User talk:Gravewit

= New Stuff =

Bot status request
Hi. There has been a lot of discussion on Gt:SaF and similar pages about categorizing skills based on the campaign they are in. As any skill-wide change requires editing zillions of pages, I decided to write a simple bot using the Pywikipediabot framework. You can see some of its recent activity by looking at the contributions of User:Stabbot. Would it be possible to mark this user as a bot so its edits are hidden from the recent changes screen by default. I promise to use the bot responsibly, upload all scripts and data files used, and log every action taken on the user page of the bot. Pan Sola has also volunteered to keep an eye on the bot's activity so that no serious damage is caused. 22:53, 14 March 2006 (CST)

Fiscal Accountability
Please respond to GuildWiki talk:Site support when you get a chance. --Karlos 07:40, 11 March 2006 (CST)

Image Woes
I asked Rainith about it, and he said really to find out I'd have to ask someone with server access, so here I am. It seems to me (and I might be mistaken on this) that GuildWiki caches images in a commonly-used format, such as 64x64 pixel size in addition to the actual format. I think this because the HTML code that displays the reduced size Image:Sever Artery.png has a prefix to the Sever Artery.png ( ex. /images/thumb/e/e1/Sever_Artery.png/64px-Sever_Artery.png ). In addition to that, when I used the same scaling on a test page, the new Sever Artery.png displayed perfectly fine. Further (although this may just be coincidental), User:Lunarbunny uses the scaled image in an unusual format (33x33 pixels) and it displays perfectly. - Evil_Greven 12:48, 8 March 2006 (CST)


 * One of the reasons cited for replacing PNGs with (in my opinion inferior) JPEGs is that the JPEGs "scale better". Does GuildWiki use the GD Library or does it use a program such as NetPBM or ImageMagick to resize images? The GD Library is ok, but it often fails when dealing with certain PNG images. I used GD for a while myself on a project of my own and it failed in manipulating PNGs fairly regularly. On the other hand NetPBM and ImageMagick have both been excellent.


 * If this is a problem that can't be altered (i.e. if GuildWiki is already using NetPBM or ImageMagick, or if neither of these can be installed) then it will change my opinion on the current debate over which image format to use for the new skill icons. 17:58, 13 March 2006 (CST)

File Deletions (and maybe a fix for the upload bug)
There are a few images that cannot be deleted the 'normal' way as I can't get to them because they have a \ in them which just sends me to the new image uploaded with the correct name:
 * Image:Balthazar\'s Aura.png (note:Not Image:Balthazar's Aura.png the one with the \ in it)
 * Image:Zealot\'s Fire.png (note:Again not Image:Zealot's Fire.png the one with the \ in it)

Then there are the images that give a message like this one: Internal Error Could not delete file "/home/guildwiki/public_html/images/0/04/Armor_frostbound_m.jpg".

 New images 
 * Image:DarkFury.png
 * Image:SoulFeast.png

If you could get rid of these files I'd appreciate it. Also someone brought up the idea that possibly the directory that these images are in is protected in some way, this could account for the images that cannot be deleted because of the internal error message and why some files cannot be uploaded with certain names. I can't remember who it was who mentioned that or where they mentioned it, but they said they were able to upload those exact same files with the same names to a wiki they set up using the same version of MediaWiki. If that is the case and it is just directory "0" that is protected, that could be a very easy fix for a problem that has plagued us for months. --Rainith 13:52, 5 March 2006 (CST)


 * Doing so right now. Gravewit 12:44, 7 March 2006 (CST)


 * That would be me who suggested that directory permissions theory, and that comment was in Software & Technical Issues/Bugs, surprisingly enough. 22:01, 8 March 2006 (CST)

Theres also some categories that need deleting, they got their actual name messed up when the char encoding went screwy and you cant even access them now :p http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki?title=Special:Uncategorizedcategories&limit=500&offset=0 at the bottom 18:54, 8 March 2006 (CST)

I've documented my recent experiments with this bug and how I managed to duplicate and then fix it on a test mediawiki installation on the Software & Technical Issues/Bugs page. 08:51, 14 March 2006 (CST)

