User talk:Daveh/Archive 2007

This archive of older discussions during the year of 2007.

Patrollers

I've made a proposal to start a new class of editors known as patrollers to help share the workload of monitoring Recent Changes. Based on the discussion, the proposal is popular with the community, so I'd like to request that you implement it when you have a chance.

The specifics of what is involved are:

1. Install a new mediawiki extension, Patroller
2. Add the following users to the new Patroller group:
   • DrPhoton
   • Ratwar
   • TheRealLurlock
   • Werdnanoslen

(The list of users is one shorter than the original list, per the discussion on Hoggwild's talk page).

As always, let me know if you have questions. Thanks! --Nephele 11:45, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Done and seems to be working but let me know of any problems -- DaveH 18:36, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Thanks, DaveH! --Nephele 19:21, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Configuration Tweaks

A discussion at Category Talk:Oblivion-Talk Pages prompted me to look through the Special:Specialpages. A few of these pages aren't behaving as I'd expect, and I'm guessing their SQL queries need to be fixed:

• Special:Mostcategories is only checking the main namespace, should probably be checking all content pages
• Special:Mostrevisions ditto
• Special:Deadendpages ditto
• Special:Uncategorizedpages is including pages from talk namespaces, but really shouldn't be
• Special:Uncategorizedcategories is identical to Uncategorizedpages.... the file SpecialUncategorizedcategories.php just extends the Uncategorizedpages class, and relies upon one variable ($this->requestedNamespace = NS_CATEGORY) to switch behaviour. I'm guessing you changed Uncategorizedpages to not use requestedNamespace anymore (it's only used by these two classes).

One other random, minor request: would it be possible to add NS_PROJECT to the array $wgNamespacesWithSubpages in LocalSettings.php? We've been creating a fair number of subpages in the UESPWiki namespace, and they're all missing the standard navigation links because subpages is turned off.

None of these are urgent requests, but whenever you're in the mood to mess with some SQL and PHP, these fixes would be appreciated. Thanks! --Nephele 01:13, 10 January 2007 (EST)

Thanks. I had fixed some of theses pages originally but probably got lost in one of the upgrades. These should be relatively quick things I can do tonite. -- 09:04, 10 January 2007 (EST)

New Suggestions

There have been a few discussions lately about changes that would need to be done by you. I wanted to bring them to your attention to see whether you have any input and/or whether you think they're ready to be implemented:

• Making Ratwar an administrator (see Requests for Adminship).
• Making Uniblab a patroller (see Nominations).
• Adding some new namespaces:
  • "Shadowkey" (see Mobile Game Page Names): Jadrax has been doing a lot of work creating Shadowkey pages (15 so far), and it looks to me like a namespace will be needed.
  • "Shivering" (see Mobile Game Page Names, second half): A namespace will be needed for the new Shivering Isles expansion, and "Shivering" seems less cumbersome than "ShiveringIsles".
  • "OblivionDe" (see German-language version): this is a pretty new idea, to perhaps create a namespace devoted to german translations of Oblivion articles. Any thoughts about it?

--Nephele 13:08, 27 January 2007 (EST)

Finally remembered about this. Added the Shadowkey and Shivering namespaces. Still unsure what exactly to do about the OblivionDe or alternate languages in general. -- Daveh 18:11, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Argh, there's my reason for procrastination taken away! ;o) — Unsigned comment by Jadrax (talk • contribs)

Thanks, Daveh! Just in time for another installment in the neverending stream of requests :)

• Making TheRealLurlock an administrator (see Requests for Adminship).
• You might also want to check out the discussion at User_Talk:Vethrian/Swordplay#Vethrian's Comments; it seems that Vethrian (who originally posted the article last August) didn't realize what was implied by posting to a wiki and wants to withdraw his article. I've tried to respond as best I could, but I'd welcome any other opinions on the matter.

Hmmm, I might have to think a bit to come up with some ideas to keep you busy after that ;) --Nephele 02:31, 22 February 2007 (EST)

MediaWiki version & plugins?

I want to setup a testing Wiki on a client's server space (he's cool with it) to get my feet wet (new to the maintenance aspect of it) and eventually come up with a workable proposal for the File Upload functionality. So I have a few version questions regarding the Upgrade Wiki entry on your page. What are the current versions of PHP/MySQL/MediaWiki on this server, and what Wiki plugins are installed? [Wish I could see a phpinfo() page ;), maybe I could figure out why my jEdit settings aren't working.] Also, what are the plans for near-future upgrades? I'm not going to bother with Wiki 1.9.1 if you're running 1.6.8. Also not going to bother with PHP 5.0 functionality if you're not planning on upgrading to that for a while (there are some major changes in 5.0). -- Felic 12:03, 4 February 2007 (EST)

You can see the basic info on software versions at Special:Version. We're running 1.8.2 of Mediawiki right now, but I'm personally hoping that we'll upgrade at some point in the not-too-distant feature. To put my plug in: as of Mediawiki 1.9.1 redirects have been made much more useful, by allowing redirects to sections. This means that, with an upgrade, the current redirect page Oblivion:Trolls, for example, would actually jump the reader straight to the section on trolls instead of just dumping them at the top of the page. Many very useful shortcut redirects could be created. That's my two cents, at least :) --Nephele 14:21, 4 February 2007 (EST)

You can view phpinfo() if you need it. We've been running 1.8.2 of Mediawiki and Php 5.0 for a while now. While I will be upgrading in the future, I've made a number of modifications, as listed on the upgrade page, that makes upgrading a non-trivial operation. It involves manually merging a few dozen pages with custom changes to them so takes a few hours instead of the 10 minutes a basic install might take. -- Daveh 14:47, 4 February 2007 (EST)

Thank you. I feel sheepish, the version page is listed right there in the Special Pages. Sorry for not looking harder! -- Felic 15:03, 4 February 2007 (EST)

XBox Mods

Sorry if this isnt the right place to put this, but i was wondering if it is possible to transfer the mods you have on this site to an xbox 360, if there is please e-mail me at ironrunner43@yahoo.com Ironrunner43 00:44, 2 March 2007 (EST)

The Community Portal might be a better place to ask this. According to Oblivion:Xbox_360 you can only install the official mods on an XBox. I would venture to guess that while it may be possible to get third part mods running on an XBox it would require extensive work, possibly including a soldering iron. I don't have a XBox myself so wouldn't be much help in this area anyways. -- Daveh 10:50, 2 March 2007 (EST)

It's not possible because of the security certificate encryption that exists for XBox files in general. I've updated the Oblivion:Xbox_360 page to note this. --Wrye 18:19, 2 March 2007 (EST)

Search Function

I've noticed a couple oddities about our search function lately that should be quite fixable, and would help to solve a couple problems.

