User talk:Lotroadmin/Archive 4

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Image issues

Starting new section to discuss the on going images we've had since the migration to the new OS. Please try to add ?action=purge to the URL of the image page to see if that corrects any artifacts within the image itself. If that doesn't do the trick, please post the link below. --Lotroadmin (talk) 22:33, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

nope...

All of the Epic Battle pages have "images with white spots" when they display. In this particular case, the File page also shows all of the "dots." However, if you click on the thumbnail, THAT image does not.

When using "?action=purge" on the File page itself, after emptying the browser cache, the re-display takes quite some time, but no change in the image.

EUREKA!! -- Maybe I found a fix. (working from Safari in OSX 10.2)

Go to the "bad image" file page
Develop> empty caches
Open the Thumbnail in a new tab - dots do not show
redisplay the thumbnail appending "?action=purge" - no change in displayed image
Return to original file page (still bad)
redisplay the file page appending "?action=purge" -- dots gone!
Visit original page -- dots all gone!

Is the sequence completely important? Like pitchers who never change their socks while winning -- who knows? I suspect using the "?action=purge" is clearing the "root" cache for that image. Don't know.

I'll go clear the other Epic Battle images.

Category:Helm's Deep Location Images

Bingo! using "?action=purge" on the "thumbnail" is apparently the trick! One presumes that clears/reloads the base cache for the image.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 01:07, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Yup :) I've been looking for a maintenance script to just rebuild all of the resized images, but that doesn't exist. The other option is to blast the image cache and deal with the server load for a few days. Let me know if we think this is worth the pain (slow load times, timeouts, etc for about 3 days) --Lotroadmin (talk) 05:27, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like the kind of a thing easy for a bot to do. I think it would be a "simple" read the page with "?action=purge" -- just doing one page every 30 seconds or so -- I think that was how long it was taking doing it manually. Matt?

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 09:10, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand the solution. Is the suggested solution to open each File (e.g. File:Helms_dike_promotional.jpg?action=purge ) with the suffix ?action=purge once every 30 seconds?

If so here are questions:
- How many images are we talking here? If the plan is to "purge" 1 image every 30 seconds and you have more then 8640 images (3 days worth at that rate) then its a wash, cause it will take longer then 3 days to execute the script. But if timing doesn't matter and we are just trying to avoid the server lag, well then I can put something together. :)
- It will take time to build a script too, maybe a day, I could run it myself or I could put it together then give it to Lotroadmin to execute, it will probably be PHP using the wiki's API. Perform an API query, slowly execute each of the 50 results (usually max) then, set the offset to the next 50 and re-execute, looping thru all the images from A-Z.
- Not sure if I have API access to a title search to get the master list of images (would I search for a common name like "File:")? Usually disabled. There is probably a better way too. I could use a generator but that's still pretty new to me and would take a bit to learn and setup.

Matthew.zellmer (talk) 21:24, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

So if you noticed the pain in the last day, it was because i decided to rebuild the thumbnail. Let me know if you see any more issues, if not I might quickly archive this topic as I hope we are past it :) --Lotroadmin (talk) 07:01, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

So that's what that was about. Glad to see it was for a good cause and hope it was worth the trouble. Nothing like a good thwak to get stuff working again, right? :) Sethladan 12:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Everything looks fixed over at the cosmetics pages, *cheers* --Savi (talk) 17:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

The Image files all seem fine. See "Randomly - page loads take "forever" below for the only issue I have seen, and which may be completely un-related.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 21:05, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Haunted by LiquidThreads

A very trivial issue, but one to which I can't immediately figure out a solution: It seems like some of the old LiquidThreads talk pages are still around in some form, or at least generating links somehow. See https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere/Categorization_Guideline for an example. Tried recreating and then deleting the pages, but that didn't seem to take - is there a way to manually check the database/clean them out or something? Sethladan 00:10, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

You are asking the hard questions...lol... I've asked this question on MW, so hopefully their response is quick. Sounds like it could be something as simple as removing the tables from the database, but perhaps I re-install LQT and manually remove them. --Lotroadmin (talk) 05:25, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into it! If it weren't a hard question, I wouldn't ask it; I'd just fix it my own danged self, hahah. :) Like I said, not a big deal but I'd been occasionally clearing out old/dead pages and files, so I happened to notice it. Sethladan 13:38, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Re: Talk pages watchlist

Yes, I have noticed that the link follows the move when I moved my own archive. :)

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 00:36, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Randomly - page loads take "forever"

Since you did the "image thing" (whatever it was you actually did), it has seemed as if you purged anything that was any sort of "cached" information, as in "old."

Example, I just went to look at my old archive file.User:Magill/talk-archive-1 The page loading bar in the browser starts to fill - and just sits there for "a while"; then the page goes blank and the bar moves - and it just sits there again for "a while." So, after about a minute or so, I give up and go look at something else. When I go visit another page and come back, the page loads "instantly" as one would expect. The kind of effect one would expect if stuff was being retrieved and the page being rebuilt. There is nothing exciting on the page, it is not even that long... just old, as in "un-accessed" for quite some time.

I have seen this randomly on other pages as I'm wandering around working on things. Some are "obvious" candidates for "image related" i.e. they DO have many images on them. But those also, once "loaded" re-load quickly. Clearing my local caches (or switching browsers) doesn't make a difference. I have no way of knowing how various "edge-cache" servers between my location and the Server are behaving.

Traceroute doesn't tell me anything useful other than the path goes off from Comcast through Sweeden (telia.net) before popping ont the gigabit backbone of (he.net) -- where I suspect it is doing IPv6 as everything from there out is not responding (* * *) --- although I am up to 30 hops by the time I give up. Interestingly, I get different results when using OSX's traceroute (nominally BSDs) compared to using Apple's Network Utility traceroute, again making me think IPv6 issues. Of course, I don't know how much good traceroute is with "the cloud" these days.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 20:58, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

The loading time is because it's recreating thumbnails. Most pages are fine now, but there's probably another 15% of thumbnails left that needs to be regenerated. Unfortinutely it's page views that spawns off the job for that, there is no server side script that does this. I've pointed this out to MW, but if they do come up with a solution, it doesn't help us out now. Things will get back to normal, and those images artifacts will be corrected too. --Lotroadmin (talk) 22:57, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Ok, it "smelled" like a cache issue, there were just no clues other than time.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 23:45, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Is the "Swirlie" broken for the Maps?