Search
Why is our search done through Google now? --Karlos 05:32, 31 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I would assume it's a performance thing. The server isn't very fast as it is. Having the search engine provided by someone else frees a lot of cpu time. I see one big problem with this, though: Google knows only those pages that were there when the Googlebot last indexed the website. So it will not know newly added pages but it will possibly still know some pages that already have been deleted. --Eightyfour-onesevenfive 06:10, 31 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, I have already run into this with a few pages. The new Wintersday pages were not very searchable the first several hours they were on. Also, I miss a lot of the flexibility that the old engine provided. --Karlos 06:31, 31 December 2005 (UTC)


 * There's not much we can do about it, it is a performance thing. We can either have google search, or have the site be almost unresponsive with mySQL errors all over. Changing Search on the main page has cut the cpu load by a really large margin. Mediawiki's search functions suck. Gravewit 13:22, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Old database?
Did we lose some data? While the wiki was read-only a while ago, I made a list of things to fix once everything was working again, but it seems those things don't exist. Was a not-quite-"current" backup used? --Fyren 21:56, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

The corruption went back further than I'd thought. I had to go back a couple days further than I'd have liked. Gravewit 21:57, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
 * At least it's back up and running. (Hurrah!) Onto the aformentioned Used Image Delete Crusade! --William Blackstaff 04:27, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Hmm maybe not. natch. --William Blackstaff 04:29, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I wasn't going to bring this up, but it's been nagging at me. Gravewit have I done/said something to be demoted or did you change your mind (which is fine if you did.) If it's the former I do apologise for whatever I did, because I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone. IF it's the latter then umm nevermind :) --William Blackstaff 08:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Official Fansite Status
Hey Gravewit, I went ahead and sent a request to Arena Net for official fansite status after we were up and stable yesterday. Check out their response on GuildWiki talk:Fansite Status/Official Status Letter.

They want to find out the following information:

About The Site's Staff:
 * Name of Site
 * URL (and redirects, if any) of Site
 * Name of principal site contact (webmaster or site administrator)
 * Name of site owner
 * E-mail address of webmaster
 * Street address of webmaster
 * Telephone contact for webmaster
 * Name of other site staff members, their positions and e-mail addresses
 * Site Mail Preferences -- Who on staff should receive mail from ArenaNet?

About the Site:
 * Date site opened, or planned date of opening
 * Frequency of News Updates
 * Goals of the fansite
 * Target GWCFP level
 * Do you meet all the requirements for an Official level site?
 * Do you meet all the requirements for an Elite level site?
 * Have you followed The Expectations as outlined in the GWCFP Program Info Pages?
 * Do you intend to email site traffic statistics (hit counts) monthly?
 * Do you have or intend to have a forum on your site?
 * Is there anything else youâ€™d like to share to help us get to know you better?

I have answered some of that stuff in my e-mail to them as you can see, the rest of the stuff they just need your SSN and credit cards.. No big deal. :)

Let me know how you wish to proceed on this. We can take it off-line on e-mail if you like also.

Thanks. --Karlos 18:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for following up on it, Karlos, but I sent them this form last month (for the second time). I did just send another copy to Gaile this morning, once I read yuor message, though. We'll see. I'm pretty tired of their crap at this point ; p Gravewit 15:43, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Sent you an e-mail. --Karlos 18:04, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe this is old news, but I didn't notice, until today: We made it!! We are finally listed on the new revamped official website under fansites. -- 12:11, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Blah at Tetris, we made it a LONG time ago as listed fansite, way before the revamp. Now we just need to climb all the way up to get to Elite status...  d-: -PanSola 13:14, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Bug link in the navbar
I dunno, the red makes me think it's a broken wiki link, heh. --Fyren 07:29, 16 October 2005 (EST)