First, I think the option on the search page that says "List redirects" should by default be enabled. Redirects are created primarily to show up in searches, so it is very confusing for readers to do a search and be told that no such page exists. For example, a reader may type in "Zenithar Temple", in which case the search should tell the user that the page Tamriel:Zenithar Temple exists. But instead, the search by default says that "no page title matches exist". The reader has to scan to the bottom of the page and read all the fine print to understand why their search didn't work; it took me a dozen tries before I realized what was going on, so I'm sure it's happened to a lot of other readers.

Second, I think it would be very useful to by default disable (or at least not have it come up as an article title match) any "Description", "Desc", "Directions", or "Author" subpages. For example, a search for "Rockmilk Cave" yields article matches for [[Oblivion:Rockmilk Cave/Directions]], Oblivion:Rockmilk Cave and Oblivion:Rockmilk Cave/Description. All the information from the subpages is displayed (properly formatted and in proper context) if the reader pulls up the main Oblivion:Rockmilk Cave page. In most cases, there is no need to confuse the reader by listing the subpages. And I'm pretty sure that it's because of this search feature that readers have on several occasions complained that a "Description" page contains too little information, and/or tried to rewrite the description page. New visitors to the site don't understand how the data is being organized, and therefore shouldn't be confronted with the nitty-gritty details.

While these won't completely fix the search function, I think tweaking these two features will address some of the more common reasons why readers complain about searches. Thanks! --Nephele 15:44, 24 February 2007 (EST)

The list redirects should default to on when a search is done from the form on the sidebar. Also was able to modify the search engine to ignore pages with "/Desc", "/Direct" or "/Author" in their names. Things seem to be working but give it a try and make sure it does what you originally were thinking of. -- Daveh 18:38, 28 February 2007 (EST)

Thanks, seems so far to do exactly what I was hoping... now just have to wait and see whether anyone starts complaining because the search works differently ;). --Nephele 19:00, 28 February 2007 (EST)

Could we make that an option instead? Have it off by default, but have a checkbox to "Search Subpages" available on the main Search page. Mainly it's useful if you're searching for common spelling errors, or if you've moved a page that might be referenced in a subpage for some reason and want to fix the link, etc. Anyhow, options are better than no options if it's not too difficult to code. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 23:32, 28 February 2007 (EST)

Should be possible without too much effort. I'll play around with it when I have time over the next few days. -- Daveh 23:39, 28 February 2007 (EST)

Yes, I can see how there are cases where an option for subpages would be useful. I had been hoping that as long as the subpage was actually being used somewhere, that a search would still work because it would match whenever the subpage is transcluded. But I just tested it (after finally finding a good word to use for a test), and no such luck. So if you search for "Tsathenes", the search doesn't list Tamriel:Books/Madness_of_Pelagius,_The, even though the name "Tsathenes" appears on that page because it's transcluded from the /Author subpage. --Nephele 00:06, 1 March 2007 (EST)

Hey I'm Probably the newest member here and I dont know if this is the place to put this but while I was searching on the Morrowind online map I somehow encountered a glitch. what happened was I was planning on raiding a ruin and I wanted to know the layout of the place. So i looked it up and it didnt show up on the results. so I reloaded the page several times and still nothing. just wanted to inform you of the small glitch. otherwise I like the Place. --— Unsigned comment by Silent Mind (talk • contribs) at 01:18 on 19 November 2008 (EST)

Umm, so how are we supposed to fix it if you won't tell us the name of the place you were looking for? --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 01:18, 19 November 2008 (EST)

Blocking an Admin

I know you usually stay out of this stuff, but FYI Aristeo is threatening to block me. (I'm not even sure how the Wiki software would handle this. Would it allow me as admin to unblock myself?) I know that you, like me, have better things to do (I personally have a list of stuff that I could be throwing into Wrye Bash, not to mention spending more time on real life, or playing the game). Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you at least kept an eye on the situation. --Wrye 19:18, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Resignation

I no longer wish to participate on the wiki. Could you please relieve me of my administrative permissions? Thanks in advance. --Aristeo | Talk 14:11, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Done...while it's a shame to lose you I suppose it is for the best with the recent happenings. You're past contributions to the site have been invaluable and I hope you intend to stick around in the future. -- Daveh 18:02, 28 February 2007 (EST)

Thank you very much. Good luck. :) --Aristeo | Talk 18:58, 28 February 2007 (EST)

Login Problems

A new user, User:Chaos Monkey is having a lot of problems with staying logged in, see UESPWiki:Community_Portal#A_problem_with_logging_in.. It seems like we've gone through the most likely reasons, and none explain it. Is there any chance you have any ideas? Or would there be anything in the logs that might suggest what's going on? I just thought I'd ask, since we seem to have hit a brick wall with this problem. --Nephele 00:10, 4 March 2007 (EST)

New Patrollers

We have three new candidates to become Patrollers, all of whom have gone through the nomination process with flying colours, and just need your stamp of approval. When you get a chance could you look things over and add patroller privileges for the following users:

• GuildKnight
• JustTheBast
• Somercy

Thanks! --Nephele 22:30, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Done. The delay was due to a last minute job having me in Chicago and otherwise tied up the past week or so. -- Daveh 14:56, 19 March 2007 (EDT)

One more new patroller request: UESPWiki:Patrollers/Nominations#Lordsword 8. Could you add patroller privileges for Lordsword 8? Thanks! --Nephele^Talk 00:03, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

Turkish "Hackers"

We've recently been getting a bunch of vandalism edits from one or more "hacker" teams in Turkey that seem to target wikis. (And yet laughingly consider it to be "hacking".) See discussion atUESPWiki:Administrator_Noticeboard/Vandalism#Okay.2C_who_pissed_off_Turkey.3F. I've got at least 5 IPs for these guys, 4 of which have hit our site. While it's mildly humorous, and nothing we can't handle at this rate (revert & block, not too hard), it was suggested that you might be able to do something more substantial to prevent further attacks from these people. I don't know how easy it would be to block an IP range big enough to stop these guys without collateral damage, though I don't think we have any legit editors from Turkey. (And if we do, they can just create an account if they want to contribute.) Anyhow, I don't feel confident enough with my Admin-ing powers yet to attempt something that drastic. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 10:01, 15 March 2007 (EDT)

Wiki upgrade

Evidently, I'm never happy with the status quo, and always want some new fancy wiki features ;) So I was wondering whether you were considering upgrading mediawiki (1.9.3 is currently available). There's one very nice new feature with an upgrade, namely the ability to create redirects to subsections of a page.

