Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-1680494-20160709093243/@comment-24473195-20160711000055

The JoTS wrote: Ah, is that all? I came across that page, but I was sure I was recalling that there was more to it than just that. I was sure that it somehow put strain on the server or was inefficient. Thanks for the info. It is very ineficient, and that's why its disabled in wikipedia despite existing as a feature for close to a decade. What makes it scary is the fact that even if the content doesn't change at all, it keeps trying to fetch it from the particular wiki / server (see ), and wasting bandwith, cpu, and server resources. If it wasn't so inefficient, wikia could conceivably enable it for all wikis, but they are rightfully cautious of it.

Wikia simply allows it because it is incredibly convenient for help pages (and few other pages) because they don't change often, and also possibly because most wikis users don't even know it exists.