I noticed this the other day -- the "swirlie" for "Tooltip Coords" seemed to only display a box, no longer a swirlie.

Today I don't find even a box on the couple of North Downs locations I was just looking at.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 21:53, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Someone deleted it because they thought it wasn't being used, i restored it. Because I don't know how to insert an emoticon, i can't point a finger at anyone, so you will have to use recent changes to discover who :) --Lotroadmin (talk) 23:07, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Woops! Definitely did not realize it was being used, my apologies - thanks for the restore. I added a reference to the gif on the template doc to remove it from unused images. --Savi (talk) 13:26, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Error creating thumbnail

Error creating thumbnail: /usr/bin/timeout: the monitored command dumped core <censors>/includes/limit.sh: line 59: 21593 Segmentation fault /usr/bin/timeout $MW_WALL_CLOCK_LIMIT /bin/bash -c "$1" It has been suggested that this page be merged with This category needs to be merged with Category:Class Trait Icons. Please discuss on the talk page.

This is while trying to use the "Template: Merge" tag. I'll try to do it manually as I know which Icon it is. it is an svg file. - Category: Ambox Images

That didn't work, (?action=purge) trying delete and reload.

Ok, deleting the .svg image and replacing it with the .png version "represents a work-around." But I guess the .svg issue is a separate one.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 23:44, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think replacing a SVG with PNG files is even remotely the answer since they are completely different image formats. vector vs raster formats. Vector has a huge advantaging on resizing. It is possible to experience these timeouts when there are several thumbnail operations in progress, but this eventually will work itself out. These "timeouts" a big part of the slowdown earlier in the week.. Feel free to restore the SVG and point me to the page with the timeout and I will see what's going on. --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:55, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

The file is:

-- the thumbnail still has(generates) the error message.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 17:32, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Did a tweak to the shell memory limit and that seemed to fix that one. Let me know if you find any more --Lotroadmin (talk) 05:43, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Maintenance

I am wondering if there is an established time of user inactivity before their player character pages should be considered abandoned and thus deleted? As an example...User:Sakari344/londorian was made/last edited in 2011 (as were the last user edits). I would assume that after 1 yr+ of inactivity such pages could be wiped (they are easy enough to recreate if they do come back after a year of absence). Is there a written 'policy' about user inactivity, etc? --Savi (talk) 14:51, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

This like many other similar "questions" about LOTRO-Wiki are NOT codified. Or if they are, I have not found them. Should they be? That is part of the question/issue behind the Great Documentation Project. (User:Magill/Project-Documentation)

As far as "old" user pages:

Are there a significant number of such pages so as to make their existence a "real issue."

Does the existence of those pages impact server performance?

Note, in my understanding of MediaWiki -- as you point out, deleting those pages does not prevent them from being recalled -- Not because they are being re-loaded from an off-line backup, but because all that "Delete" does is remove a pointer in (I'm guessing) the main namespace. The fact that the page can be trivially rolled back instantly, implies that it's still "on-line" and merely needs to be "re-linked."

I don't disagree that such pages are "untidy" but other than maybe filling up "Special Pages" I don't have an issue with them.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 21:51, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

There's a very minor server hit per page, but nothing I would worry about. For the player character pages, I would leave them around, i'm sure their owners will gloat about them from time to time. Now pages without any substantial content, perhaps a weakly defined page then lets flag it for review such that we can walk through an example of what we want to keep or remove. For the example you linked, there's really not enough there to keep (just 3 sentences), but if there was an image, background description, something interesting, then I feel we should keep it. --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:37, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Alrighty, will leave them be then unless I come across any blank ones (or close to). Good luck with your documentation project Magill, tis a great undertaking! :) --Savi (talk) 13:35, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

A related topic is: {{Template:Obsolete}} See: Category talk:Obsolete

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 01:09, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been more aggressive with not-current pages lately. We've traditionally kept a lot of stuff around, but it does pile up and annoys me quite a bit. (So do the old player pages and images that Savi found, but they don't get in the way nearly as much.) It's "nice" to have old things around for historical purposes or to keep for posterity, but I'm not sure it warrants the extra person-power that maintaining it eventually entails (I realize the technical overhead is relatively minimal). Sethladan 01:22, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

For the old pages, do we want to create archival namespaces (for Main, Item and Quest) where we can move obsolete pages to? Search selection will be disabled by default? Another option is to move the pages to "name (obsolete)". In both cases a move without a redirect might be preferred if we want to properly cleanup obsolete pages. There will be side-effects though with tooltips, for obsolete pages and external sites linking to those pages. What do you guys think? --Lotroadmin (talk) 17:18, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I view the wiki as a reference to the Current game, so I would simply remove, rather than archive, the obsolete items,skills,etc since they are no longer in the game. If certain things change, there could be a section on said page about its 'history', but other than that I view the obsolete pages as mostly unnecessary myself ^_^ But tis just my 2 cents worth ;) --Savi (talk) 19:23, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Adding other Languages to Lotro-Wiki

I would like to pick up the discussion about multiple language support. Is has been discussed before:

User_talk:Lotroadmin/Archive3#Other_languages_.40Lotro-wiki.3F

I am willing to start the effort and, once we have the technical means to do so, begin translating key pages to German (my native language). I have high hopes that other users will notice and chime in and start helping to translate as well.

From the technical side, I am not sure what the best way of implementation would be - but I would like having a similar feature like on Wikipedia, where a Language Navigation section is provided and active links are shown for pages that have a translation available.

