1262173 - Disable render-time switching of Zone URLS, commit waffle switch "dumb_doc_urls"

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Performance, enhancement)

Description

[John Whitlock [:jwhitlock]]

What problem would this feature solve?
======================================
Before Q3 2015, page rendering included looking for links in the content that would redirect to zone ULS, and changing them to the zone URLs.  For example, this URL:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Firefox

will 301 Permanently Redirect to

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox

The "dumb_doc_urls" waffle switch, enabled in July 2015 was an experiment to omit the render-time changing of URLs, and instead rely on clients getting the redirect. This made a significant improvement to site speed:

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/pull/3331#issuecomment-119973568

It does not appear to have a negative impact on search engines finding this content, and should be made permanent in the code.

Who has this problem?
=====================
Core contributors to MDN

How do you know that the users identified above have this problem?
==================================================================
Checking the setting of "dumb_doc_urls" requires at least one database hit per visitor, with the results cached in the session cookie.

Alternate code paths require testing, even though they are unused in the code.

How are the users identified above solving this problem now?
============================================================
Visitors get 301 redirects and a slightly slower experience

Do you have any suggestions for solving the problem? Please explain in detail.
==============================================================================
Change the code to make "dumb_doc_urls" the only code path. Delete the waffle switch and related code.  Delete the documentation for dumb_doc_urls.

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================

Comment 1

[John Whitlock [:jwhitlock]]

I was confused. This was fixed in https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/pull/3338 for bug 1177264, months before this bug was filed.

The dumb_doc_urls documentation was removed in https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/pull/4838.