metaphor for this one, but w/e. Trust me. If you want to improve your image (or even maintain it), you do _not_ want pvxwiki with its trolls, drama and elitists under the same roof as gwiki. But I'm too late. So good luck. &mdash; Nova   &mdash;  (contribs) 23:05, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * They could already come here. This doesn't make it much easier. [[Image:Zefirsig.jpg|19px]] God Zefir  23:14, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Man Nova, it's not up to us. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 23:16, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * We are also mixed with the Club Penguin wiki userbase. If anything, PvX will probably bring up the average. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 23:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC)


 * There is no reason for Club Children to come to gwiki. On the other hand, I can imagine pvxwiki would love to extend their range of influence here.
 * Speaking of which, have you even seen pvxwiki's community, pansola? it's... ugh. bleh. ph-tooey. PvXwiki content would surely bring up the average but their community is very different from ours. &mdash; Nova  [[Image:Neo-NovaSmall.jpg]] &mdash;  (contribs) 00:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You're sitting here insulting an entire community. Seriously, are you being any better right now? Like I said, they already could come here. This doesn't really change much. [[Image:Zefirsig.jpg|19px]] God Zefir  00:42, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Too bad he's fucking right, pvx is shit, proven. It is now just a matter of watching and waiting. Napalm Flame 03:26, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * If their general preference to link to the official wiki is of any indication, the majority of the influential ppl would probably be more interested in having influence over GWW than over here. Both wikis are open to the public, anyone we would need to be "concerned" about would not be daunted by the need to create a separate account. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 00:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Expecting most anyone to make sensible decisions about anything is like asking a turtle to part from it's shell. [[Image:RHSig.jpg]] talk 04:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you implying that a turtle would fare better without its shell? [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 04:07, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't the PvX trolls just stay trolling PvX? 76.94.212.186 04:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * They will have to, because I won't put up with crap here. >:D [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 04:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * There isn't much to troll here anyway and it's not the end of the world like merging PvX and Gwiki into 1 wiki again. 76.94.212.186 04:22, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * All we do is troll each other. Usually people we talk to all the time. Anyone doing anything over here will most likely be someone that's hated at PvX anyway. [[Image:Zefirsig.jpg|19px]] God Zefir  04:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * cough*Napalm*cough* 76.94.212.186 04:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * "There isn't much to troll here" /QFT - Trolling here is like yelling SAGE SAGE SAGE on 4chan, everyone could care less. Trolling GWW is where the real LuLz are. --ilr[[Image:Ilr_d-small.png]](,Feb.'09)

The only thing I can see worth trolling is probably the terrible notes in skills, and even so, it isn't worth the time anyway. Pika Fan 11:26, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You can't troll Guildwiki unless you try extremely hard, and I doubt anyone will bother with that much effort. I'd laugh at anyone who would try anyways.--relyk 16:06, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * "You can't troll Guildwiki unless you try extremely hard" &mdash; is that a compliment or an insult? -- ◄mendel► 16:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Let's say it's a compliment and end all of this. [[Image:Zefirsig.jpg|19px]] God Zefir  17:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * But... but... Its fun!!  [[Image:RHSig.jpg]] talk 19:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It's more accurate to say I am overly blunt to the point of having no tact at all. Closer to being a douche rather than a troll. And it's true that guildwiki has rather idiotic notes in their skills like "using this skill("You're All Alone!") with the assassin's Signet of Malice results in an almost guaranteed 2 conditions removed". My eye bled when I saw that.Pika <font color="#FDD017" face="blackadder itc">Fan [[image:chrismaspika_sig.jpg|19x19px]] 22:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Cyclops? _O_ 76.188.100.220 19:14, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I lost my other eye to terrible english.<font color="#FDD017" face="blackadder itc">Pika <font color="#FDD017" face="blackadder itc">Fan [[image:chrismaspika_sig.jpg|19x19px]] 09:12, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

HURRAY -_-
Now that the two websites are merged, I can no longer log into my old account or access any of my old files. (Ikimono)--66.192.104.13 00:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You're compaining on the wrong wiki, except that I actually have the answer. Log in as "PVX-Ikimono" and hope your account will get renamed soon. Leave a note on pvx:User_talk:Angela/renames to make sure they don't forget you. -- ◄mendel► 01:11, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Servers
That note about how much it costs to run a Wiki with example with a AMD server is just stupid. Anyone can post a link to some lame/cheap servers that will break down within a few weeks - running a real Wiki is not. To have 99% uptime and some scale of reliability you need at least Web Cluster. Upgrade that to XEON server, add developing, maintenance and backup solution - and then we will be getting close to a real thing. And far away from 200$ a month.

During 674 days I have been running PvXwiki it had 99.85% uptime. And all that with 2 x DB wipeout, 1 x HDD breakdown, 3 x Server switches and usual network problems.