Well, the goal of this thread is mainly to restart the discussion about this, and to state my intent to offer help with German translations. I think this would be a valuable addition to the lotro-wiki and has a great potential to attract more users and contributors. I am aware that no single person will be able to translate the complete content (far from it) but I am willing to actively search for more people on the German servers I play and motivate them to translate a few pages here and there! --Gwindur (talk) 02:03, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Currently I have the following concerns with enabling the translate extension on this wiki:

search results will include translated pages as there's no way to select languages, I've brought this up to the translate extension group, they realize it's not ideal, but they haven't indicated this will be addressed.
having enough editors to translate a minimum set of pages, and really define what that minimum number of pages would be
having moderators police the pages for spam in much the same way that do today.

If we can resolve the second too, maybe we can start using the translate feature with the hopes that the search issues will be resolved down the road. --Lotroadmin (talk) 23:41, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Can someone elaborate on what this "Translate" option does/how it does it.

Are we talking about piping pages through "google translste" on the fly?

Are we simply going to point to "another page" of the same name, but in a different language?

Does a person simply set a flag -- Show me only pages in Language X?

In answer to "the minimum number of pages" -- that answer is partially dependent upon how this whole thing works; AND it also relates to the question I asked long ago -- how do people A) get to the Wiki B) navigate the Wiki.

Assuming that people go to the main-page and follow links from there...

Main page
Any page linked to "directly" from the Main page

Assuming they arrive from Google --

Any page (Whatever is "trending" -- can we find that out?)
Any page linked to from any page

Assuming they arrive at the Main page and use the WIKI search function

Main Page
Whatever is "trending"

Obviously, the first assumption is the easiest to plan around.

There is also the inverse situation to consider. Those "other language" Editors might want to create their own pages -- not simply work as drones translating the work of others.... so we need reverse translation as well.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 00:53, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Probably the best usage of the translate extension is to review https://mediawiki.org. There's really a few more extensions involved but mostly it's the work of the translate extension and the translated pages really become subpages. The subpage approach to me is a clever idea, and probably is preferred, but devalues the search results, namespaces or perhaps something between namespace an subpages should have been created. As for folks contributing in a another language, well they would first have to create the english page, or stub it, before adding the translated page, perhaps not ideal, but i think could be manageable.

My views on the 3 issues raised by lotroadmin and the comments from Magil:

Being myself an experienced searcher of information in at least 3 languages, I don't expect this to be a big problem, even if the translation exstension devs would not address the problem somewhere down the road. Reasoning: The typical user I expect here will have a good feeling for using LANGUAGE only search terms, that won't trigger many results in any other language (i). Users will be able in localising or checking the English root site and checking for available translations from there (ii).
I hope we don't have to quantify a minimum amount of translated pages that is 'worth the effort'. I'd rather carefully try to identify good candidate pages for translation, i.e. pages that are stable and don't exhibit drastic changes. If we aim for a good number of translated pages, we should make it as easy for translators as possible. I don't think there is a way around the mentioned translate extension mainly for one reason: "If you have ever tried to translate content in MediaWiki without any tools, you know it does not scale. The translated versions get out of date and there is no way to track changes to the master page, so there are many half-translated and outdated translations without a clear overview of the overall status. Translators often feel discouraged when they can not work with small manageable pieces of text. Translators don't find what to work on or what needs updating. The users also get confused by outdated information.[quote from translate extension help page]"
Yes, keeping spam at bay is important and translators will have to be joining the efforts. -- Gwindur (talk) 01:22, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

A few comments on other issues raised above:

Instead of 'trending' pages, I would select among 'frequent visisted but stable' pages for a good set of translating candidates.
I don't see a way doing this without use of the language extension. Having English root pages and marking these up for translation is the only managable way to start this (in my humble view). This will also minimize initial reverse translations as it implements a preferred direction of translation. Later, we might come up with a policy to at least have an English stub in place before adding a page in a translated language.
The origin of how they locate content (using google or wiki search) might not be a big problem in case we use the language extension. You either get the English root page, or if a translation was available AND you searched for language specific content (e.g. "Buch 8 Riddermark Kapitel 4" or "Wette in der Steppe"), you would locate the tranlated content directly. -- Gwindur (talk) 01:22, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Any chance of adding the extension to the test version of the wiki so we can quit dancing around how and whether or not it'll actually work? :) Sethladan 03:03, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Fine Seth :) I will set up the wiki for the extension.. There's been a few volunteer "rounds" of layoffs at work, so shortly when i'm not celebrating a co-workers departure, I will set up the extension (god willing it will be very soon, for such a sad occasion) --Lotroadmin (talk) 04:07, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Wasn't trying to be pushy, sorry! Just seemed like you're going to keep getting bothered about this until something gets done one way or the other. I'm not sure how a "volunteer" layoff works, but that's a shame that you're losing so many people lately. As always, you get to these wiki things when you have time, but send off the comrades in style when you can. (You know I'd just write you a danged extension if I could, but that's still a bit above my reach.) Sethladan 05:17, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Translation 2

Stray thoughts #1 -- Special:PopularPages -- can this be "tweaked" to be "more refined." I.e. I assume it show popularity since "time zero" (whenever that is.) So therefore, can this time be set?
Stray thoughts #2 -- Does it make sense to "prototype" a translation via "Google Translate" and then let individuals "correct" that translation. I.e. you can feed an entire page to Google Translate, not just phrases, and get back a translated page. This page can then, be saved in source form and posted to the Wiki.
Stray thoughts #3 -- I don't know the ins and outs of the various Google Tools an development "stuff -- Is there any kind of "interface" into Google Translate which would allow us to automatically invoke it?

https://translate.google.com/about/intl/en_ALL/

Stray thoughts #4 -- related to #3 -- Chrome includes some kind of "automatic translation feature."
Stray thoughts #4 -- Google Summer of Code -- I'm too far removed from Computer Science these days -- so I have no idea what this is. (i.e. the implications of it.) I use Mac Ports and all I know is the following announcement from MacPorts...

I'm pleased to announce that The MacPorts Project has been accepted into Google Summer of Code 2014 [1] -- a program where Google pays students to work for Open Source projects over the summer.

https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2014

https://trac.macports.org/wiki/SummerOfCode

I don't know if we have anywhere near the resources to be able to engage in something like this, but it is a way to "community source."