Server & Bandwidth
Hi Gravewit, as far as I understood, you're the man in charge here, as in: the man who runs the server. Just a little questions: How limited are we when it comes to server bandwidth? I'm asking because I was thinking about creating a weapons GALLERY. Since such a page with many images might put a little strain on our server pipe I don't wanna do this without asking back first. --Tetris L 18:35, 22 Sep 2005 (EST)
 * I'm a bit worried that out head-admin has been missing in action for quite a while. Does anybody know details about him, and about the server? Where is the server located? Does Gravewit have physical acces to the server or is it just hosted by some company. Who does back-ups? Who except Gravewit is in touch with the host? Who pays for it? Is the financing safe? I'd hate to see us in the situation where somebody pulls the plug and all we get is 404's. A bit too much work went into this over the last few weeks. --Tetris L 22:25, 3 Oct 2005 (EST)
 * Those are good questions and real concerns. Gravewit has not been around here much, but he has been updating his site Perhaps leave him a note in one of the comments or something? --Karlos 22:41, 3 Oct 2005 (EST)


 * I'd like to echo some of Tetris L's earlier questions. Most importantly and specifically: Who is keeping regular backups of this Wiki?  I don't know where the server is located, but if a meteor hit it and any backups they have, who can restore the Wiki?  Do we have any mirrors or ways for Average User to at least download the public pages (in a form usable for restoring after Catastrophe)?  Should I be pre-emptively downloading the whole site that I can reach, perhaps, just in case?  (Doesn't seem like the best use of bandwidth ...)
 * As a minor aside, if someone was willing to put up with the headache of managing advertising for this site, I'd personally find a small number of rotating google ads to be entirely acceptable. Anything that is text and doesn't blink or flash that keeps this wiki up is fantastic, says I. --JoDiamonds 05:29, 25 October 2005 (EST)


 * I keep weekly mySQL backups of the site on my local hard drive at home, so unless a meteor strikes my house and new york city at the same time, we're okay. Personally, I'd much rather not do advertising, but if we did, it would certianly be text ads. Being obtrusive to the user is something I'm against, which is why we've not done it so far. One of the ideas I had was to run text ads until a certian dollar limit was reached to pay for hosting, and then disable them after that. - Gravewit


 * Good enough, re: backups. The ad-idea, which I can absolutely understand wanting to avoid completely, is pretty intriguing.  Getting just enough money from ads also avoids the issues of anyone making a profit off of the site (or anything thinking someone is). --JoDiamonds 07:16, 25 October 2005 (EST)


 * We're pushing upwards of 70GB a month in bandwidth, and using about 400mb of space, so says the server. I guess the problem with this is that it's starting to get costly to maintain the site, to the tune of about $60/mo USD. So far It's been coming out of my pocket. If you've alternative hosting plans you'd like to suggest, feel free. Gravewit 06:59, 10 Oct 2005 (EST)
 * I don't have alternative hosting plans. But I might cough up a few bucks for the tip jar. --Tetris L 07:08, 10 Oct 2005 (EST)


 * I'm pretty stoked to see that we're using 70GB a month. Unfortunately, I can't provide a better hosting option other than seeking sponsorship.  I noticed the Segment Hosting link on the side&mdash;are they giving us (you) a discount or something?  Ads are, as always, a possibility, though we've all stated in the past that we'd like to avoid that.  Still, I'd rather see some text ads on the left bar than see you pay USD 60 a month out-of-pocket. &mdash;Tanaric 17:00, 10 Oct 2005 (EST)


 * I'm incredibly happy with how popular this has gotten, make no mistake. I nearly shat myself when I saw the bandwidth stats, and they have DOUBLED every month. That's awesome. The cost is somewhat of a problem, but the host and I have worked out a deal that will take us down to maybe half the previous cost. So, $30 or a bit more a month. Much more pallatable, but still not super great on my end. I'd rather not do ads, either- I'm very skeptical that they would work at all, in fact. Perhaps if things get more crazy around here, we'll do a test run. That's in the future, though. We'll see how this month pans out. Also, thanks ONE MILLION to everyone who has donated since my last message! You guys are nuts. This month is covered for sure, in full. Gravewit