The other reason I was wondering is that I've just proposed some PHP tweaks (see UESPWiki:Community Portal#Transparent Namespaces), and I'm not sure whether to use 1.8.2 or 1.9.3 as the baseline version (there is at least one change I've noticed in the functions that I'm looking at). If an upgrade isn't likely in the near future, I can easily work from 1.8.2. But otherwise, it seems that working from 1.9.3 would be better. FYI, it looks like three functions in three separate PHP files (preSaveTransform in Parser.php, goResult in SpecialSearch.php, and one line in excute in MonoBook.php) would need to be changed to implement my transparent namespaces suggestions. I'm putting together first versions of the code tweaks, but I'll spend some more time triple-checking what I've written once I know which code version to use. --Nephele 17:10, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

I've been trying to delay the inevitable I suppose....upgrading to 1.9.3 is probably the better choice of the two as I've been thinking its about time for an upgrade. I'm not sure if I can get to it this week and I'm away all of next week but will let you know whenever I get it done. -- Daveh 17:32, 27 March 2007 (EDT)

I see that v1.10 should be released later this month and would prefer to wait and upgrade to that rather than do v1.9.3 now and then upgrade again to v1.10. Hopefully a few more weeks isn't an issue, but let me know. -- Daveh 21:03, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

Hi, Daveh. I've been starting to get a bit antsy about implementing those PHP upgrades that I emailed you a month ago :) For example, today a new editor started to create a bunch of redirects in the main namespace. With my PHP tweaks those redirects wouldn't be needed, and it's a bit frustrating trying to explain that there's a better solution, but I have no idea of when or if it will be implemented. Also, with each extra week that passes I'm less and less familiar with what exactly I did in those bits of PHP code, so it's already going to be a lot more difficult for me to debug any problems that come up when they're installed. I know you're on travel at the moment, but would it be possible to look into adding those bits of PHP code next time you're at home with a couple of spare hours? They should work equally well in version 1.8.2. Thanks! --Nephele^Talk 13:56, 4 May 2007 (EDT)

Recent Downtime

A quick note about the recent downtime today, 30 April from 2-5pm EST. Not sure what the problem was but the server was lagging terribly due to low memory conditions causing it to use the swap space frequently which kills performance. The web server was just restarted to fix it.

I'm still away from home and can generally only access the web in the mornings and late evenings. Fortunately work finished early today (for a change) so I managed to catch this downtime relatively early. I will continue to keep an eye on things as my time permits in the near future. -- Daveh 17:35, 30 April 2007 (EDT)

Rename Account

Hello, I am asking if you clould please rename my account from ChadFromCky to InvaderTak89 as I have decided upon a new tag for myself but would like to keep my stats e.g. Contribs, user page, etc. Thanks. ChadFromCky 00:47, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

Sorry for taking so long to do this. See the note on your talk page. -- Daveh 22:22, 11 June 2007 (EDT)

Thanks! Everything works fine except it still says my old user name on signed comments (like the one above and this one) using the 4 ~ but I don't leave many comments though so I'm not too fussed about it. I did a test edit on my user page which worked fine aswell. It seems it was successful.--ChadFromCky 05:00, 12 June 2007 (EDT)

NepheleBot

My new account for helping out with repetitive maintenance-type tasks, NepheleBot, is ready to go. I've got the scripting in place at my end to use the account, including all of the promised controls on when and what the bot will do. Based on discussions (UESPWiki:Community Portal#NepheleBot, User Talk:NepheleBot#Feedback), the community appears to be OK with the giving the idea a try. So, in short, I think I'm ready to ask for NepheleBot to be given bot status. If you agree, could you add User:NepheleBot to the "bot" user group? Thanks! --Nephele^Talk 17:09, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

Forums

Any chance you could check in on the forums and see what problems have cropped up there? An editor left a message on my talk page asking me to get in touch with the forums admin; I don't know any details, though. --Nephele^Talk 12:26, 24 June 2007 (EDT)

Update: there's been some related discussion at the admin noticeboard. Seems that some updates to the forum moderators need to be made.... --Nephele^Talk 22:18, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

Another New Patroller

The latest successful candidate for patroller is Rpeh; see his nomination. So when you get a chance could you add patroller privileges for Rpeh? Thanks! --Nephele^Talk 22:18, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

Welcome Back

OK, I know it's more than a week still until you'll be back from vacation ;) But there are a few todo items that have come up, so I figured I'd start to keep track of them here so I don't forget them later.

• Just in case you haven't been able to before now, the server really needs to be restarted.
• Eshe has been successfully nominated to be a new patroller, see UESPWiki:Patrollers/Nominations#Eshe.
• The discussion at UESPWiki:Community Portal#References has concluded that the Cite extension will be very useful and should be installed.