I have just "discovered" -- the Wikimedia translators' portal/noticeboard

Oh good! The tutorial there seems to be exactly the kind of information that I was hoping to get. -- Gwindur (talk) 23:33, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 14:00, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Hrm.. where to dart.. #1 no, but email me for the URL for AWSTATS which will give you top pages for the month, sadly you can't repost any of it.

2, My guess but google translate sucks... just a guess.. i'm converting TO english and pretty much knows it sucks. It might be a reasonable starting point, but in now way shape or form should be be declared as a starting point
3, read #2

4i think this is outside of our scope here, but i can push for the translate/search to be fixed. not a bad idea for that.

--Lotroadmin (talk) 04:11, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Spammers

I have been seeing increasing amounts of accounts created just to spam gibberish, etc; Has there been any change in the creation process? I'm wondering... if there are simply so many of these junk accounts getting through if there is something that could be changed? Back when I first applied the cat thing never let me through, and I believe you added my account individually (either through the old forum that used to exist or email, can't recall)...would an 'instruction page' to email x or post x and then be manually added a possibility or are the legitimate accounts created way to numerous for that to be effective? On the other hand...if its a legitimate person just trolling I suppose there is not much to prevent that... --Savi (talk) 16:35, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Ideally what we need is to prevent unconfirmed and normal users from adding URLs to sites not on the white list. To over generalize the issue here is that MW doesn't put a lot of wait behind security as a way to stop spam, so for that they haven't associated the "add url" hook to group memberships. The Confirmedit extension hasn't done that either even though this was a highly desirable bug in the past, but there is now a hack of a patch that blindly blocks all unconfirmed users from adding a URL. We had a good run of spam free months when the confirmedit was "broken" and new users couldn't add URLs to any page, but also this broke account creation for a few web browsers (IE mostly). So lets say the stars aligned and we got what we needed, this wouldn't prevent the spammers from creating an account and adding content to a page, but only prevent them from adding URLs. There is no perfect scenario, but if you notice a spammer that you can email, let me know, we can at least ask them to stop. --Lotroadmin (talk) 03:45, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Not sure if a security hole has popped up for bot spammers or real spammers are just attacking with a vengeance, but for the last 50 account creations (Special:Log/newusers), only 6 of them haven't been spam.--Savi (talk) 13:52, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

If it continues I will swap out the cats and dogs captcha for something else. To bot this would take a very skilled coder unless the extension has a backdoor/bug. --Lotroadmin (talk) 17:52, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I will keep watching for a few more weeks if you wish. Update: The current last 50 creations include 14 without any contributions yet, but disregarding those the spam count is 32/36 (only 4 had legit edits). I would recommend changing the captcha if possible, but I have no idea how difficult/time consuming that process is. --Savi (talk) 13:40, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it's fair to expect one or two a day with any captcha as those could be actual oxygen breathers, but if we see a burst of edits in an hour or on a cadence then those could be spambots. The other captcha options haven't been this effective, but if they are scripted attacks, a change might slow them down. An earlier version of the cats and dogs captcha had a bug that prevented the default group from adding a URL to a page, this nearly stopped all spam attacks, but also annoyed new users trying to link a fansite for their kinship. I think most gave up adding links, but a few asked for help and we ended up just promoted folks after one or two edits. There is a patch available to the captcha extension that will block all URLs for new users, so we can bring the bug back.

We also could look for extensions that enhance the patrolled edits features by hiding new user's edits until approved. I've seen of these in the past that were beta, but if there are any stable ones available, we can try that. How active are we with patrolling edits? --Lotroadmin (talk) 22:45, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I think I'm the only one Patrolling... but I don't know for certain. (At the moment, I have one entry that I can't clear -- haven't found the "root" entry that needs to be cleared. The original page got moved.)

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 23:34, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I've been doing some patrolling, usually while thinking about what to do next. I have blocked a multitude of spam accounts and removed their links, putting the Delete Page template there instead. --Tharondir (talk) 08:05, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm -- definition/documentation time -- Help: Patrolling -- are there any changes that should be made to this page of instructions and information?

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 16:58, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I rarely do any patrolling myself...just occasionally glance at the recent posts to see what is going on. I suppose you are right about the daily possibility of ornery oxygen breathers, so perhaps there is no need for a change. I wonder if limiting the size of edits for new users for a day or two would have any impact or not, though that could also be a frustration for a legitimate editor who is just starting. But as you said its quite easy for someone who cares to write a message. As for the url block for new users, I've seen several spammers who just post a wall of random text without any outside links, so not sure its worth bringing the bug back.--Savi (talk) 17:04, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the spam cleanup :)

Yep no problem! The spammers usually start posting at around 11PM PST, and I'm usually still on then, so I just clean up everything. :) And yeah, in the edit summary I always write "Advertisement Links Removed" so that the spam links don't appear in the summary. SjsharksBoy (talk) 23:02, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the promotion mate, I'll do my best to try to keep the wiki free of spammers! :) SjsharksBoy (talk) 07:53, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Change to "Help" link in left column

The "Help" entry of the left column now points to:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/SpecialMyLanguage/Help:Contents which "redirects" to:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents

I assume that is part of the Language support. And an edit that needs doing.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 03:04, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Rather wild, i pointed it to the our help page. --Lotroadmin (talk) 03:38, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

The Special:Block user page's link to the Lotro-Wiki.com:Policy is dead

Could use your help, please join our conversation at User talk:Magill#The Block user page's link to the Lotro-Wiki.com:Policy is dead. I was talking with User talk:Magill on a solution for a dead link but I think you need to weigh-in on the solution. I am looking for a way to make it easy for everyone. Matthew.zellmer (talk) 11:55, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Closing this out. Thanks a ton for the help Matthew.zellmer (talk) 17:10, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Understanding Page Loads

I am doing a bit of work on the deeds and adding some categorytrees. I wanted to understand the impact on page loading for categorytrees. Do they suck up a lot of time on the server to query? Do pages download slower because of the category data? <categorytree depth=1>Angmar Deeds</categorytree> Matthew.zellmer (talk) 17:10, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I haven't noticed a performance issue with categorytrees on the server. For users that don't log in, the server will try to deliver a compressed cache page, if the page doesn't exist then it page is delivered and the cache is built. For editors, there's very little cached content delivered from the server, but your browser may choose to cache items. In the past i've made comments on extremely large pages that take several seconds to load, server-side cache or not, this will be noticeable by the user. Typically the wiki page itself isn't a concern here but the number of additional objects needed to be downloaded, this includes additional files like javascript, css and images. If you do notice a slow page with a category tree let me know and I can dig into it.

