Buggy Version of CensusPlus?

spoonium · Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 5:44 am Post subject: Buggy Version of CensusPlus?

I was wondering, is the version you can download on this page (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/censusplus.php) known to be buggy?
The reason I ask is, I recently switched to the version hosted on WoWAce (http://www.wowace.com/addons/census-wholib-version/), and I noticed three distinct changes:
1) I suddenly see much more players being found. Where with the official version from this page, I wasn't exceeding ~700 players on my realm, I suddenly now see more than 1200 being catched.
2) Requests to /who were send twice according to the verbose output. This is not the case anymore.
3) Manual /who requests didn't tend to work. They now do (although there's another problem now, where it doesn't correctly proceed with gathering data, instead it simply tries to perform the same /who request over and over).

Are these things known? Especially the issue with the suddenly increased population bothers me, as it can significantly skew the population data, e.g. if there are only two persons gathering data per realm, one on each faction. But the first person is using the official version (with a lower population found) and the other one from WoWAce, thus having found a much higher population.

1974ER · Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 9:43 am Post subject:

I am just a fellow user, so Rollie might have more input for you, but here goes...

1) Number of characters seen is HIGHLY time variable... for example, I census several realms where early morning figures are around 100-250, around 20:00 they can exceed 2000. Also, different days of the week have differences in population. This is true regardless of version used.

Using the version available here:

2) The doubling of /who requests is a known error, I and several other people have reported it a fairly long time ago.

3) Manual /who requests work, if a census is currently in progress. If not, they seem to get ignored. As far as I know, has also been reported.

Rollie · Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 1:11 pm Post subject:

Hrm, I'm not sure about the version on WoWAce. The one here on the site is the officially supported version.
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spoonium · Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 4:02 am Post subject:

Rollie · Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 9:07 am Post subject:

Yeah, I knew there was a version on WoWAce, but I haven't used it myself.

I would not be against making it easier for the public to help update, but I can't just hand over all aspects as I have to maintain updates on the website that reflect any changes in the mod.
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spoonium · Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 11:12 am Post subject:

Well, if you change anything e.g. in the way the tables are being read from the addon, so that you'd need to publish a new version, you could always commit those changes to the repository yourself.

And if the addon itself somehow is made incompatible to this site, well, I assume that change wouldn't last very long, as it defeats the whole purpose of the addon: to provide data to this page. Wink

Anyway, it's your addon, so in the end it's your decision. I just think making it public would be a great thing.

1974ER · Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 5:08 pm Post subject:

spoonium · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2010 5:30 am Post subject:

1974ER · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2010 7:05 am Post subject:

Interesting... I already see a possible pattern here. And ingame meeting is indeed a good idea... only problem is I don't know how often you read this forum. So, I am going with following: EU-Alleria, Horde, character Trelw, time approximately at 16:00, 17:00, 18:00 or 19:00 today (server time). I might be a few minutes late, but will aim to be available at those times on that server & character. Smile

spoonium · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:16 am Post subject:

So, after one hour worth of testing together with 1974ER, I think I'm able to draw the following conclusions:

a) The official version without using WhoLib is accurate.
b) The WoWAce version is accurate as well (it uses WhoLib).
c) The official version with using WhoLib is innaccurate.

The last point is what is/was happening to me. I have another addon* that uses WhoLib (or LibWho, they seem unable to decide how it should be named...), and as soon as this addon is active, CensusPlus switches to use WhoLib (as intended) and begins to produce faulty results.
It actually doesn't matter what version of WhoLib you are using. My first impression was that an older version was causing all this trouble, but updating the library to the one used by the WoWAce version didn't fix it (and the WoWAce WhoLib library is working fine, as we found out by testing).
Thus the only reasonable explanation is that the official version of CensusPlus does not work correctly if any other addon uses WhoLib, regardless if it's up to date.
It does though if it uses its own build-in routines.

Additionally to providing false (too less) results, the official version takes about 50% longer while using WhoLib (which also doesn't happen in the WoWAce version).

There are only two solutions I can think of:
- remove support for WhoLib entirely until fixed
- switch over to or ask to take over the WoWAce version, if you don't want to completely give it away

* SpamMeNot

1974ER · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2010 10:06 am Post subject:

Since I basically only did what I always do ( = run censuses), I can't offer much additional input... One minor detail, which bugs me after examining the data I wrote down while Spoonium and I were experimenting is the question: Which characters get missed by the faulty censuses? Do they have something in common and is it possible to find out what that something is?

I am considering the following as a possible test setup: Completely empty .luas for both testers, one running the official version without WhoLib (I can do this), the other with. After censuses finish, manual checking of characters to find out which ones are missing. 80s only, only characters with special letters in their names, some other pattern, completely random pattern?

