LocalisationUpdate went live and then the lights went out

Yesterday the much anticipated LocalisationUpdate extension went live on the servers of the Wikimedia Foundation. This was from my point of view a disaster.

So what happened; Brion installed the LocalisationUpdate software and it invalidated the cache for all projects. This will certainly lead to increased CPU usage. Then he stopped LocalisationUpdate and then it was found that it is not possible to do this gracefully and the system stopped.

The good news is, that everyone is convinced that the functionality of LocalisationUpdate is extremely relevant. Research on the functionality of Usability Initiative for instance showed that the lack of available localisations is what stops the adoption for some languages and, LocalisationUpdate is the only mechanism under consideration that is able to make these available in a timely manner.

When LocalisationUpdate will go live is anybodies guess. The good news is that developers like Roan are involved and are eager to find a solution, the Usability Initiative will certainly be one of the more obvious beneficiaries of having a fully functional LocalisationUpdate but most of all, everyone who uses a WMF project not in English will benefit.
Thanks,
       GerardM