If you notice on the main page, i converted the images to a sprite to reduce server load and also reduce page load times. This isn't something we would want to do everywhere as it makes it harder to update the images. If there were several common images used by a template, then sprites would reduce page load times for the users. There was an automatic sprite generation function on MW wish list but it seems this was dropped. MW has greatly improved how javascript and css files are delivered over the last several releases, but our tooltips bypasses with the hardcoded link to a user page. I don't find our tooltips slow, so it hasn't made it to my todo list to see if i can improve it.

Now if you update a template that impacts a categorytree, then you might see page load time slightly increase as all the data in the various caches are expired and not to mention several jobs are queued to update the various pages. It's interesting the amount of caching enabled here though, we have file cache, php object caching, memcache and browser cache. If we had two servers running we would enable squid as well, but the file caching seems to do the trick.

--Lotroadmin (talk) 03:12, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

The only thing I notice effecting page load times is uploading a new image. But that does seem to be strictly on the first access after upload; which I assume to be the cacheing by the image system.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 19:30, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Ok that's good. I didn't see any issue with the categorytree either but just wanted to make sure. I figure that if categories are made right, we can use the categorytrees to populate a lot of the hard-coded lists in the wiki. Lists of quests or deeds, specifically for the region pages. Is there a categorytree type widget that will allow a small image to be assigned as well? That would be perfect. Matthew.zellmer (talk) 11:54, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Changes to Left column

I notice that the left column has changed.

Minimally missing is "Recent discussions"

The contents of "Tools" also seems to change. (other than the admin entries - block/email/rights, etc.).

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 19:27, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

This was very strange. The effect seemed to be directly related to other activity on the Wiki. I went to patrol a number of new pages. These took a very long time to load. And would no update the "patrol" tag. Ultimately they did all load and I was able to patrol them. At that point, I noticed that the left column was "back to normal."

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 23:12, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

What you were seeing was most likely cache related, the disappearance of the side-bar typically is a server-side cache issue, but it's possible that the auto-restart of a service caused memcache and file cache to get out of sync. Random pages will have the correct side bar so it's sometimes hard for me to notice the issue. It's rare, but typically i have to clear the file cache if i restart memcache and I have that scripted as such for manual updates and other goodies, but for systemd auto restart, it's not that convenient to wipe the file cache. --Lotroadmin (talk) 05:42, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Category Page formatting

I am working with category pages and I noticed that I cant seem to put things below (like a footer) the "Subcategories" and "Pages in category" sections. I want to put a Deeds-infobox template below these Category:Dunland like its in the other pages e.g. Dunland. Is there a way to do this? Matthew.zellmer (talk) 12:03, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not aware of anything -- you can put stuff in the upper part of the page (the "edit section"), but the lower part is automatically generated by MediaWiki.

Looking at MediaWiki.org, there doesn't seem to be any Category page or extension with that kind of layout.

I suspect that the php: Wikia code/includes/CategoryPage.php would have to be modified, and that modification would then apply to ALL pages. Don't know.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 23:53, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Category pages are just one of those things set in stone by MW. It's been debated a few times over the years about if we should make more use of the category pages, but I always point out it's not part of the main namespace and it's possible to be excluded from searches. As I think it's important to understand how searches could exclude category pages, I do think they are highly valuable. For those that want to include a list of pages in an article by using categories you can take a peek at my user page and review the Dynamic Page List extension in use. It's a lot like CategoryTree extension, just you can find pages that intersect multiple categories. --Lotroadmin (talk) 00:29, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I was afraid of that. No problem. I will work with what I have Matthew.zellmer (talk) 18:25, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Tooltips on other domains

Hey, I created a small documentation on how to add the tooltip to external pages: HowTo. Could you (or anyone else) try this with his/her own domain? I don't quite remember, but the tooltip should work without modifications in most circumstances. --EoD (talk) 03:06, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Missing Articles

Would you weigh in on Help Talk: Contents Missing Articles.

Primarily on the subect of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) -- there are apparently multiple extensions which deal with this. Are any of them reasonable?

Do you have any other suggestions?

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 23:14, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

character issue with Ã that should be í

I've notice a few character issues that have creeped up since the upgrade to MW 1.23. If there's others please list them here. I think i might be best to move the page and hope links fix themselves. --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:58, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Good grief. Does every update come with a character conversion gotcha? Sethladan 03:26, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

This is the first one i've noticed in a long long while, MW folks have done some language simplifications to help with translations but that really shouldn't have been an issue for us. My guess is the table itself was updated to a more language friendly type.

For page names, just move them with no redirect, will be enough. If you don't have the no-redirect option, and you want to help clean this up, let me know and we get you the right permissions.

For file names, just move them, again with no redirect. You might have to preview pages to rebuild the images.

I haven't noticed an issue with the text, just with the titles....

--Lotroadmin (talk) 03:32, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I have a way to fix page titles and file names, just list out any issues here and I will address. I don't have a solution yet for categories pages names yet so hold off on listing those here, but feel free to manually fix them. --Lotroadmin (talk) 06:16, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Lol -- 223 of them! At least that is how many "item moved" emails I got! Which was also interesting as I don't think I've ever gotten emails for "moved" pages before.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 14:32, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Possible related issue -- "Talk_Pages_Watchlist" is Throwing an error. "A database query error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software."