Allubz · Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 6:02 am Post subject:

I'm not sure whether I'm hijacking this thread now, but I found 'a newer' version, updated through WoWMatrix to produce odd results too.
At least, I can't tell whether the strange results occured after updating or later... it feels like it happened later since I updated my AddOns nearly a week ago.

All of a sudden the total amount of Characters went up from <9k nearly 15k and the current procentual coverage per class and race is bugged too.

I'm pretty sure I don't have WhoLib c.q. LibWho and I don't use / download from WoWAce.

Screenshot:
1920x1080

http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/7594/wowscrnshot061610135259.jpg

Paladin% 11%, rest 2-4%.

Races are ridiculous too, it's commonly known (and a few days ago my Census still had it) that Blood Elves are most played whereas Trolls are least played.

spoonium · Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 3:33 pm Post subject:

As far as I can tell (just downloaded it) WoWMatrix checks on http://www.warcraftrealms.com/censusplus.php for updates. So it should be the official version.
However, that behaviour doesn't look much like the one observed. More like a fluke, double counted characters, etc.
You could save your WTF folder and press the purge button and scan again too see what the results are then.

1974ER · Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 4:03 pm Post subject:

That does indeed look weird... have you taken a closer look at all of those level 80 paladins?

Allubz · Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 6:10 pm Post subject:

How would I do that, or are you being sarcastic =P?

I feel like deleting all Census data, but that will sort of affect my data... I like to see in-game how many chars I have collected from my realm. It was at 8k and jumped to 15k, like said.

1974ER · Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:37 am Post subject:

No, I was not being sarcastic. In fact, I am often incapable of sarcasm even when I do try to be sarcastic.

To explain myself:

Censusplus is not supposed to be able to find characters that aren't there. Therefore, there should be names, guilds, etc. if you for example find 500 identically named characters, there is your error.

When the census window is open, you can click on things to reduce the info shown. Click on the 80 bar, on the paladin bar and so on.

Try to find something that does not make sense... Could even be 100s of gibberish named unguilded characters... which might then indicate somesort of massive hacking / botting operation in progress.

Also, though that would reduce your data amount, you could try applying for example "/censusplus prune 2" as a command to remove all data that is older than 48 hours.

Edited for clarity and typos. Sad

Allubz · Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:51 am Post subject:

Alright, thanks for the heads up.

I'll update asap.

EDIT:

Level 80:
7579 (50%)

After that there's 571 (3%) level 1 characters. All inbetween resemble numbers barely over or way under 100. This all together can not even add up to 15k.

When looking at the screenshot I supplied earlier, I hovered my mouse over the Paladins section, where there was no guild or anything else specifically selected. Note that it shows just 1744 (11%) Paladins on a total of 15k. All other values are 3-4%, ranging from 550-700 characters, per class. These added up also don't total out to 15k. In fact, totalling these numbers (even though ridiculously imbalanced, with 11% palas ) I total out to around 8k characters, which was my overall result collected over a few weeks, before the system went buggy.

No matter what I select, I keep getting odd results.

EDIT2:

Now it shows 13.6k

I'd better reset Census, ;o?

1974ER · Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:50 pm Post subject:

Well...

7579 + 571 = 8150

Add... 78 x 100 = 7800

Approximate total 15950...

Even so, your figures still look weird on the screenshot... but... it is very late... Since you are on EU, I'll do a census (or two Very Happy

) on that server after I wake up again...

EDIT: Sorry, it's already Friday afternoon and I just finished my first scan of EU-Proudmoore, Alliance side... 563 characters seen, of those 84 paladins, 77 druids and a bit less of the others. Nothing apparent weird, at least so far.

Balgair · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 4:50 am Post subject:

Classwise there's definitely something weird going on, if 11% is paladins, and all others are 3-4%, 50% of results are no class. Something's gone very glitchy on that one, perhaps some digging in the .lua file would explain more, since there's gotta be a lot of characters in there with no class listed, thus won't display on the ingame interface.

Allubz · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:00 am Post subject:

Yeap I'll try to see to it that I dig through the .lua file.

There's nothing weird on the server itself, I'm pretty sure. The characters add up rather normally right now, too. It's just that it jumped from 8k to 15k ^^

EDIT:

Right, I just gave up on looking through the .lua file. There's 1688 pages of random infos that don't really help me.

Any tips on the .lua file or shall I simply delete my census d.b.?

Also, I'm afraid my updates to EU-Proudmoore are bugged now on the main page. At the moment they're still fine, but maybe with the next page update or something?