So from https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-23056 it sounds like at least one of the problems we're having with Jenkins hanging is because of attempts to access the workspace of jobs through the UI - when a slave is slow or hanging and that kind of request is made, it can lock up the whole UI. I've contacted the Mahout team regarding their linking to javadocs in job workspaces, and am going to contact the Maven team regarding what looks to be build usage of bits from some of their jobs' workspaces, but I'd also like to nip this in the bud permanently by requiring authentication for access to job workspaces.
My thinking is that the only legitimate reason to be accessing the workspace is if you need to in order to debug a failed build - otherwise, if there's something that you want to be publishing from your build, you can use the archive artifacts functionality. Does this sound reasonable to everyone? A.
