bugs Simtropolis 9.0.x - Bugs & Issues Report Thread

[TakemeThere 5,833]

 

5 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

Some additional info on Leaderboard tiebreakers:

Apparently there's no such thing. According to IPS, ties are only split by whichever results are first pulled from the database. So in other words, a logical method isn't used.

An even bigger case for draws then...

That makes even less sense then, but on the bright side at least now we know why it's happening lol. It's too bad that the end users have limited control over some aspects/parameters of the software being used. 

5 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

After investigating this, it would seem both @dk1 and @bixel had a whole bunch of their existing STEX files liked. On each day, this caused them to acquire enough rep to claim the lead, and pip you to the post on both occasions. In bixel's case, a momentous gain indeed.

There were two separate users involved (which I won't bring to light here). Although from past & present evidence, we believe the circumstances for them liking the files was genuine, with no ill intent to prevent you winning the daily total. So based on that, we're reluctant to make changes which would reverse this and alter the standings. The community is in charge of these Leaderboards, and manually adjusting would take control away, and also set a precedent for the future.

If interested, it's possible to check by visiting the rep activity for dk1 and bixel on their profiles. Since these are single instances (each file), it explains why they aren't shown in the "Popular Content" list. On both days, the lowest individual item has 2 likes.

The fact that any content can be liked at any time, means this is really a limitation of the system. Exactly the same with new content, it's possible for older files, posts, or other items to receive rep, and count to that day's standings. So in theory, this means anyone with at least one content item can achieve this.

Looking back at the history, it seems this isn't the first time an inactive user has attained 1st place. I guess it's just one of those things which by chance, has occurred two days in a row whilst you were leading. Sorry about that!

(However, especially with your return to the CJ scene, I'm sure #47 can only be a matter of time.) 

Oh that's totally cool, the only thing I was worried about was that it could of been a bug and I'm more than happy to hear that isn't the case. I can see what your saying going through the files and I have to say that I have absolutely no issues at all with the rep that was given. As far as I'm concerned anyone can give as many likes to anyone else at any point in time for whatever reason they so chose. In fact you don't have to go too far back to find a member who received 100 likes in a single day!(Feindbold Dec 6, 2016) And I'm guessing that reaching 100 wasn't exactly a coincidence  Perhaps if the members giving the likes had signed up that same day it might of seemed suspicious, which is not the case here as both have been members for years. But even if that was the case then I'm not sure if I'd agree with any action being taken. Who's to say they didn't legitimately sign up just so that they could give thanks to and support the work of that particular content creator. And those creators in question here; bixel & dk1, have both supplied outstanding content to the community so any rep points given to them is entirely deserved  

To be honest though I'm of the opinion that the daily leaderboard is a little bit silly. I'm guessing it was brought as more of a curiosity or as fun thing. But in the sense of using it as a measure of a persons contributions it's really not of much value. My total # of wins does make sense relative to my rep count but their are plenty of highly regarded members who don't punch any where near their weight such as Schulmanator & Ln X. It's something that's highly subject to random variation and often the worth of a contribution a member makes on any particular day isn't fully recognized/ disseminated until at least a few days after the fact, which is why I would be much more interested in a list of weekly or month leaders but for now I take it that the software isn't capable of showing those totals. *sigh* If only the leaderboard page wasn't so slow... Anyhow thanks again for looking into things.

[Silur 3,304]

3 hours ago, APSMS said:

I've been having that page refresh bug, too, in case it helps. I usually use Firefox, but have noticed the problem on other browsers as well. Refreshing manages to load the right page, but it takes a manual refresh, as otherwise the page merely hangs. Happened right here in this thread, too, as I was scanning back the archives to see if others had already reported it.

 

Just another user to add onto the pile of people reporting bugs, just so that the software providers have a harder time claiming it's isolated.

I have the same problem. What is the reason?

