GuildWiki:Software and technical issues/Bugs

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A Suggestion for a better user interface
Hey guys,

I can't say I love GuildWiki enough -- It really is one of the best websites that is game related which I have come across in my many years of computer gaming.

I am writing to describe a "feature" rather than a bug, but I couln't find the best suggestion box, so I used this area of the website.

I have a simple suggestion which I believe would make your site even more valuable than it is today. This idea just dawned upon me tonight and I don't have time nor the energy to focus efforts on your site, but you might want to take the suggestion -- or you might want to throw it out the window like an old banna peel that turned black due to complete disneglect.

You have maps which show all of the different areas in GW -- and I have not found much better anywhere on the planet. But -- as I was researching today how to do what I would like to do within the GW world, I found that your maps are somewhat limited in that they show particular areas but they don't show where the portals lead to.

I believe it would be a KILLER addition to your site to have someone go through your images of the world and add the linked portions of the world as a name to each portal on the image you currently have stored for each area of the world.

I would be happy to contribute to this effort if your website would like to extend the effort to add to your information in this respect.

If not -- because your website literally runs itself and your community is overwhelming, then that is ok too, but I wanted to write in as a gaming and game programming vet of 25 years to let you know that your site is "the bomb" and I cannot believe how much intuition and influence you people have over so many people. You really should should start to look for outside advertising or other ways to expand your "super" potential.

Thanks for listening!

-Jim R.


 * Not sure what you're suggesting, exactly. There's some people working on something vaguely related at Interactive map project, but I don't know if that's still going somewhere.  Which maps are you talking about?  Do you mean just editing the images or what?  --Fyren 00:13, 27 December 2006 (CST)

Section Line under Header not showing
Description: Section Lines under Headers do not appear.

Page: Any page w/o a TOC.

Problem: The first section header, if there is nothing before the header, has no line underneath the text.

Submitted By: &mdash; Rapta   (talk|contribs) 18:31, 29 January 2007 (CST)

Comments:

Not sure why this is happening, if it's a Wiki problem or something wrong with my browser. Seemed ok yesterday though. &mdash; Rapta   (talk|contribs) 18:28, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * Only seems to affect the first header, and when there's no TOC, it seems. &mdash; Rapta  [[image:Rapta_Icon1.gif|19px]] (talk|contribs) 18:29, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * After testing - it appears that this only happens if the header is the top-most item on the page. If there's a TOC, or even a   inserted to add a space, then the horizontal line shows correctly.
 * For testing, I'm currently using Win 2000sp4, IE6. But, I can try other browsers from home (although my guess is MW, and not IE, still worth mentioning what everyone is using). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:52, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * Right now, using Win XP MC SP2, IE6. &mdash; Rapta  [[image:Rapta_Icon1.gif|19px]] (talk|contribs) 18:54, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * I can't tonight - but you may want to poke through the release notes for MediaWiki v1.8 and 1.9. On Sunday GuildWiki was upgraded from v1.7.1 to v1.9.1. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 18:57, 29 January 2007 (CST)
 * It does appear to only happen in IE6. Not sure what changed yet, but it's probably due to the default CSS.  --Fyren 21:30, 29 January 2007 (CST)

S..l..o..w..
Anyone notice slowdown on the wiki today? Anyone know why? It's got me worried it may be a repeat of last time... O.O Could be me though but this is me checking to see if others are experiencing the same. --  Vallen Frostweaver  15:01, 5 February 2007 (CST)
 * Reacting a bit slowly to me too. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 15:11, 5 February 2007 (CST)
 * Well, I tried to start the crusade that I have been waiting to get to for a long time, but after deleting the first few images I gave up. Each page loads so slowly. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 15:30, 5 February 2007 (CST)
 * Slow for me all of yesterday and today. — Biscuits (talk [[Image:Biscuit.png]] contribs) 17:10, 5 February 2007 (CST)
 * Seems fine again now. — Biscuits (talk [[Image:Biscuit.png]] contribs) 07:30, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * same 58.107.53.89 18:28, 7 February 2007 (CST)

Today I couldn't access the wiki at all for an hour or so as the pages didn't load. -- (talk) 07:45, 8 February 2007 (CST)

I still don't see anything wrong at our servers. I've been refreshing recentchanges multiple times an hour since I woke up about 13 hours ago. I personally haven't experienced slowness so I don't think it's on our host's network's end. Anyone experiencing slowness might want to try doing a trace to gamewikis.org and seeing if there are problems like high ping or packetloss mid-route. --Fyren 07:51, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * No worries Fyren. It apears the lag monster has vacated the premises this time.  I've been on  for over an hour and it looks good now.  No lagging but I'll post again here if it comes back.--[[Image:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG]]  Vallen Frostweaver  08:08, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'll check ping and packetloss the next time the wiki slows down for me. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 08:34, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * Funny... it's slow again (and has been fow an hour or so)... it has to be something to do with traffic. Early morning here it was fine but not now.  I wouldn't mention this recurring slowness if it wasn't something new - not to mention others are experiencing it too.--[[Image:VallenIconwhitesmall.JPG]]  Vallen Frostweaver  13:26, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * I don't think it's related to traffic as I have had slowness in the hours when wiki has the least visitors. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 13:31, 8 February 2007 (CST)