Finally, I wanted to give you a heads up that there have been some changes in IRC, so if you want to chat, you'll find everyone at #UESPWiki now instead of #UESP. --Nephele^Talk 01:23, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Installed the cite extension finally. and -- Daveh 19:50, 4 August 2007 (EDT)

Wiki Tweak

You may have noticed some of the talk (e.g., Template Talk:NPC Summary) about the fact that editing certain templates basically shuts down the server for 5-20 minutes while the server updates all of the pages influenced by that template. It seems that there is a setting that would prevent this problem, namely:

$wgJobRunRate = 0.01

See Job queue. From what I can tell this would tell the server only do about 1 job for every 100 apache requests (whereas by default this parameter is set to 1, i.e. 1 job for every apache request). This means that it will take longer for all of the pages to get updated when a template (or any other transcluded page) gets updated. But I think it's a necessary tradeoff right now, especially since everybody is terrified to make any changes to certain templates because the effects are so diastrous. Since it seems like you're fiddling with settings right now, would it be possible to try implementing this one, too? Thanks --Nephele^Talk 12:14, 1 August 2007 (EDT)

Yah...I've been wondering why the CPU usage was so high and the site sluggish the past week. I made the requested change...the server will be slow for a few hours as it rebuilds all the cached pages again. -- Daveh 13:50, 1 August 2007 (EDT)

Thanks! I'm curious to see what effect that will have next time one of those pages needs to be edited. It's somewhat bizarre that the job queue length had been stuck at 25 all morning (and it's been a high a few other times in the past few days); now that the job queue is getting processed more slowly, the length has dropped to 1. Any way, I'll try to remember to check the queue length occasionally and make sure that a huge backlog isn't starting to build up because of this tweak. --Nephele^Talk 16:00, 1 August 2007 (EDT)

This is actually the first time I've ever seen a non-zero job queue size. Depending on what they mean by 'request' even a 0.01 would mean a job would run every 10 seconds or (based on 600,000 daily page requests). I also did a real server reboot (the whole machine, not just the web server) for the first time in half-year. Not sure if that made a difference too but will keep a closer eye on the server in the next week or so. -- Daveh 16:34, 1 August 2007 (EDT)

Forums (2)

At the forums we have been going though the older posts. I had come across a post by yourself which was stating that the forums would get Avatars once they became more popular (needless to say they are now more popular.) To get the opinion of all the members I put up a poll to see if Avatars would be a good idea. The poll results showed that the majority of members still though Avatars would be a good idea. I was wondering if you could add the ability to display avatars.--Most Honored Listener 01:27, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

Search Function

We seem to have lost the tweak to the search function that made it not display description subpages. So searches like this one for Dive Rock end up listing pages such as Oblivion:Dive_Rock/Description, which is probably why anonymous editors find the description pages and ask pointless questions (Oblivion Talk:Dive Rock/Description). Any chance that tweak could get re-enabled? Thanks! --Nephele^Talk 02:31, 2 August 2007 (EDT)

I'm not sure what happened to this change...I can't find the changes anywhere. I assume it just got lost in the upgrade to 1.10.0. At any rate I've put it back it. I just editted includes\SearchMySQL.php and added:

  AND NOT (si_title REGEXP ' directions$' or si_title REGEXP ' author$' OR si_title REGEXP ' desc$' or si_title REGEXP ' description$')

to the search query on line 181. Performance of searches shouldn't be affected noticably (a few test runs showed almost no difference in query time). -- Daveh 10:38, 4 August 2007 (EDT)

Test Email

Trial edit for testing email... -- Daveh 13:38, 1 September 2007 (EDT)

Patroller Request, Again

The latest successful nominee for patroller is User:SubtleCynicism (see UESPWiki:Patrollers/Nominations/Completed#SubtleCynicism), so when you get a chance could you add him to the list? Thanks :) --Nephele^Talk 02:25, 2 September 2007 (EDT)

Oops, forgot about this...done! -- Daveh 12:13, 7 September 2007 (EDT)

Howdy, Boss!

Nephele says you aren't homicidal, and you have a sense of humor, which is a good thing. I've been working on a Morrowind fanfiction, where I've cannibalized the names of my fellow editors for characters. I've gotten permission from the majority of my characters, but not you yet. To tell the truth, I was almost afraid of you getting mad. May I have your blessing upon this project, and anything else done in the Editor-verse that may include Hermit Dave? Somercy 10:19, 7 September 2007 (EDT)

Nope, its not a problem. I did leave you a quick note on your user/take page last night (I forget which exactly). -- Daveh 12:12, 7 September 2007 (EDT)

Cool beans! Now I see it. The eventual plan is to invite other editors to join in in this "Universe," so if you want to play with any of it, please do. So, you're not some big scary admin who'll beat me up for my errors? Somercy 13:11, 7 September 2007 (EDT)

Renaming Account

I was wondering whether it would be possible for you to move the edits done by User:Most Honored Listener to User:Forlornhope, as requested on my talk page.

There's additional background at User talk:Most Honored Listener. But FYI, this Most Honored Listener is not the same person as the forum's Most Honored Listener (whose wiki username is User:Obliv4PS3). CheckUser confirms that they are completely different IPs (and live in different continents, too, for that matter). But to prevent confusion, I requested that this new editor set up a differently named account, and it would be useful to get the edits transferred over to the new account, too. Thanks. --Nephele^Talk 15:49, 8 September 2007 (EDT)

Done, using the reassignEdits.php script as mentioned. -- Daveh 18:18, 13 September 2007 (EDT)

Problems with Image Uploads and Forum Polls

A new problem has emerged with uploading images. I first noticed it about 3pm PDT yesterday (Sept 23), in other words not long after you last restarted the server (although it's hard to be sure that's when it started, because the problem is intermittent). Since then, Lurlock, rpeh, and I have all hit the problem repeatedly. Trying to upload files will frequently (but not always) result in the error message:

The file you uploaded seems to be empty. This might be due to a typo in the file name. Please check whether you really want to upload this file.

The files definitely being uploaded definitely aren't empty. And sometimes after 10 (or 20 or 30) tries the server will end up accepting the exact same file, so it's not inherently a problem with a file. This problem has occurred with at least a dozen different image files (gif, png, jpg format; ranging in size from 3 KB to 613 KB). It seems possible that when the server is not busy it accepts files (i.e., when there are less than 10 active server requests), but that hasn't been confirmed.

A second intermittent problem that's been noticed a few times now is that forum users are sporadically having problems viewing any poll results. An error message appears: "Could not obtain vote data for this topic. DEBUG MODE. SQL Error : 1030 Got error 28 from table handler". When the message pops up, it will appear on all polls. Then later it clears itself up again. It seems to be the same problem reported in this thread. I've got a more complete dump of one error message if you're interested. This was first reported yesterday afternoon, too.

