Edit - Meta Stack Exchange

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

2

This was a useful feature. Think it's wrong to fend off attacks by taking away features.
– Shadow Wizard
Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 19:37
2

The root cause of that attack is a botnet of IoT devices. Since logging in to SE through an IoT device is absolutely useless (unless the device acts like a screenreader, reading the text on the webpages out loud), why not disable the title only for unregistered users?
– SE is dead
Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 19:45
2

@ShadowWizard due respect, you have a minimal view of the impact such a change makes in various situations and what bottlenecks it alleviates. If I told you it allowed us to scale to ~30% more traffic, does your opinion change?
– Nick Craver Mod
Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 20:37
1

@dorukayhan It's not that simple, it's a code path ~13 methods removed and in a cross-site-code path. Accessing the request or user there would be prohibitively expensive.
– Nick Craver Mod
Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 20:38
1

@Nick respect given, don't doubt it helps you fight attacks and reduce costs. But why was this feature in there in the first place, if it's so bad? What feature will be the next victim of the DDoS attacks? (And I'm sure the attacker(s) now really happy for being able to make a change for bad in SE.)
– Shadow Wizard
Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 21:03
2

@ShadowWizard Those responsible probably have no idea this change was made. It was something we considered moving for years, it's a ~30-40% bandwidth increase on many routes that almost no one uses, that's a little crazy from a scale standpoint. The fact that a specific instance was a final catalyst here is mostly a detail in the decision. I made this call, and I stand by it for the health and resilience of the entire network.
– Nick Craver Mod
Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 21:23
1

@Nick wasn't aware you considered removing it before, this does change my view on this. Still, would be nice to announce such a change before it's done, as you take away a feature many people use on daily basis. Of course not everyone, not many, but still, some.
– Shadow Wizard
Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 21:25
2

@ShadowWizard totally fair, that wasn't high on the priority list under the removal circumstances here, but at least this meta post serves as a reference now. I'll make an effort to post to meta explicitly for future changes like this...but none are planned right now.
– Nick Craver Mod
Commented Mar 13, 2017 at 21:27

Add a comment |

Correct minor typos or mistakes
Clarify meaning without changing it
Add related resources or links
Always respect the author’s intent
Don’t use edits to reply to the author

create code fences with backticks ` or tildes ~
```
like so
```
add language identifier to highlight code
```python
def function(foo):
print(foo)
```
put returns between paragraphs
for linebreak add 2 spaces at end
_italic_ or **bold**
indent code by 4 spaces
backtick escapes `like _so_`
quote by placing > at start of line
to make links (use https whenever possible)

<https://example.com>

[example](https://example.com)

<a href="https://example.com">example</a>

formatting help »
answering help »