Couldn't find that on Google? :) gcardinal 21:16, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * See also: GuildWiki_talk:Welcome_PvXwiki --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  22:25, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Not a lame, cheap server, but rather one of Germany's biggest web hosting providers, with the server stats etc. better than the entry level config of the service you cite, and the connection not throttled at 10MBps either (and extra transfer volume three times cheaper to boot). I agree there's a tradeoff in price vs. uptime. You can buy daily backups with 1-hour restore and 24/7 monitoring for an extra 39€/month each, as it is with the basic offer you get business hours service and backup of system configs. Re: the cluster, MediaWiki seems to support load balancing out of the box, making it unnessecary to pay extra for that; is that wrong? -- ◄mendel► 03:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The Euro is strong. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 04:14, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Dear ◄mendel►, have you ever been admin or worked as nix administrator on a website with 500.000 daily pageviews? Or maybe you have worked on some big web-projects? If not, you simply have no idea what you are talking about. And again - searching google and posting links is easy - running one is not.
 * What can I discuss with you when you don't even know what Unmetered 10MBps is :) Hey, I know, I got 20mbit link at home and a AMD 64 server - I will host my next Wiki from home! Yeah ;) lol. gcardinal 11:33, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * And you simply can't compare near static Mediawiki on guildwiki.de with PvXwiki. PvXwiki has a gwbbcode in every page that needs decoding and generation on each change. Not to mention all the custom extensions PvX has. Or amount of pages that is created, rated, deleted and changed every day, without mentioning 24x7 disucssions. Or maybe the fact that only 20-30% of PvXwiki users are from Europe, while 30-40% are from USA and Canada. Maybe, just maybe, you need to think about placing servers in place where both people from Norway, USA and China will have good surfing experience.
 * For me www.guildwiki.de loads in 12-15 seconds and I live in Norway. While PvXwiki loaded in 3-5 seconds with servers in Canada. What else can I say? :) gcardinal 11:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 * My, aren't we patronizing today. Wikipedia states (see link above) they can deliver 70% of their requests from cache (I believe the rest fail to be cached mostly because the skin personalizes the navigation?), and you know that is different for PvXwiki?
 * Performance means balancing database (you want enough RAM) with Apache/php page generation and Apache/static file delivery (images & js/css) (actually could use a more light-weight server for that), resizing of the images, and cache (squid in the old wikipedia example, Varnish in the case of Wikia) - have I missed anything? If all you have is a single server, the exercise is moot, and if you have multiple, just replicating the "single server" setup is not going to be optimal.
 * You've moved to a service where pages sometimes fail to load, take more than 30 seconds, or worst of all, load incompletely (e.g. without headers, makes my firefox go crazy). It happens more often than I'd like. The traffic they generate is amazing, though.
 * Ultimately, it comes down to priorities and tradeoffs. You couldn't finance the level of service you liked to provide, and rather than settling with less you settle with wikia. I'd have chosen differently. Let's just leave it at that. -- ◄mendel► 13:31, 22 February 2009 (UTC)


 * LMAO, XEONs for a Buildwars Wiki. ...see also: solid chrome spinners on a donkey cart. --ilr
 * Gold is better.<font color="#FDD017" face="blackadder itc">Pika <font color="#FDD017" face="blackadder itc">Fan [[image:lightningbolt_sig.jpg|19x19px]] 12:46, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Mendel, please stop embarrassing your self :) You have no idea what you are talking about, not even near it. I told you why PvXwiki is different from Wikipedia. Learn to read.
 * Try hosting something your self, we will see if you can do better then I did with PvXwiki :) apache, cheap .de server and googling will sure make it fast and secure LOL! :P gcardinal 12:52, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Just to end this stream of BS: PvXwiki was hosted on 2 servers, with Lighttpd server, Squid from time to time and separate static image server, it also was a backup of a main server. I don't need your guesses on how PvXwiki worked, I hosted it up, Dude :) gcardinal 12:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Lol @ mendel embarassing himself. Guess who comes off looking better from this section? 208.44.247.101 14:24, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not a contest as to who looks better. Ideally we're discussing whether PvXwiki could have been hosted on two AMD X2 6000+ machines with 6GB RAM each, and what drawbacks this would entail. gCardinal's signal/noise ratio could be better, but he's contributing, and I'm learning.
 * I am aware that there are faster servers than Apache, I just don't know which of these are compatible with Mediawiki because I've not actually been in the position to set this up, so that's why I wrote them in there. I took the "unmetered" comment to actually research how much bandwidth my example hoster provides, and over the whole data center it comes down to an average of 2.5Mbps/server, which should be plenty if you consider there are going to be a lot of gaming and small business servers in the mix who don't need nearly that much even at peak times. (And I know we're going to need the upstream connections that lead to international gateways more, so averaging over the total bandwidth of the host's upstream is only a very rough estimate.) Unless I am mistaken, "unmetered 10Mbps" is a billing model, not a service guarantee, either.
 * I would like to know how the size of the page database as XML file (current or full history) relates to the working set memory size of the database server (forgive me if my use of technical terms is off, I mean the memory needed for the database to answer most requests without going to disk). I don't understand why page displays need to be dynamically rendered for different anons on Pvxwiki, and what the proportion of anons was. I know you stated that pvxwiki is different, that's why I asked, but apparently you have no numbers at hand from when you ran squid what the cache hit rate was, or you would have given them. I was under the impression that PvXwiki ran from two servers; using a third for static images and as backup seems a good idea. Wikia is contracting image servers out, I believe, and it took some time to get the synchronization issues solved. -- ◄mendel► 15:14, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Just to point out, the wikia servers are actually WORSE than what gcard was giving us. Lag has increased noticeably thanks to the wonderful wikia transition. Combined with administrators that are no longer known among the populous, it's not so fun.  —ǥrɩɳsɧƴ ɖɩđđɭɘş   17:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)