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

On 3/6/2017 at 11:40 PM, Takingyouthere said:

I would be much more interested in a list of weekly or month leaders but for now I take it that the software isn't capable of showing those totals. *sigh*

You can get weekly and monthly totals on the Leaderboard page as noted in CB's post in the Site Updates & Announcements thread.

On 12/9/2016 at 6:49 PM, Cyclone Boom said:

On the top right side, there are several range filtering options, including:

 

And if you go to the Forums page and scroll down you'll find:

Where you can also select Month or Year or All Time. This one on the Forums page loads a lot quicker.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

12 hours ago, Takingyouthere said:

That makes even less sense then, but on the bright side at least now we know why it's happening lol. It's too bad that the end users have limited control over some aspects/parameters of the software being used.

Yes, clearly not much thought has gone into handling ties. The good news is with their intention to expand on the feature, I would suspect more options will be provided for the configuration. It does have enormous potential, and is quite a revolutionary addition for forum communities.

 

12 hours ago, Takingyouthere said:

As far as I'm concerned anyone can give as many likes to anyone else at any point in time for whatever reason they so chose.

We completely agree it's fair to allow this freedom, and glad to hear you're supportive of this.

 

12 hours ago, Takingyouthere said:

In fact you don't have to go too far back to find a member who received 100 likes in a single day!(Feindbold Dec 6, 2016) And I'm guessing that reaching 100 wasn't exactly a coincidence

Funnily enough for all users, there's a set limit of 100 rep allowed to give each day. So what happened there, I'm guessing someone went on a rampage and used up all their daily allowance at once!

However, we'd not be against considering a raise or removal of this limit.

 

12 hours ago, Takingyouthere said:

It's something that's highly subject to random variation and often the worth of a contribution a member makes on any particular day isn't fully recognized/ disseminated until at least a few days after the fact

That's a good point. Like with sample data, the more there is, the less opportunity for outliers to affect the result. But I suppose it could be seen both ways. By measuring a short timeframe, it does give more chance to a wider range of people. Say if someone made an exceptional post or CJ update, that might equate to enough rep alone to reach the daily summit. Where on a weekly or monthly basis, it more favours those who regularly make consistent contributions.

Perhaps having separate "winners" would make sense then, to reward both aspects.

 

10 hours ago, Silur said:

I have the same problem. What is the reason?

There could be a combination of factors. So to properly determine exactly what's going on, both the page loading and Leaderboard performance will need further investigation. If server related, it's possible fixing one may fix the other.

I'll report back with a progress update as and when more information comes to light.

 

5 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Where you can also select Month or Year or All Time. This one on the Forums page loads a lot quicker.

Yes, although they may report different results than the Leaderboard, this widget does perform much better. I'd guess because it's simply retrieving the rep calculations, and not querying where the data is associated (i.e. posts).

There's also one at the bottom sidebar of the Activity feed, which is expanded to listing the top 20.

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

@RandyE reported a bug to me in chat.  If one goes to a category of the STEX and attempts to upload a file you can get this far and then the drop down won't drop down.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

@RandyE reported a bug to me in chat.  If one goes to a category of the STEX and attempts to upload a file you can get this far and then the drop down won't drop down.

Thanks, I've made a note in my file and will get that forwarded as a priority.

Site Performance

A quick update on this:

Measures have been taken to mitigate the excessive bot activity. Since it's been an intermittent issue, an assessment will be made tomorrow to determine whether this was successful. From observation, it would seem to have been most noticeable around midday EST.

Efforts can then begin to address the exact causes of the performance drops (thread pages & leaderboards).

 

EDIT:

I've updated the bugs list on the initial page.

  Edited March 9, 2017 by Cyclone Boom  

[TakemeThere 5,833]

On 3/7/2017 at 6:53 AM, CorinaMarie said:

You can get weekly and monthly totals on the Leaderboard page as noted in CB's post in the Site Updates & Announcements thread.