There are a few other pretty minor things that have been noticed, that I only wanted to mention in case they are somehow related and having the information will help you to fix the image upload problem.

• Lurlock was unable to edit any pages for a while. Every try would give an error message: "Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still doesn't work, try logging out and logging back in." Logging in and out repeatedly did not help
• The job queue doesn't seem to be dropping below 3

OK, I'm guessing that's enough problems to keep you busy for now ;) I'll post any more details if they become available! --Nephele^Talk 16:04, 24 September 2007 (EDT)

One quick update. The forum thread I quoted above [1] says that the source of the problem is lack of space on /tmp. I'd guess a lack of space on /tmp would also explain the problems with uploading files. --Nephele^Talk 16:27, 24 September 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for the update...I've been busy with work/travelling and you just caught me while I'm at home for a bit. Indeed the /tmp directory was full. On the previous server it was just a regular directory but on the new server I see they made it a seperate partition of 500MB which just eventually filled up. I've changed the MediaWiki cache directory to a point on the main partition and freed up 400MB on /tmp.

Whatever issues are related to this should clear up, which should be all of them you listed. Just let me know if this doesn't fix some of the latest issues although it may be a few days before I have time again to poke around. -- Daveh 20:57, 24 September 2007 (EDT)

Commas in links

Just thought I'd bring to your attention a small problem we've been having ever since the "transparent namespaces" change. Whever a comma or colon exists in the title of a page, you have to specify the entire page name twice when you link to it, or it truncates everything after the comma/colon. There was a complaint about it here, though I'd noticed this one for a while. I imagine it can't be that difficult a fix, but who knows? Seems just like a feature designed to do this, which could probably be turned off... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:17, 3 October 2007 (EDT)

Its probably just an issue with the Regex used to parse the page title. Nephele wrote this feature but I'll take a look at it tonight and see if it doesn't have a quick fix. -- Daveh 07:42, 4 October 2007 (EDT)

Special Pages glitches

For a while now, I've been noticing that many of the Special Pages are somewhat less useful than they should be, either because they aren't working properly or are just listing far too many things to be of much use. I've put together a list of the problem pages.

Articles with the fewest revisions

Articles with the most categories

Articles with the most revisions

• All of these are ignoring all pages outside of the Main namespace

Dead-end pages

• Lists only Daggerfall:Hints, and has for quite some time. This page does link to at least one other page: Daggerfall:Cheats, and I'm sure there are other pages that don't link to any which aren't listed here for some reason.

Disambiguation pages

• Doesn't list anything, even though I know there are pages which incorrectly link to Disambig pages, which should appear here.

Protected pages

• List is obviously incomplete. Compare to those in Category:Protected Pages.

Random Page

• Should ignore sub-pages and Talk pages. This would make it a much more useful tool.

Uncategorized categories

• Does not list categories at all - Instead seems to be identical to Uncategorized pages.

Uncategorized pages

• Should ignore sub-pages and Talk pages. Would also be helpful if it did NOT ignore the Template namespace (I've been trying to get these templates organized recently, but many are just hard to find since they're not categorized at all.), or if you could somehow choose which namespace you wanted to look in, not sure how feasable this is.

Not rushing you or anything, but if any of these are easy-fixes, it would be nice to see if something can be done about them. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 00:52, 9 October 2007 (EDT)

Most of this is probably just how we use multiple namespaces. I have fixed some of the other pages but either overlooked or figured these weren't important enough. I'll start looking into each one and updating them as I have time. Unfortunately, some of them will be more difficult depending how the feature was originally coded (some just need one line, others need their entire output tweaked). -- Daveh 14:19, 9 October 2007 (EDT)

No problem, just wanted to make sure you were aware of the issues. The ones that bother me most are the two Uncategorized ones, given the recent push I've been doing to get everything all nice and organized. It'd be nice to be able to have a good concise list of all the pages that haven't been organized yet, but having Uncategorized Pages flooded with all the sub-pages and talk pages makes it nearly useless. And the Uncategorized Categories is clearly broken, in that it lists everything BUT categories. ("Uncategorized Templates" would be another good one if it existed - would pretty much solve my other complaint about Uncategorized Pages.) The others, I don't care that much about, but other people might use them, I don't know. (Though I might find uses for them more if they worked properly, but I'd have to see.) Anyhow, whenever you get around to it is fine, just letting you know about them. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 14:53, 9 October 2007 (EDT)

Server clock

Not sure if it matters at all, but I just noticed that the server-clock is running about 20 minutes slow. My computer's clock (which I just synchronized on the web, and compared to my cell-phone which gets its time from the tower) says 3:47 Eastern right now, and you'll notice that the time-stamp on this post won't match that. I doubt it affects anything major, just thought you should know in case it's a symptom of deeper problems. (As is often the case when a computer clock starts lagging.) --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:26, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

Thanks...the server was not running any time syncronization daemons so I'm guessing the time was simply slowly drifting. I've started NTP and will check in a few days/weeks to make sure the time is not drifting anymore. -- Daveh 19:59, 22 October 2007 (EDT)

Notice

I have been recently informed that Tiberius's next arrival won't be soon but as he said he will come back to finish what he did not finished and to improve UESPwiki. He also said that some users might find trouble (except Rpeh that apologised). Lord Geogorath 12:08, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

(Notice:I'm not making threats so don't start fights with me)

Editing Oblivion Map

The Oblivion map-editing tool at User:Daveh/Map no longer seems to be working. I'm guessing it's a casualty of the server move? I can pull up a location to edit it, but when I click "Save Location" or "New" nothing happens (the page doesn't refresh or update in any way).

Also, since I'm in map mode, a couple other questions come to mind. First, there's a missing tile on the map. Second, what's the feasibility of creating a Shivering Isles map? If someone were to get ambitious and follow the instructions on UESPWiki:Oblivion Map Design, create a complete set of map tiles, and create a data file listing all of the map markers, would it be relatively straightforward for you to then assemble it all and make a functional map? Any additional tips or recommendations on preferred formats, etc? Not that anyone has volunteered to do all of that work ;) But knowing whether or not it's possible would be useful.

