P99 wiki constantly down

[Cbaci]

From a quick scan of chrome dev tools shows it's the CSS that's gaffing. but it could be my openclaw discord bot responding to voice prompts for "How to make it so my EQ ranger wont die so much on P99"

[Jimjam]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This may be true, but we definitely also have a problem with wiki spammers I personally had to remove hundreds of pages (one by one [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]) of spam for penis pills and other crap from the wiki (before Rogean turned new signups off).

But i really need more pp.

[Ruluvien]

Originally Posted by CrazyPro [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's because of a horribly implemented pigparse feature that scrapes the wiki every single time someone targets a mob.

Not sure I buy that. If that was the case surely someone with some common since would have turned that feature off by now.

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by Ruluvien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Not sure I buy that. If that was the case surely someone with some common since would have turned that feature off by now.

It's true.

https://github.com/smasherprog/EqToo...ikiApi.cs#L107

[Goregasmic]

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's true.

https://github.com/smasherprog/EqToo...ikiApi.cs#L107

This isn't new though?

The software stack all reached EOL, some as far as 2015.

Could be overloaded by other shit like spammers or AI scrappers too I guess? Not my area of expertise.

[bcbrown]

No, not new. When I looked into it it seems like that feature's been included for 2-3 years, and one of the maintainers is starting to add some caching that should help, but it's still unfinished. I don't think that's the only cause of the wiki issues but it certainly doesn't help!

[Dgc2002]

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This isn't new though?

The software stack all reached EOL, some as far as 2015.

Could be overloaded by other shit like spammers or AI scrappers too I guess? Not my area of expertise.

The amount of traffic generated by the previous version of this PigParse feature is probably a blip on the radar compared modern scrapers/bots. Without something like CloudFlare between your site and the open internet you'll be hammered all day by indiscriminate bots.

I would honestly be surprised if traffic volume is really taking down the Wiki. I just tested with a mirror of the wiki and each mob/item page is a few hundred kB which is nothing.

[loramin]

Our wiki stack is outdated, deliberately, because much of it is custom. Think of all those tables on a zone page, for instance: there's no way to do them with wiki stuff, so Rahvin had to write custom PHP code ... many years ago when the wiki started.

Back to hen we had up to date Mediawiki software, but many years have passed, and Rahvin quit. So now if we update, all his stuff (ie. big chunks of the wiki) breaks, so we're stuck with old software.

This also is an issue with wiki spammers: a simple CAPTCHA would stop them, but our wiki is too outdated to do CAPTCHAs. I offered to custom code one, but Rogean turned me down ... so presumably he has another solution in mind, and the wiki is down while he implements it (unless he's decided to not have a wiki anymore).

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Dgc2002 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The amount of traffic generated by the previous version of this PigParse feature is probably a blip on the radar compared modern scrapers/bots. Without something like CloudFlare between your site and the open internet you'll be hammered all day by indiscriminate bots.

I would honestly be surprised if traffic volume is really taking down the Wiki. I just tested with a mirror of the wiki and each mob/item page is a few hundred kB which is nothing.

The devil is on the details. For instance, even 0kb requests require server effort, and enough such requests can take down a server.

Similarly, overloading is more about lots of requests at one time. Wiki servers are web servers: they're designed to handle a basic number of requests at any given time, so it's about making a lot more requests than it can handle at once.

It does seem unlikely to me that a tool (even a horribly written one that makes tons of requests) would consistently, over time, overload the wiki ... but if most of a guild uses it and they all spam requested the same raid mob page, that certainly could slow or crash it briefly.

I'd suspect the bigger issue is AI agents, which are overloading servers all over the Internet right now. But like I said, the devils in the details, and since I don't have access to the wiki server logs, I don't have those details ... so this is just speculation.

[Jimjam]

Speaking of overwhelmed by bots IMG_1128.jpg theer can be dozens of clearly spam accounts processing registration at a time and maybe twenty thousand unregistered viewers (not human) trawling the site at a time.