Yeah but those are just the rolling total of the last 7 days what I wanted to see was the leaders from past individual weeks and months. One of which I've already taken care of 

On 3/7/2017 at 1:12 PM, Cyclone Boom said:

However, we'd not be against considering a raise or removal of this limit.

That's a good point. Like with sample data, the more there is, the less opportunity for outliers to affect the result. But I suppose it could be seen both ways. By measuring a short timeframe, it does give more chance to a wider range of people. Say if someone made an exceptional post or CJ update, that might equate to enough rep alone to reach the daily summit. Where on a weekly or monthly basis, it more favours those who regularly make consistent contributions.

Perhaps having separate "winners" would make sense then, to reward both aspects.

That's true. I guess I should look at it in the same as having more trixie's winners, that way more people can feel appreciated. It's just that I felt like the site was trumping the daily winners a little too strongly; having created an entire new section on the site for it, then having medals by our names and the total count of wins on a members home page. But I can understand the appeal to it. And I think that would add to it, having the weekly and monthly winners recognized in the same way on their user page.

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

We seem to have lost the Simtropolis regular smiling emoticon:

 

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

17 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

We seem to have lost the Simtropolis regular smiling emoticon:

That's strange, I was able to see it in the middle there:

Does it also appear missing from the "Simtropolis" category selection?

The smiley should be the first one at the top left:

Maybe it's worth trying a forced cache refresh (Ctrl+F5).

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

Just did Ctrl+F5.

<-- that was typing it. It acted like it was going to change, then didn't. And it's missing from the picker too. My first one shows the

 

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

I've tried an internal refresh of the emoticons list. Let me know if that worked or not.

The still appears live on the server at:
https://community.simtropolis.com/uploads/emoticons/default_1.gif

Is it also missing for anyone else?

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

7 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

I've tried an internal refresh of the emoticons list. Let me know if that worked or not.

Nope. Btw, I'm in FF. I'll come back and edit this with Chrome...

Ok, now in Chrome.  

With it I see a little picture box, but still not the emoticon.

[nos.17 5,133]

1 hour ago, Cyclone Boom said:

Is it also missing for anyone else?

Yup. I'm seeing this:  

[SecretMbr_735754 2,157]

  <-- Black Ninja Llama       I get 2 lists of emoticons, 1. Trixies (All Llamas), 2. Simtropolis (Standard Set).    The default set is Trixie Llamas.    

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

OK, so it only shows as a missing image?  -->

It's quite puzzling how one emoticon, amongst the others, suddenly stops working in multiple browsers. For what it's worth, I'm not able to replicate this in Firefox, Chrome or IE, and can see all posted ":)" smilies in this thread...

A few other questions to anyone encountering the issue:

• Has it just been noticeable today?  If not, when did it first occur for you?
• Can you view the image directly?  If so, maybe try a Ctrl+F5 refresh from there.
• Does it make any difference embedding using the URL?  Like so:
• Is the image visible in posts made by other users?  (I assume not)

Thanks.

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

Editing in: I just noticed the problem moments before I posted about it originally.

Here's a s/s of your post while I'm using FF:

And here's what I get when I try to go to your Directly link:

^ Ctrl+F5 whilst there does nothing useful.

So, apparently, ST feels I've smiled too much and I've used up my quota.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

OK thanks.

Guess what? The bug has caught up...

After trying another force refresh myself (which I also did earlier), I'm also not seeing the smiley anywhere. Also get that same error when visiting directly.

Since there has been a delay, this may suggest an issue with server caching from Cloudflare (the CDN used by the site). As this is a clustered service around the globe, it may have taken a while for the issue to spread to different regions.

Very strange indeed... But at least now I'm seeing it first hand, it's a little easier to try and investigate what's going on.

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

6 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

... it may have taken a while for the issue to spread to different regions.

Ah. My ISP sends the electrons at nearly the speed of light. I guess others are still using carrier pigeons.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

Without carrying a smile, that'd be a grumpy pigeon right now.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

OK great news, I think I've now successfully restored the missing smiley!