Thanks! --Nephele^Talk 03:06, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

Someone mentioned the missing tile...strange but probably just a result of not exporting that tile originally and it carried through. I'll check the map tool...probably just a database permissions error.

I've been thinking about an SI map recently as well. If someone wants to try and create the tileset that should be fine as long as they coordinate with me to make sure the result is usable. I can dig up my Python scripts and PSP macros I used...most of the process I used is automated. The hardest part was actually exporting the original tiles from the construction set as it would crash after doing a few hundred tiles. Since SI is smaller this should be less of a concern.

I've been busy/away the past few weeks but am mostly around this weekend and should be able to catchup up things like these. -- Daveh 09:04, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

Fixed the map edit thing...helps if I actually give the mapsedit user write permission. I've added a few scripts to the bottom of the UESPWiki:Oblivion Map Design which may help anyone attempting to export images. -- Daveh 21:46, 22 October 2007 (EDT)

I've finished the example I was working on for the SEWorld. It ranges from (-2,2) to (2,-2) (NW to SE). Would you like me to email them to you so you can verify whether the format is correct? I've also included a 1280x1280 image to show that the overlap in each cell image has been removed. The archive is 740 KiB. The jpg compression is a different from the one recommended here (higher quality), but I still have the uncompressed .bmp files I converted the .dds files to. --Timenn 08:46, 23 October 2007 (EDT)

Sure...any e-mail examples would be fine, although from the sounds of it you're doing fine. Nice work with the removal of artifacts from the images. If you have the time/will after I might get you to do the same for the Oblivion tiles. -- Daveh 18:23, 23 October 2007 (EDT)

Rpeh has the credit on removing the artifacts. I've emailed you the examples. Before I start glueing the images together we will need to make a decision on the zoom levels. The SEWorld map size is not as easy to break down as the Tamriel map size was. SEWorld's size is 36x44. One idea is to round this to 48x48 so you'll have:

48 -> 24 -> 12 -> 6 -> 3 -> 1. The extra rows could just be gray background, like on the original Oblivion map. --Timenn 12:00, 25 October 2007 (EDT)

Zoom levels must be powers of two, at least in the default implementation of Google maps (other powers are technically possible but it makes it much more complicated). The base level does not have to be square either. Basically you just start at the base level and start scaling down by 50% until you reach a size such that the entire map fits in within one 256x256 tile.

As for glueing...I'm assuming you mean glueing 4 images together and resize by 50% to get the next zoom level? The final map uses the individual 256x256 map tiles. -- Daveh 14:32, 25 October 2007 (EDT)

I feared it would be not that easy. Powers of two will simply mean: 1 -> 2 -> ... -> 32 -> 64. All the tiles that are completely empty could use the same all-gray image. I will add gray to the tiles that are partially occupied (the borders). My idea was to indeed glue (a bit sloppish word I admit) 4 images to each other and resize that back to 256x256. As for the quality of compression, what size should be average, and what size maximum per image?
This is what I believe to be correct:

• Zoom level 16 is the original image. Zoom level n covers an area 4 times bigger than Zoom level n+1
• Image naming format is: seworld-xx-yy-zz.jpg. Where xx and yy are the x and y positions of the tile, zz is the Zoom level.
• The offset for x and y is 0 from the top left of the whole map. The position where (e.g.) 10-10 starts is different per zoom level.

I won't start naming until I know precisely what you want :-) --Timenn 15:43, 25 October 2007 (EDT)

That sounds right. For resizing I did the same thing...simply used a blank grayish image (matching the water color) for tiles outside the exported area. The "64" resize will likely just be one tile with the island entirely within it. You may wish to center the island somewhat in 'blank' tiles, i.e., instead of just adding them all on the right/bottom edges add an equal amount on all four sides. -- Daveh 20:55, 25 October 2007 (EDT)

I've got a very rough-and-ready stick-together-and-resize program too if anybody's interested... Daveh, I already uploaded the code for the artifact remover here if you want to play with it (and don't mind sullying yourself with C# rather than Python). As we've been discussing on Timenn's talk page it doesn't do a perfect job but might be worth running over the Ob map tiles. I'd guess it would take between 30 and 40 minutes to go through the whole lot. --Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 11:07, 26 October 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, I'll give it a try...and I'll take code in any shape or form. My previous scripts were Python as I needed an excuse to try it out. -- Daveh 12:02, 26 October 2007 (EDT)

At the moment I'm working on a script (Python) that will automatically generate all the required images. It is a bit trickier than I first thought. I'm currently debugging it, and then I will add the final code that actually concatenates (better word than "glue"?) the images. --Timenn 16:52, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

No problem...I still have to modify the OB map code to a more general form to let it be used for SI, MW and anything else we might need, plus I (or someone) still has to export the map locations for SI. Note that I added CreateZoomLevels.py recently which creates all the zoom levels from the base export for OB. -- Daveh 22:21, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

That looks great. I will modify my script to give an end result your script can use. The part of my script that renames the images, creates a new offset (0,0) and centers the images, works now. This would mean we are nearly there. In conjunction with Rpeh's image cleanup program this series can do all the work in one go!

I haven't yet looked into the steps required to export map locations, but I'm willing to assist if necessary. --Timenn 07:10, 31 October 2007 (EDT)

I've finished my work on the images needed for the map. Thanks to Rpeh's program only 80 images (zoom16) remained with artifacts. I cleaned those manually. Probably the only remaining artefacts are some of those tiny dark-red markers. My script centered the actually used cells in a 64x64 grid and generated the padding. Your script then generated all the zoom levels, up to 10. The final example is this.
There is just a small problem of getting the files to you. The archive containing all images is ~50 MiB big. Further jpeg compression will only make the images look alot worse, and will only slighty reduce the size. The file is too big for mail, and I don't know if it is possible to upload them to the wiki. An alternative is to have you download them from my end (FTP), or vice versa.
As for the offset required for the location coordinates, I know which image (at zoom level 16) represents cell 00,00, will that be enough? --Timenn 09:11, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

Great! You can ftp into:

 Ftp:      uesp.net
 User:     uespupload
 Password: upload6175jLo

Obviously not secure so this will be temporary. That should be enough information for the cell offset but I haven't done much on the actual map code yet so we'll see. As for exporting the map location data I used a custom C++ program using some code from ObEdit to iterate through locations and output the desired ones in SQL format. It should be easy enough to tweak it for SI. Hopefully I can get most or all of this done this weekend. -- Daveh 09:25, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