Generated by: from User:Magill/ToDo -- (right hand column)

[https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php?namespace=&target=Talk+Pages+Watchlist&days=30&limit=250&title=Special%3ARecentChangesLinked Recent Discussions]

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 14:48, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I got the runaway emails, too. Sometimes MW changes the default settings when they do an upgrade, so I had a good bit of clicking "delete" on my iPad last night. I can also confirm the "database error" for the Talk Pages Watchlist. Sethladan 16:18, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Yikes, sorry about the emails... I will report that back to the extension author as a feature request. Some will see the new extension installed if you have admin rights, but maybe I need to move it to bot accounts only. The mass rename extension submits everything as jobs, so i'm rather shocked it didn't mark as a minor edit.

Let me know if you see the database issues still or anymore name issues. I still don't have a solution for the categories and might have to enlist the services of a bot guru. --Lotroadmin (talk) 19:09, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Guys! Looks like someones script or changes did make it to the categories already. Here is a region list and every sub category were changed, caused numerous link breaks, whoever changed it didn't leave a record in the page histories at all.

Matthew.zellmer (talk) 20:59, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

The MW update to 1.23 broke page titles, filenames and these categories you mentioned (and tons more).. I've only addressed the titles and file names, but not the categories. You can't move a category name, but you have to copy the contents manually to the new page, which will correct all the broken links related to categories. So these categories with the wrong special characters I hope to address tonight or tomorrow morning, but they might have to be botted. --Lotroadmin (talk) 21:26, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I suppose we should make a list of those names with special characters -- unless there is some way to search for them?

So far I have seen:

LothlÃ³rien
Nan CurunÃr
The Delving of FrÃ³r
User:Fingolwë
EsteldÃn
(And of course all the other 200+ individual pages)

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 00:41, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Talk Pages Watchlist is still generating the error.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 00:43, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

A page I just manually moved -- Quest:Thane LÃ©oferth of Brockbridge -> Quest:Thane Léoferth of Brockbridge

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 02:01, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I've queued up 314 pages to be fixed with that criteria, sorry for any emails :( --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:09, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I changed my default on edits to 'minor', let me know if you are still getting the annoying emails. I've also done a few more fixes, but i've noticed differences in accents for a few of the remaining broken links. With the categories, I think the best solution is to manually fix it.. you have to find the old category with the wrong special character and then find the wanted category and copy the contents.. I will hopefully work on it tomorrow --Lotroadmin (talk) 07:40, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I only got about 25-50 emails after you posted the 314 message. I didn't think to count them, but I don't believe there were more than 2 pages worth (i.e. 25/page).

Talk Pages Watchlist is still throwing errors.

Interesting -- My patrolling list -- "title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500&days=60&hidepatrolled=1 Patrolling]" suddenly picked up a bunch of items going back to 17 May -- it had been current.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 14:12, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

The Talk Pages Watchlist needs to be split up, it's hitting the mysql query limits I have set. This was most likely caused with 1.23 upgrade upsizing a database table, (and also chaining the format which is causing some of the special character pain) --Lotroadmin (talk) 16:00, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I disabled the "email me when pages on my watchlist are changed" setting, so no more inbox spam here. I'd never had that enabled, so I figured the upgrade changed it (as we've seen happen with some other settings at times). Talk page watchlist was always fragile, although a clever enough idea (Gwen's, I think?); time to go think of something else, heh. Off we go to hunt categories first...! Sethladan 17:27, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what (if any) tools you have on hand for this kind of stuff, but a little work with the MediaWiki API produced this list of categories with Ã in the title. Working through it manually from the top down, hopefully in a way that's not breaking anything. Sethladan 05:43, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

My only tools are the wanted category list and the search bar where I replace the special character with a space. Which might be incomplete, but a start. The broken redirects have caught a few of my mistakes and a few remaining fixes left that you can't bot. It's like the wrong special character is an actual character we use, so bottling it would cause more harm than good, but again that list is probably incomplete too. --Lotroadmin (talk) 06:28, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't remember ever seeing an A-with-tilde before on the wiki, so I figured anything with that character in it was something needed fixed. If it is incomplete, then I guess we'll just have to find the rest as we come across them. Sethladan 18:31, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Just wanted say thank you guys for all your work on the fixes! Keep it up! Matthew.zellmer (talk) 21:04, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Talk pages watchlist

The Talk Pages Watchlist needs to be split up, it's hitting the mysql query limits I have set. This was most likely caused with 1.23 upgrade upsizing a database table, (and also chaining the format which is causing some of the special character pain) --Lotroadmin (talk) 16:00, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Ok... so what does that mean/imply. As I understand it, this was some kind of local "something" which generates the page.

Since it throws an error when you try to edit it, how do we go about changing it?

I suppose the first thing to do would be to slice off the OLD "User Talk" pages portion, as that probably contains a HUGE number of "dead" user.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 22:51, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Can you access the source page and edit it via some magic Admin command? I have no idea how to circumvent the php link that causes that page to "auto-execute."

Or do you have to increase the msql limts; edit the page; and re-lower the limits?

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 01:11, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

I moved a chunk of code to a subpage: Talk Pages Watchlist/User Talk‎‎ that appears to have a bug in the 'older' section. I"m not sure what is causing the issue or the purpose of tracking the older user talk pages, but nothing shows up in the log related to this. Feel free to revert my edit and prune through the older section to find the offending line(s). --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:04, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Most interesting thing -- the list "selection header" has changed. It now shows:

Is this something which you did specifically? I haven't edited the page yet so I don't know if I can change it.

This also lead me to look at Patrolling -- and a bunch of items has suddenly cropped up on that list which were not there "yesterday."

I have to look at both of them more closely.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 18:43, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

I didn't change anything just moved enough text to the subpage to get it to update. --Lotroadmin (talk) 03:33, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I "shortened" the "User Talk" section significantly. Basically using the most current 40 in DPL. And then using members of the Contribution list to build the "older pages" list. That was easier than trying to find the bad entry in that other list. (I gave up after about the 3rd or 4th try.)

I assume that future changes to older pages will show up in the DPL, and they can be added "normally."

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 01:20, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Possible issue with sig after update

See: User_talk:KonaCoffee#Friend_List -- I don't know if there is a way to see what/if they have in their "profile" entry.