Basically, I've replaced it using the same configuration as before (filename and shortcut + HD version). So if gone according to plan, this should allow a smooth transition -- All existing instances on the site loading again, with it restored in the menu as the 1st item. Otherwise it might be worth another force browser refresh (Ctrl+F5) to once again load the image into memory.

Yet another situation which underlines the critical importance of backups. You never know when they might be needed, even for a small 2KB file.

As to what caused this, the prime suspect is:

It makes you wonder whether this llama or its accomplices are somehow responsible. However, as they were first witnessed around 2 weeks ago, orderly queuing outside the Llama Pen, there is no conclusive evidence to prove this.

In all seriousness, clearly the image had disappeared from the server, and that "1S160/2" error code was indeed a fancy way of saying the good old "404 Not Found". My theory is there was a conflict with the llamas or initial failure with an upload, and it's somehow taken this long for the issue to propagate. If the original working smiley was cached, it's plausible Cloudflare may have caused the delay in being detected. But in truth, this is mere speculation, and we'll probably never know for sure...

For all intents and purposes, this can be forever known as "The Mystery of the Missing Emoji"

 

---

STEX Upload Selector

In other developments, I'm also pleased to report Dirk has promptly fixed the STEX category dropdown:
 

 

I imagine they'll take a little longer, but next on the agenda is the page loading & Leaderboard performance.

Thanks everyone!

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

Yep. I can use them again. The only evidence that they had gone missing are the screenshots.

*Cori presents @Cyclone Boom with another BEE award*

 

[APSMS 1,892]

4 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Ah. My ISP sends the electrons at nearly the speed of light. I guess others are still using carrier pigeons.

My ISP sends them at that speed, too, but when you have satellite internet, this still means a minimum response time of over 1/4 second (45 000 mi @ 186 000 mi/s), not counting server processing time and the fact that space-based electronics are usually years behind what's available currently on the ground. Average ping: between 700 and 1200ms.

Plus it can never decide if I'm in Arizona, Iowa, or the South Pacific, despite the fact that they only service the US (and you know whereabouts I am IRL anyways).

[Haljackey 17,325]

Ran into this while accessing the home page today

 

...Unable to reproduce, hope others can't as well.

 

Although I kinda like it

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

22 hours ago, Haljackey said:

Ran into this while accessing the home page today

I'd suspect a brief server hiccup or the like. I've noticed something similar on rare occasions when a page doesn't complete loading.

Let us know should it happen again.

[matias93 7,535]

Yup, incomplete loading of the CSS, happened to me once or twice on the phone, mainly over Opera Mini.

And definitely it looks very cool with the transparent background of the avatar!

[Edvarz 1,984]

That has also happened to me a couple if times, I just refresh the page and everything's back to normal.

I've been having a weird issue when trying to change the page on threads, it doesn't load, I have to refresh the tab for it to load properly.

[Silur 3,304]

3 hours ago, Edvarz said:

That has also happened to me a couple if times, I just refresh the page and everything's back to normal.

I've been having a weird issue when trying to change the page on threads, it doesn't load, I have to refresh the tab for it to load properly.

It work for me well today, but I had same problem before.

[Edvarz 1,984]

6 minutes ago, Silur said:

It work for me well today, but I had same problem before.

Oh, it works normally now. I had the problem in the morning... should have double checked before posting, sorry.

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

I can confirm the thread page loading issue has now been identified and should now no longer be present.

After looking into this, it was caused by the Google ads which are shown below the initial post in each thread page (e.g. above mine here, as it turns out).

Threads used AJAX to load pages inline, without needing to refresh the entire layout. Basically this was incompatible with the ads, meaning there was a clash when the request was made. Dirk has now disabled this in favour of the standard method of loading. So if you notice a visual difference when changing pages, that's the reason.

Since ad blockers would bypass the issue, this explains why it wasn't consistent for all users.

[Silur 3,304]

Thanks for the solution to this problem!