The files have been uploaded. I can imagine it is easier making the map with the images at hand :-). --Timenn 10:58, 2 November 2007 (EDT)

Thanks. One minor thing I just noticed: The filenames are in the format 'seworld-##-##-##' with the numbers less than 10 zero padded. Its much simpler in the map code to not have zero padded numbers, so 'seworld-00-00-09' would change into 'seworld-0-0-9'. I've already renamed the images you sent but if you need to resend them it would be quicker to have them in the desired format. -- Daveh 14:45, 3 November 2007 (EDT)

Another thing I'd like to do is to include the main city interiors on the map (see SI Worldspaces). It's easy to figure out which city cell is in the main world cell as the cell numbers are the same, i.e., SENSBliss.10.05.dds is the same as SEWorld.10.05.dds. Unfortunately, the edge city cells will probably have to be merged manually. The world cell image contains tree/rocks and the city cell image contains the buildings (look at a few edge cells to get a better idea). The interior city cells can just replace the world images directly so we shouldn't have to manually edit more than a few dozen, unless you can figure a way of merging them automatically. Thinking ahead, I'd like to do the same thing with Oblivion which will require much more piecing together. -- Daveh 11:43, 4 November 2007 (EST)

Sorry about the image name format, I must have meddled too much with the raw export images to have realised Google maps didn't need the padded zero.

The only other worldspaces I know of are: The Fringe, New Sheoth (3 seperate worldspaces) and Vitharn. I will look into merging these maps with the SEWorld map. --Timenn 09:29, 5 November 2007 (EST)

The SI map can now be found at www.uesp.net/oblivion/simap/simap.shtml. Currently it is just the map as I have yet to finalized the location data (took me longer than usual to export them correctly). The map itself looks very good so thanks to Timenn/Reph and whoever else put it all together. -- Daveh 19:27, 3 November 2007 (EDT)

I've got a rough draft of the locations up and mostly working. They appear to match up fine as far as I can see but take a close look and make sure. There's also no facility to edit locations...yet. -- Daveh 20:38, 3 November 2007 (EDT)

The locations seem to be aligned perfectly. I did a few random checks. I'm not sure what you mean by editing locations? --Timenn 09:29, 5 November 2007 (EST)

If you have the right permissions (like a few of the sysops do) you can add/edit locations on the OB map at User:Daveh/Map. I'll be doing a similar thing for editing the SI map data. -- Daveh 12:47, 5 November 2007 (EST)

I've mailed you the updated cell images for the New Sheoth area of the map. Bliss was a bit tricky to place, as its worldspace didn't synchronize with the other worldspaces. In the cases I had to choose, I chose the SEWorld worldspace, e.g. the fountain near the Bliss entrance is now missing. I omitted the tiny worldspaces used for the Houses of Mania and Dementia gardens as I doubt they were significant. Also it would have been hard to find the right spot on the global map where these gardens can be found.
I will continue on the Fringe, I don't know if that will take longer or not (bigger area, but just one worldspace). As for Vitharn... I've compared the cells of SEWorld and SEVitharnWorld and they look very similar. I think it is not necessary to merge images for this worldspace. --Timenn 08:19, 7 November 2007 (EST)

I've now mailed you the updated cell images for the Fringe area of the map as well. I think these images are the last. --Timenn 08:18, 8 November 2007 (EST)

Is the map ready for prime time now or does more still need to be done? --Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 15:42, 20 November 2007 (EST)

Sorry, I've been busier than usual the past week and haven't done anything on the map. What I have left to do is relatively minor and won't change the map that much so I believe we can call it ready for use at this time. -- Daveh 18:53, 20 November 2007 (EST)

The bad news is that making the SI map "ready for use" means that now we're noticing all the locations that need to be added to the map and other similar cartographer tweaks ;) Any chance of getting map edit capbilities online for the SI map? Also, I'd like to nominate both Rpeh and Timenn to be added to the list of cartographers (I'm sure there are other possibile candidates, too, but they're the first two who come to mind with all the work they've put into the SI map so far). --Nephele^Talk 02:24, 22 November 2007 (EST)

I'll see if I can get it working. It shouldn't be too hard since making the OB map work with SI was much simpler than I thought it would be and the edit part reuses the same code. -- Daveh 09:12, 22 November 2007 (EST)

Patrollers... Three this time!

Three more editors have been nominated and approved for patrollership:

• Vesna, see nomination
• Gaebrial, see nomination
• Mankar Camoran, see nomination

If you concur, could you add Patroller rights for all of them? Thanks. --Nephele^Talk 12:31, 7 November 2007 (EST)

Great! All done.... -- Daveh 22:48, 7 November 2007 (EST)

Wiki Tweaks

Two things that have come up tonight that need to be tweaked:

• The recaptcha appears to be ignoring the previous whitelist and therefore editors are frequently getting prompted when saving pages, even if the pages only contain links to UESP. This is particularly problematic because frequently the editors aren't even aware that the page contains an "external" link (for example, every stub on the site technically has an external link from the "expanding it" text that the stub template automatically adds). So somehow recaptcha needs to be forced to ignore links to uesp.net.
• Can the Template namespace be added to the $wgNamespacesWithSubpages array in LocalSettings.php? I realized that's the final tweak necessary to get the modification we were playing with earlier work ;) (And the last $tcn0 setting did work, by the way! Thanks).

Thanks. --Nephele^Talk 01:52, 11 November 2007 (EST)

ReCaptcha wasn't using the whitelist page so I added it in from the previous version of ConfirmEdit and tested it to confirm it is working. I also made the change to allow subpages in the Template namespace. -- Daveh 11:46, 11 November 2007 (EST)

Other Permissions

I was wondering whether it would make sense to tweak some of the other permissions. In particular:

• Aristeo still has map and cartographer permissions, which don't seem too necessary any more.
• I think it would be useful to give CheckUser permissions to some other active admins: TheRealLurlock, at least, as the most active other admin right now; or else, just give it automatically to admins.