 * Major slowdown for me on GuildWiki off-and-on all week, and at all hours of the day/night from multiple pcs using different internet providers. I've tried multiple sites in both .com and .org domains, and no other sites seems affected.
 * I started some tasks earlier today here and just gave it up due to the horrendous slowdowns. I suspect if it can't be resolved soon, it'll spur migration of people to the official wiki.  Sadly, I can't reach the official wiki from this PC due to a local firewall, so I'm pretty much S.O.L. on wiki participation at this point. :-(  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 13:51, 8 February 2007 (CST)

Another detail that may be of use. I can't even click the "back" button on my browser without it having to reload the page s..l..o..w.. as well.--  Vallen Frostweaver  14:27, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * Atm wiki lags like hell for me, but ping is normal and packetloss 0%. Hmm... --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 17:13, 8 February 2007 (CST)
 * I'm not experiencing the lag at present but I ran a trace anyways. I'm currently getting about a 40ms response time from gamewikis.org with zero packet loss on ping (approximately the same response time from trace) If you attempt to compare times I'm in the Central Time Zone of the US so you can approximate the number of hops it takes to get to the server.  Lojiin 17:19, 8 February 2007 (CST)

I did some further checking and sometimes squid's reported response times are spiking. Not sure what's causing it since numbers for CPU, memory, and hits/usage aren't out of the ordinary. As a shot in the dark, I restarted squid. Keep posting if you think things are slow. (I still haven't noticed slowness; some people I asked have, some haven't.) I might end up upgrading squid to see if that helps, but that'd mean a little downtime. --Fyren 05:59, 10 February 2007 (CST)


 * Earlier today I attempted to access GWiki but the server timed out, giving a generic The Page Cannot Be Accessed message. That was...hmm...three hours ago maybe. Now, I loaded up GWiki but it took like 5 minutes just to reach Main Page. Once I'm actually on it seems to speed up a little bit, however I'm not even going to bother logging in because in general things are really quite slow and I'm always hovering on the edge of another timeout. Thankfully I already ported some of my common reference materials off Wiki, so I'm not totally in the dark...but, as it is I can't work on any of my Wiki rewriting projects...or make that new template. :( 24.6.147.36 21:46, 10 February 2007 (CST)


 * Connection timing out frequently now. Ping and traceroutes seem fine though. — Biscuits (talk [[Image:Biscuit.png]] contribs) 12:25, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * Just did something that probably put the hard drives through a workout. We might end up swapping the drives around in our servers to better fit usage, but again, that'd end up causing downtime.  I'll post when we know.  --Fyren 13:13, 11 February 2007 (CST)


 * VERY slow, both from work (which routes through a corporate proxy in Europe), and from home (which uses comcast in the USA). No other sites affected.  I haven't tried as an anon to see if that helps - but logged in it takes a LONG time for pages to load, and about 5% of the time they simply time out with a generic page could not be loaded message (NOTE: took two tries to post this because the connection timed out). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 13:23, 11 February 2007 (CST)

I've been loading GuilWiki extremely slow for the past 48 hours, and no other website is loading slow like this. I did a tracert to gw.gamewikis.org, and I got this:

1    *        *        *     Request timed out. 2   55 ms    56 ms    54 ms  slkc-dsl-gw04-196.slkc.qwest.net [67.41.239.196] 3   54 ms    54 ms    54 ms  slkc-agw1.inet.qwest.net [67.41.238.25] 4  166 ms    54 ms    54 ms  slc-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.131.25] 5   71 ms    69 ms    70 ms  svx-core-01.inet.qwest.net [67.14.32.6] 6   70 ms    69 ms    70 ms  sjp-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.214.134] 7   71 ms    72 ms    71 ms  qwest-gw.sffca.ip.att.net [192.205.32.81] 8  102 ms   102 ms   102 ms  tbr1-p012101.sffca.ip.att.net [12.123.12.17] 9  103 ms   103 ms   103 ms  tbr1-cl1.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.10.5] 10  101 ms   102 ms   101 ms  gar1-p370.chail.ip.att.net [12.123.4.69] 11  367 ms   122 ms   226 ms  12.119.137.90 12  101 ms   102 ms   101 ms  alpha.gamewikis.org [216.86.149.248]