 * Just saw the ledger... $175 this month?? &mdash;Tanaric 06:34, 20 October 2005 (EST)


 * Yuppo. Before the deal with the host, and some upward mobility in the hosting package. We went from 60gb of bandwidth used to 100gb. Overages hurt. A lot. We get charged per GB over the limit, so the site never gets taken down, just charged extra. Host has increased our credit after some nudging by me, so it should come down to less than $100/month. Bandwidth pimpin' ain't easy. Gravewit 15:29, 20 October 2005 (EST)

Hi take a look at AS-hosting, me and a few friends use this and it's very reliable and the staff are great and you can get 10GB disk space and 200GB b/w for Â£8.99 which is around $15? if you need more they do custom plans. Take a look anyway Skuld &Dagger; 16:55, 20 October 2005 (EST)


 * I'll take a look at it. Gravewit 06:35, 27 October 2005 (EST)

A Thank You
Fear not, my pretties, I have been monitoring things though not posting. I'm really proud of all the work you guys have done, and it's pretty humbling to see the wiki my pal michael and I started with almost 3,000 articles, and a group of people who are so dedicated.

So, since I'm posting again, any and all questions can go right here. I've some ideas, and I'd like to expand operations here to wikis for other games, so, let loose with the hate and love. Gravewit 05:37, 10 Oct 2005 (EST)

Hi Gravewit, glad to have you back! I hope you peek in a bit more often, or let us know alternative way to contact you except you talk page, for urgent cases. As for questions: See "Server & Bandwidth" (scroll down). How is the situation? --Tetris L 06:20, 10 Oct 2005 (EST)

= Old Stuff =

Since I have no clue where to ask, I'll ask here. How should we request deletion? By adding to a page? That template doesn't actually exist here. I ask since there's at least a few cases where pages with the same name exist that differ only in capitalization. So the one that doesn't match the game should get axed. --Fyren 20:11, 30 Jun 2005 (EST)

I would post on the main page talk. If you'd like, create the template yourself, one of the sysops will help out! Gravewit 02:08, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)

Hey Gravewit :) I dunno if you noticed our talk on the main page about the fault with IE. It seems that the HTML is invalid. Not sure how this happened but there is a closing div missing, that causes all versions of IE (as far as I'm aware) to show the footer on top of the main content box. You can see in the W3 validation of my Tiny Page that there is an unclosed div somewhere. 22:22, 1 Jul 2005 (EST)

Biro- I made that change, I can't imagine why it wouldn't disappeared. Gravewit

Also, it doesn't seem to have fixed anything. Gravewit

Hey Gravewit, I'm not sure where you made added the close div, but it seems to me that it should have been after the tip jar. 2 divs are opened but only one is closed.... 43:       ....     All the other portlets are here... .... 96: 	  97: 		 tip jar 98: 	   99: 	  If you find GuildWiki useful, please consider a donation. 100: 	 101: 102:

As you can see, column one is opened, p-tip is opened, and then a div with class pBody is opened. Only 2 divs are closed. 04:00, 2 Jul 2005 (EST)

While you're blocking people, could you tag 69.212.83.167. Or promote me to an admin status and I'd do it myself :) MartinLightbringer 04:13, 16 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Looking at the edit histories, 155.215.21.3 seemed to just be undoing (to the best of his limited wiki fu) a couple instances of vandalism. --Fyren 06:46, 16 Jul 2005 (EST)

Yeah, 155.215.21.3 was me. On another computer anyway. I'm new to wiki stuff, but I hate it when I see vandalism, here or on wikipedia. --The Ghost of NSO 20:11, 15 JUL 2005 (EST)

Thanks for the quick fix, Gravewit. We love you long time. &mdash;Tanaric 15:50, 19 Jul 2005 (EST)

It was just a new thing the host added, and I forgot to change on my end. Gravewit

MySQL Errors
Oeh noes! I'm receiving lots of errors while trying to view pages. The exact error message is: Database error From GuildWiki A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "MediaWikiBagOStuff:_doquery". MySQL returned error "1030: Got error 134 from storage engine (localhost)".