The sig is displaying the date/time portion, just not the beginning.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 22:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Seems okay with the default signatures, maybe an issue with custom sigs? --Lotroadmin (talk) 23:27, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Patrolling after the update

I have noticed that since this update, the patrolling list seems to stretch back "forever." -- with most of the items being ones which I had definitely patrolled before.

The implication being that the PREVIOUS update was marking things incorrectly.

I have also noticed that NOW the couple of pages which I was aware of that had "re-directs" under them that could not be marked "patrolled", now have re-directs popping up allowing them to be marked as patrolled.

At any rate, at this point, I'm working my way backwards marking pages as "patrolled."

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 23:19, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

To address some of the link updates after the special character renames, i've rebuilt all the links including special pages, but i'm not sure why that would make some reappear. I only see a few from the 30 day list of recent changes hiding patrolled. Are you seeing more? --Lotroadmin (talk) 23:56, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

One reason there are not quite as many in the immediate past is because I've been actively patrolling the list since the update.

The 30 day listing shows many more than a few. About 50 for May 8 alone. If you kick the list out to 60 days, (&days=60) there are several pages of items.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 13:55, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

If you kick the limits up to 90 days and 900 entries (&limit=900&days=90), the list of items to be patrolled simply keeps rolling on and on.

Many are pages which I know I have patrolled in the past.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 14:35, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

We've seen this happen (all [y]our patrolling work getting wiped out) on some previous updates, too. Someone can probably bot the patrolling (I dug out my PHP stuff yesterday anyway, so I can look at this tonight) all the way back, since we know that everything that needs to be checked (all the recent stuff) already has been. Sethladan 18:22, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

There ended up being about 1,000 (convenient number, hm...) unpatrolled edits stretching back a couple of months. I managed to convince Sethbot to run through them, so we should be all caught up now. Sethladan 04:08, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank You. - - - Now what do we do about the Talk Pages Watchlist? (see above).

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 04:54, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I love bots! I was going thru my watchlist and I can see all the work being done, you guys are working overtime to get things back to normal, thanks! I am seeing a lot of Special:Log/patrol "patrolled" entries in my watchlist for each of the pages I am watching. Now that I think about it, I don't remember seeing them before. Its like I somehow mananged to add the Special:Log/patrol to my watchlist. Is this normal or some odd artifact of patrolling a thousands edits in a day? Matthew.zellmer (talk) 12:27, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

example

(diff | hist) . . m Category:Wildermore Deeds‎; 21:18 . . (-744)‎ . . ‎Matthew.zellmer (Talk | contribs | block)‎ (removed duplicate dropdowns) [rollback 1 edit]
(Patrol log); 21:18 . . Matthew.zellmer (Talk | contribs | block) automatically marked revision 671913 of page Category:Wildermore Deeds patrolled

Interesting. I don't remember ever seeing patrol log stuff on my watchlist, and now it's popping up for me, also. There are a couple of minor changes related to the watchlist and patrolling in the MediaWiki 1.23 patch notes, so it's possible that something got introduced along the way (by accident or intent). A little annoying, heh: more distracting lines on the watchlist. Sethladan 14:51, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

@ Sethladan --- What happened? all of those patrolled items you botted, are back again! They WERE gone yesterday, but they have all returned.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 05:10, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I ran a script on sunday night to refresh category links for files, didn't work, but I'm now curious if this is the cause of are patrolling hardships. Seth if you can run it one more time, I promise not to re-run the script for at least a week :) --Lotroadmin (talk) 16:05, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Now that I have the PHP written, it's no problem at all to auto-patrol everything, so run the script as much as you need if it helps anything - even if you want to test your theory, heh. I'll get the bot going right now (or in five minutes, as soon as I switch to my Linux OS...) Sethladan 17:19, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

And done. 1761 this time, interesting. Wonder where the other 750-ish came from. (Who's "Redirect fixer"?) Sethladan 17:54, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Redirect fixer is a script, and it didn't do the best of jobs either lol... --Lotroadmin (talk) 19:27, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Sub page listing

While working the Talk Pages Watch list "Help talk" section" I stumbled upon the fact that there are a whole collection of "sub" pages which are not visible unless you know they are there.

It turns out the DPL will show them. Below is the "top 50" listing. Many of those pages are Liquid Thread pages. Which, I'm assuming, someone "recovered" at some point in time, but did nothing to make them "visible."

I've gone ahead and mashed the individual pages together but it is a tedious process, as LQT dropped all of the signature info in the text requiring that all of the articles become "unsigned"./

So I guess one question is -- is there another equivalent to "ls" than DPL?

(not yet done. breaking for dinner.)

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 21:04, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Not to sure what DPL or LQT is but I have some time for hand jamming fixes and bots to help it along as well. Give me an idea of what needs to be done and we can divide up the workload. Matthew.zellmer (talk) 21:53, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Feel free to delete the LQT pages, it was considered beta at the time we used it, I offered folks a period to migrate any text to normal pages, so anything left should be safe to delete --Lotroadmin (talk) 03:35, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

@Matthew.zellmer

LQT = Liquid Threads, an extension which was tried for a while about 2 years ago. It "replaced" Talk pages, by making them into Threads. It was an interesting extension, but it had lots of bugs. So it was abandoned.

DPL = Dynamic Page List, another extension, currently active, which can be used to generate lists of pages in specific namespaces.

What I was looking for was a way to list "all pages" ala the Unix "ls" command. The basic problem is -- the Wiki is a database, not a file system, let alone a flat file system, so conceptually, it isn't even a comparable concept. The closest which comes is both the "CategoryTree" extension for Categories; and DPL for Namespaces.

@lotroadmin -- this is probably one of the only discussions retrieved (maybe the only one). From what I can tell, the retrieval simply made each LQT thread item its own page. I'm just stringing this one conversation back into one page, and putting it back into the "main stream."