First one is my router, it always times out, but what is that 12.119.137.90? that one constantly comes back very high. - Entice789  (Talk | Contributions) 15:49, 11 February 2007 (CST)
 * Same thing with me. Very slow and sometimes doesnt load at all. I ran the same tests and got this:

Ping statistics for 216.86.149.248: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 24ms, Maximum = 26ms, Average = 25ms 1   11 ms     9 ms     5 ms  73.115.128.1 2    8 ms     7 ms     *     GE-1-37-ur01.whitebear.mn.minn.comcast.net [68.87.178.185] 3    7 ms     *        6 ms  te-8-1-ur02.shoreview.mn.minn.comcast.net [68.87.174.129] 4    6 ms     *       11 ms  te-8-3-ur01.shoreview.mn.minn.comcast.net [68.87.174.125] 5   11 ms     *        *     te-8-2-ar01.roseville.mn.minn.comcast.net [68.87.174.121] 6   24 ms    23 ms    22 ms  12.117.139.205 7   26 ms    25 ms    26 ms  tbr2-p033701.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.123.24.206] 8   25 ms    25 ms    24 ms  tbr2-cl7.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.10.45] 9   26 ms    24 ms    23 ms  gar1-p390.chail.ip.att.net [12.123.4.65] 10   47 ms    29 ms    25 ms  12.119.137.90 11   24 ms    22 ms    25 ms  alpha.gamewikis.org [216.86.149.248]

9 PM now, and the slowness has subsided...still takes more then it usually did though. - Entice789  (Talk | Contributions) 22:55, 11 February 2007 (CST)


 * If you're curious Entice, here is the ARIN info for 12.11.137.90:

AT&T WorldNet Services ATT (NET-12-0-0-0-1) 12.0.0.0 - 12.255.255.255 AT&T Worldnet Services ATTSVI-12-112-0-0 (NET-12-112-0-0-1) 12.112.0.0 - 12.119.255.255
 * 1) ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-02-11 19:10
 * 2) Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.
 * --Rainith 02:28, 12 February 2007 (CST)

Server clock
Why does it seem that the server's clock is always running slow? Currently it appears to be ~ 8 minutes slow for me. I checked my preferences to make sure it wasn't a time zone offset or something like that (I don't have it set to -7:52 or anything). Obviously this isn't a huge issue, but it is one that seems to be ongoing and we've had issues where the clock has continuously lost time before so I'm kinda curious. --Rainith 06:42, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * It's not using NTP since every time I ask Gravewit if our host has its own NTP server he doesn't respond and I forget about it, so like any other computer, it drifts. --Fyren 07:50, 10 February 2007 (CST)
 * all unix variants come with some form of NTP, and windows has it's own slightly broken NTP client built in. if you have console access to the box, i can give you instructions on implementing one of them. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 10:11, 27 May 2007 (CDT)
 * I don't know how to say this in any other way: reread what I said and try again. --Fyren 10:26, 27 May 2007 (CDT)
 * i'm going to guess by that cryptic comment you mean you don't have console access to the box, and must therefore wait for gravewit, as opposed to fixing it yourself. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 03:03, 28 May 2007 (CDT)
 * The key word I used: server. The key word you used: client.  --Fyren 08:22, 28 May 2007 (CDT)
 * nearly every NTP client is an NTP server, esp for unixes, who almost always use the offical deamon.
 * why would the wiki box need an NTP server, since it does not have an attached time source?. it needs an NTP client, since it needs to collect time from an NTP server that is connected to a timesource, like one of the US naval observatories --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 10:41, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

not working
There is a math button on the edit toolbar, but using it just displays the tags on the page instead of parsing the contents. I was trying to niceify the formula in Fast Casting. — Biscuits (talk contribs) 09:15, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * It's not actually supposed to be working (and I turned my toolbar off long before I ever got sysadmin access). I guess I could either remove the button or make it work.  You can also make a math image on Wikipedia and upload it here anyway.  --Fyren 14:11, 25 February 2007 (CST)
 * OK, didn't know about the Wikipedia thing. It would be good to have it working for those rare situations ;-) — Biscuits (talk [[Image:Biscuit.png]] contribs) 14:39, 25 February 2007 (CST)

Search engine is too text specific and doesn't allow for variables
Hello,

Just wanted to report that your search engine is too text specific and doesn't allow for variables such as spelling mistakes. But, in particular, it doesn't allow for plural forms of words resulting in a "word not found".