That specific one was from Antidote Signet LordKestrel 09:12, 23 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * After doing some reading, it seems this might have something to do with the tables needing repairing. Not 100% sure whether this is the problem though, since as far as I'm aware all effected pages are still editable, i.e. the wiki code is accessible. I'm not sure exactly how mediawiki works, but I suspect there is 1 table for the wikicode and another table for the html output (or some sort of cached output) and it is this latter table that needs repairing. Even so, I suggest backing up the database in case any further damage is incurred. 09:28, 23 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Actually there's 26 tables in the default installation of mediawiki :) If I had to guess though, it's likely wikidb.objectcache that is corrupt. But it'd probably be best to just shutdown mysql and run a mysiamchk -r on the lot of them just in case. MartinLightbringer 08:42, 25 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Nevermind my previous comment. You're too fast for me Biro.. :) So error 134 is record is deleted or crashed. This can't be good. :) Since the data is there, perhaps an index is corrupt? --Karlos 12:45, 23 Jul 2005 (EST)

Material of mine used on site.
Hi :-)

I'm Xennon, the guy who made the www.xennon.co.uk/eliteskills/ listing. I was contacted a while ago about the use of my information on this site. I said the information itself may be used, however the maps were not to be used.

It was brought to my attention that the editor Ollj has been adding my maps under boss information without my permission (in fact, expressly against my wishes) so I was wondering if someone could get these removed :-)

e-mail me at chriscox@ntlworld.com if you wish to talk about this.

Cheers Xen
 * Sorry about that, Xennon. I'm sure an admin will delete the images (I would if normal users could).  Ollj is... a little overzealous.  --Fyren 06:54, 29 Jul 2005 (EST)

Weird Data Error
I was updating some page a couple of hours ago and it gave me a strange SQL error, so since then, it shows the recent changes as the last thing I saw before I made a few changes myself. The changes are there when I look at the articles, but Recent Changes is stuck in time. And changes i made after that also give me the SQL error. --Karlos 21:22, 4 Aug 2005 (EST)


 * It's being discussed on Talk:Main Page. &mdash;Tanaric 17:19, 5 Aug 2005 (EST)

More Admins
As is usual for a site like this, admins vary greatly in their attention spans as time progresses. More specifically, at the moment, Fyren appears to be the only significantly active admin, and that's a problem. I'd like if we gave at least one more active GuildWikian sysop status. My vote's for Karlos. &mdash;Tanaric 21:41, 3 Oct 2005 (EST)
 * Although I've had my fair share of arguments with him recently I still agree Karlos would be a good man for the job. --Tetris L 22:19, 3 Oct 2005 (EST)
 * That would mean I'd have to show more restraint in debates! Dang! --Karlos 22:41, 3 Oct 2005 (EST)
 * No, it wouldn't. Look at vs.Ollj for proof. ;) &mdash;Tanaric 10:26, 5 Oct 2005 (EST)
 * For the record, you (Tetris L) are actually my second choice, were I the one making sysops around here. &mdash;Tanaric 10:26, 5 Oct 2005 (EST)
 * I would put 84.175's name out there too. --Karlos 17:26, 5 Oct 2005 (EST)
 * Agreed! &mdash;Tanaric 04:09, 6 Oct 2005 (EST)


 * I see you made Eightyfour an admin. Without any doubt 84 is qualified for the job, but ... unfortunatly he is MIA at the moment. He hasn't been on for 10 days. Maybe real life called. Maybe he's on vacation. Maybe he quit GuildWars. We don't know. :/
 * For more suggestions for possible future admins, may I toss in Rainith's name.
 * On a side note, where did the Admin list go? It disappeared from the special pages list with the 1.5 upgrade. --Tetris L 23:12, 17 October 2005 (EST)


 * Does this help?
 * It's Special Pages -> Logs -> Choose Bureaucrat Log then hit Go. --Karlos 23:23, 17 October 2005 (EST)


 * Found it. It's Here. --Tetris L 23:37, 17 October 2005 (EST)