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 03:50, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

start page update with Epic Battles

I have a request to update the initial start page with a link to the Epic Battles page. If you end up adding the link it probably should go in the bottom-left blue box under Instances. I understand your pretty busy with the MW fixes so no rush in getting back to me on the request. Matthew.zellmer (talk) 21:09, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Added. This sort of request can usually go on Talk:Main Page in the future. Good call! Sethladan 22:11, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Sure thing! Thanks! Matthew.zellmer (talk) 12:09, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Another "bug" in the recent update

The "default" header on both "Recent Changes" and "Recent Discussions" seems to be "backwards." (Or otherwise broken.)

I can't say if this display is truly "different" when compared to the "before," but the effect (i.e. the way it operates) certainly is.

The basic issue is -- Hide/Show -- are reversed, but not necessarily for all options.

"Show patrolled edits" -- is clearly backwards -- but not completely!!

If you click "Show Patrolled edits," it changes to "Hide" as expected.

However, the log page suddenly displays "(Deletion log)," "(User Creation Log)," and "(Move Log)" entries! But interestingly, none of the "(Patrol log)" entries.

You can easily see this by toggling the value. (With the rest of the values as shown.

Do those "patrolled entries" exist? That is another question.

My "Patrolling" listing AGAIN shows all of the entries I have patrolled in the past few days PLUS all of the entries that Sethledan's botting cleared the other day.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 16:00, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

It does seem to work, but yeah, it's different. The recent discussion isn't a MW special page, or at least not a normal special page, but a trick or fun feature that i'm sure isn't tested by MW. I will search the bug reports to see if there is anything related to this. I would have to understand how this custom discussion page works before i could file a bug against it. --Lotroadmin (talk) 16:28, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I rock! lol..

Have you looked at the contribute score page lately? A few days of edits rocketed me to the top 15. The Replace Text extension for the win? I will have to figure out how to remove the artificial credit as I clearly don't belong in that company, i'm only cleaning up.... after an MW update...or potentially after myself... The real takeaway from my artificial ranking, it is interesting how many pages have special characters. --Lotroadmin (talk) 05:44, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

You do rock! And hey, it's hard work beating up bots and regex replace engines. Give yourself some credit. You could use a bot account for that sort of work if you really want to keep your name out of the press; Contribution Scores extension can be configured to ignore bots (if you haven't already done so). Sethladan 09:42, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Possible certificate issues with IE

I was just having a conversation with one of my Player Council members from last year about "certificate" issues with I.E.

Unless you are aware of something happening, this is basically just an FYI.

This was my response to her last note.

SabrielofLorien

All I know is if I go to some loto-wiki.com pages I get a bad certificate error from IE. That entire page loses all the css formatting and there's a big box that pops up and says basically " Don't Go Here ". How that gets generated I don't know.[/quote]

Hmm. I am aware that there are issues with IE and security (again); personally, I use Safari 99% of the time with Firefox and Crome for specific testing issues. I've never had any certificate issues with any of those three.

SabrielofLorien

Last time I setup a site on GoDaddy I got a SSL certificate with the site, I presume that the same is true of lotro-wiki, that there is a certificate somewhere in the hierarchy. Maybe it's provided by the ISP.

I can say that mostly it's when you are hunting for information on older sections about LOTRO in the wiki, that have not been updated in a long time, like SoA items like instances and locations in Angmar.

LOTRO may not use SSL but a huge number of websites do, having a new MITM exploit revealed in the last 2 weeks surely didn't help. The fix is the same, deploy the code, revoke the SSL, buy a new SSL and re-deploy. However, it's already known that only the biggest and best organized companies have done the process correctly. Many smaller companies skipped the revoke part and went straight to deploy new. Since they are smaller (?) the risk is less that the data is still compromised but it's now a big swiss cheese of who's got the proper certs in the right order.[/QUOTE]

What I suspect you are encountering are issues with the banner ads. I frequently have had to get them purged from our list of "acceptable ad" sites -- there have been random ads that do have major Java as well as Flash issues. All the banner ads come from Google Adsense.

None of the Wiki pages are "static;" even the older SOA pages are generated on the fly by the MediaWiki software. This is especially true since sometime in May when all server side caches were purged in a major version upgrade.

As far as the Site Provider's certificate, if it was causing a problem, it would be with ALL pages from the Wiki, not random pages.

I'll mention the issue to others and keep an eye out for things to see if we find anything.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 00:29, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

It's a self-signed certificate, if they want to use the https over http, tell them to add the certificate to their trusted list. It's real expensive to get a SSL for a website like this and we've had them in the past but the companies all seem like fly-by-night companies. Not to mention most have been hacked several times over the last few years. Since this site only really offers information and doesn't require a password to use, it seems that a ssl certificate is overkill. I provide the SSL mostly for folks who are concerned about the password. But any security expert would point out that Adsense, customizable javascript and css, doesn't lend itself to a secure site even with an SSL cert. --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:19, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I found an inexpensive SSL provider, so all should be good to go. I also fixed a http vs https file cache issue, so hopefully no more pages with the missing formatting. --Lotroadmin (talk) 04:36, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

For kicks I also enabled SSL for logins, let me know if you have any issues. I just need to figure out how to hide the ads for the login page. --Lotroadmin (talk) 05:19, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Almost a day and no reported issues, that's promising. Now how do I block the NSA from spamming our site??? --Lotroadmin (talk) 02:11, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

User Pakorn

I've blocked this user (Pakorn) with some reluctance. They have shown a fair amount of creativity in creating several purely bogus quests and creatures. While tagged as vandalism when I've deleted them, I don't believe they were malicious actions as such, simply misdirected.

As they never created a User page I had no way of contacting them to ask "Why?" and hopefully re-channel their actions.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 13:22, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

When it seems like someone is being "silly" instead of downright vandalistic, I'll usually give them the benefit of the doubt and leave a talk page message to - as you said - re-channel. We've seen this on occasion in the past with younger editors, or people not actually realizing the purpose of the wiki. I'm not sure what this individual's not creating a user page has to do with it. Sethladan 14:42, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I've seen other MMO wikis make up content as a seasonal, but was a very orchestrated joke. As for just foolish pages, might be best to confront or a short ban. As for spam, the full wrath is warranted. :) --Lotroadmin (talk) 04:41, 26 June 2014 (UTC)