For example, you could type "insect carapaces" and no results are found but you must type "insect carapace" in order to get a result. I think it would be a relatively easy matter to deal with and I'm surprised no one has addressed that issue yet.

thank you


 * This has been discussed previously and a fix has been suggested iirc, but no one with the access to do the changes has done them. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 20:15, 19 March 2007 (CDT)


 * I've added a couple of redirects. I think redirects are the best solution to this kind of problem.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 07:29, 20 March 2007 (CDT)


 * I would vote against redirects. I see this as treating the symptom and not the problem. I could not imagine the work to add a redirect for every item in the game just so searches with a trailing 's' worked. It would seem that the code for the search could be changed to first run the search as entered and if the results are zero then rerun the search if there is a trailing 's' truncating the 's' during the search process. I am sure this can be said more logically but hopefully you understand my point. Glamtre 15:17, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

Pricing Guide
Hey there,

Just had an idea for something you could incorperate into each page belonging to a green item. Basically, every time someone sells or buys that item in game, they could log the price they bought or sold it for into a calculator. The wiki calculator could then find the average amount, and the lowest and highest that the item has both been bought and sold for, so players could quickly reference and judge how much items are worth on the relevent item's page.

Thanks for considering this.


 * Won't happen. Free market economy. ANet only does things to slow price depreciation or does things to speed it up (free UW & FoW weekend, lavish loot weekend, double green weekend, etc). Otherwise, it's up to the players. --Mgrinshpon 11:12, 30 May 2007 (CDT)
 * we don't keep market prices. it'd take to much effort to keep up, and would be too easy to fake. however, marketwatch is a rough aproximation of that. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 22:03, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

I understand that it could be tricky to maintain and incorperate however I believe it could be tweaked to make it more useful and overcome the price changing ANet introduces from time to time which Mgrinshpon pointed out. The reason I suggested this is because currently the only way I can get a rough idea of how much things are worth is through GuildWarsGuru Auctions. The problem with this is that you only get x amount of items for sale per green item type, if any at all. It does not give a pricing guide as such over x amount of time. I tried to look at marketwatch which Honorable Sarah suggested but it did not work for me.

I believe that what I suggested would be greatly beneficial for the community as it will allow players to see a rough guide for how much things are worth as opposed to pure guesswork created from GuildWardGuru Auctions. Bearing in mind this wiki is viewed by a vast amount of players, getting the staistics input would not be an issue. To counter the fact that ANet do change prices from time to time, then the calculator could be set to only work out averages etc on a cyclical monthly basis to reduce this chance of statistical innacuracy.
 * the possibilities for abuse, and the effort required to implement a price tracking system, are far greater then any possible benefit. imaging if someone were to vandalize that page and bilk someone out of cash before it was reverted? how would we even verify someone got 60k for a tanzit's defender if they claimed they did? implementing statistical safeties to prevent abuse would require massive recoding of the wiki underpinnings.
 * moreover, there is the cultural issue; wikis operate on two counterbalanced principles, 1) most edits are good faith efforts to improve, and 2) every edit can be verified. market prices are by their nature difficult to verify without a transaction log, and mediawiki isn't set up to handle massive transactional information (see drop rate data, which is all manually calculated). no market transactions can be easily verified or reverted.
 * finally, you seem to reference anet adjusting prices. Anet does not set the player to player prices for any item, and only sets the algorithm for trader prices (reference Game updates/20060313, where the trader algorithm was bugged, and a roll back was required). ectos have dropped by around 15% in the last two weeks, for no apparent reason. how could we predict, or even react, to a change that occurs seemingly without explanation? --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 01:14, 2 June 2007 (CDT)

I do agree that it is open to abuse, but surely it would be no different to any other data collection scheme such as Drop_rate/Inferno_Imp. That data applies to principle 1, yet noone but those who logged the imp data can verify it's accuracy (principle 2). On the drop rate page you showed me it even states "The hope is that with this project, players can make informed decisions instead of following rumors about drops." which is pretty much going along with the lines of how I imagine the data log for green purchase and sales would work. In answer to your last point, it's a difficult issue to overcome. The only thing I can currently think of is like a I mentioned before, a monthly or half monthly cyclical calculation, so that the data used is "current", which in turn should reduce price innacuracy issues due to algorithem changes within the game.
 * The problem of guildwiki's calculations being off, or not reacting in time, would not even be the problem/abuse I would worry about. What I'd be worrkied about here (and what nixes this whole idea IMHO) is the following scenario.  I'm selling Shreader's Talons, which typically go for 1K or even less.  I go to the wiki page and modify it to say they're worth 15K, and then try to sell them to some newb.  When he asks if they're worth it, I say "check guildwiki".  Unless he checks the -history-, which most newbs won't, he won't see that I vandalized the page to my own benefit.  And how would the admins know for sure if it was vandalism or just a lucky sale that raised the price.  With Drop Rates, there's no percentage in cheating the numbers, as that doesn't result in profit for the vandal.  For item sale prices, that's not the case. ScionOfErixalimar 16:06, 12 June 2007 (CDT)