Thanks! --Nephele^Talk 12:34, 14 November 2007 (EST)

Yup, I've been meaning to give Sysops the checkuser permission...done! -- Daveh 18:51, 20 November 2007 (EST)

Server Restart

One more quick request :) The server needs to be restarted because it's getting overloaded with permanently frozen connections. I have finished the problem page edits that were creating these connections, so hopefully now it's safe to restart the server and clear them all out. --Nephele^Talk 18:17, 14 November 2007 (EST)

Yah, I noticed those today and was wondering about them. Restarted. -- Daveh 20:22, 14 November 2007 (EST)

Looks like another restart is needed. We've got 8 frozen connections and site performance seems to be suffering as a result. At some point it would be really useful to actually find the bug in the code that causes these connections. But for now, just getting the server restarted should make a big difference. --Nephele^Talk 22:43, 1 December 2007 (EST)

Thanks for the restart(s). Unfortunately, performance is still pretty abysmal. Is there any chance that the partition used for logs has filled up or that there is some other problem with the logging system? Half of the connections in the server status are showing "L" (logging) for their status, and I don't think I've ever even seen "L" status show up before in the logs. It may be Saturday afternoon, but the server status reports definitely don't look like the usual weekend afternoon slowness. So I think there's some type of problem there that needs to be fixed.... --Nephele^Talk 18:13, 8 December 2007 (EST)

I had enabled logging recently to track an issue and didn't turn it off. Likely the log file was just getting big and slowing things down. I've disabled logging and restarted. -- Daveh 21:52, 10 December 2007 (EST)

Ajax Search Function

There's been feedback in a couple of places about the ajax search features that you enabled a couple weeks ago, namely at UESPWiki_talk:Upgrade_History#wgAjaxSearch and at Help talk:Searching#Search Function Bug?. The feedback's not exactly favorable ;) And even after a couple of weeks, I'm still not finding myself getting used to it. In fact, I'm finding myself consciously avoiding even using the search feature any more, because I've had a few serious problems (e.g., wiping out an edit before I'd saved it). When you get a chance would it be possible to turn off the ajax? Thanks. --Nephele^Talk 15:04, 1 December 2007 (EST)

New Patrollers (Part 5?)

We've got another two waiting for your approval:

• Timenn, see nomination
• Timmeh, see nomination

Thanks --Ratwar 15:13, 12 December 2007 (EST)

Hey. I'm just making sure you've seen this comment, because it has been 2 weeks. And I'm sort of eager to get to work. --Timmeh ^Talk 23:30, 26 December 2007 (EST)

Thanks for the reminder...done! -- Daveh 10:12, 29 December 2007 (EST)

And now there's yet another new candidate supported by the community:

• Willyhead, see nomination

Thanks!

(Also, in case you hadn't noticed, you may be interested in some other posts at Proposal for Performance Tweaks and Minor Tweaks.) --Nephele^Talk 03:27, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Daggerfall Map

I see you were wondering about a Daggerfall map. Just because the game is really old and our Daggerfall pages don't get seen much, I doubt its really that useful, and even so, it would be too much work to do for how much help it would end up giving. If I knew how to, I might try. But it's very low on the priority list until I get the Daggerfall pages fixed up. --Timmeh ^Talk 18:24, 20 December 2007 (EST)

It would have to be generated completely differently than the OB/MW maps since DF's landscape is generated procedurely. Extracted locations is also a good deal harder as the map format is binary and there are not any editors for them around. Right now its way down on the 'list'. An overall Tamriel map is probably of higher priority (lower resolution showing provinces, major cities, landmarks, etc...). -- Daveh 13:19, 21 December 2007 (EST)

Merry Xmas!

GuildKnight says "Happy Holidays!" Season's Greetings! I wanted to say Merry Christmas and thank you for this wonderful wiki! Without you, I would not have this addiction that occupies nine-tenths of my free time!! Anyway, have a happy new year, too. --GuildKnightTalk2me 01:52, 24 December 2007 (EST)

Many thanks...and have a great Christmas/holidays yourself! -- Daveh 10:56, 24 December 2007 (EST)

Just Curious

Good Evening Daveh, I was on the IRC the other night, and I have found a difference in the Wiki in which we all were mystified by. It's not that much of a big concern, and I have ntocied this about a month ago. If you usually looked at the bottom of a page on our/your Wiki (UESP) there was a view counter of the page that counted how many views the page has had. I have noticed that it has evaporated, vanished into thin virtual air. We have had no idead why this has happened. We did not sus[ect that you have made any changes for you have not been active at the time we have noticed this. I am just curious why this has happened. I am not begging for it back, though it was an interesting touch to our/your Wiki. Please respond on my talk page. Thank You, and Happy New Year Sir.

Sincerely, Playjex 22:47, 29 December 2007 (EST)

Nephele told me a while ago that when they updated the wiki software it changed or something. I'm not sure how well my memory knows stuff though, so I could be wrong. Sometimes it lies to me. --Timmeh ^Talk 23:42, 29 December 2007 (EST)

Actually, all I said was that I'd guess it might have changed with an upgrade. But looking it into more detail, it was turned off by Daveh on November 15 when he set wgDisableCounters to true (see Upgrade History). Personally, I'd like to see both of those changes reversed (see previous request at #Ajax Search Function).... --Nephele^Talk 23:59, 29 December 2007 (EST)

Would be nice to see if anyone but me is looking at the Daggerfall pages I've made. --Timmeh ^Talk 00:32, 30 December 2007 (EST)

I agree. Do you think we should start a vote on Community Discussion? --Playjex 13:56, 30 December 2007 (EST)

I'll make these changes when the site load is low during the next few days (it invalidates the site cache which slows it down for an hour or so). -- Daveh 16:03, 30 December 2007 (EST)

addition to easter egg

i noticed that in the unrelated section of the easter egg page, the character who is writing to "dracula" is also an acronym for a famous vampire Alacard (Alac Ardius, just remove the "dius")...he has appeard in many anime movies and storylines...so instead of there being only one vampire for this easter egg there should be two!

Assuming you meant an Oblivion easter egg I copied your comment to Oblivion_Talk:Easter_Eggs#addition_to_easter_egg. -- Daveh 13:56, 31 December 2007 (EST)

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