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As a web dev who dont do css much, I am curious how saving without change fixing it lmao. Anyway, thanks for reply.
As a web dev who dont do css much, I am curious how saving without change fixing it lmao. Anyway, thanks for reply.
Like /u/DJembacz mentioned, it's about forcing the MediaWiki software stack to update a few things, because these things (a technical element of the wiki called Semantic MediaWiki) can take a while to be updated in a big database.
The CSS bugs are mostly fixed after I've applied the changes. I was able to prepare these in advance but was stuck in traffic on my way home from work :)
As to why the content is broken... we use one particular extension which doesn't play nice each time ArenaNet upgrades the wiki software (we call this one "SMW" - we use it everywhere, it's a beast and it lets us do pretty things) . The maintenance script provided with SMW (intended to be applied after we do updates) just keels over and stops halfway through with the size of our SMW database.
So we end up running some scripts to purge pages on the wiki (same as happens when you click the clock as a logged in wiki user). There's about 100k pages on the wiki, and the script is ticking through the pages. It'll get there, just give it 24 hours and don't worry about it. We're working on it.
This is probably one of the reasons we don't upgrade very often.
(I still think it's amazing that ArenaNet host the wiki for free with no adverts. It's great that they do any updates at all, and I know it takes them a fair bit of effort in the background to provide it).
Please a round of applause and /bow for /u/chieftainalex, who worked very hard to prepare for this update last week. Every time we upgrade the MediaWiki software, a bunch of CSS gets changed and Alex has to go through hours of fixing it.
And regarding the purging, unfortunately, we're bound to Semantic MediaWiki and they still haven't fixed this bug. Generally speaking, we don't upgrade too often to keep the software stack stable (and also because of how many months it takes to prepare these upgrades).
No, it finished at 4gmt. I get the problem too. They did change versions, perhaps thats it.
Yes, it's very common for the wiki to be in a "broken state" after an upgrade. MediaWiki (and the associated software we also use, such as Semantic MediaWiki) changes a lot of things between two versions and most of this is totally transparent for the content created by the wiki editors (who are players like everyone here and volunteer their time to edit the wiki). This requires some work to fix the content structure (things like template and CSS) that only wiki editors can do because they're the ones creating and maintaining the content.
Cheers Stephane but we all know the actual hard work is the bit J and QA do prior to even letting us know there's an update coming!
Ha Alex, never stop being your amazing self! ;) The hard work we put in the wiki is multiplied many times by the awesome community of the editors.
Sounds normal to me, I'm sure it'll be back to normal soon enough! Always thankful for the tireless work on keeping the wiki running and updated.
Credits to every single wiki editor who create the entire content of this wiki.
Saving without changes (also called "blank edit" iirc) is just meant to force the wiki to refresh the cached content in the database without actually changing the content and also to propagate it to included contents (templates etc). That's why it wouldn't solve the CSS issues but could help with broken parsed content.
For the next MediaWiki upgrade, we'll try to run /u/chieftainalex's bot before going live to see if it can help with making this smoother for everyone (editors and players).
I of course thank everyone for their contributions to the wiki, it's helped me and countless others immensely over the years. I would suggest though that a shout-out to the issues be posted somewhere public- the wiki is so ingrained into the game at this point that both vets and new players are struggling to find information at the moment. Vets can cope, new players may be put off.
The wiki editors did put a big notice at the top of the wiki to let all visitors know about the issues.
I'm a heavy user of the wiki and even I didn't understand what exactly was wrong and when it would be fixed :) Just worried that a lot of newer players will be put off from using it and GW2 isnt the easiest game when it comes to learning about specific items (whats needed, what to vendor etc)
Worry not. I can see that there hasn't been less users or less use (pageviews or average time spent on the wiki) of the wikis since the maintenance!