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We will be upgrading the entire site and moving servers within the next few months. Dev is in progress.

I looked into the affected php code, and did not see use of the code causing the issue. I think a vulnerability remains, but it was cleaned up by the recaching process. Upgrading IPB should fix the source (coming soon).

It's a possibility once we switch servers.

We lost touch with s4n, our server administrator. We have not heard any response from him for a couple of months now, so hopefully he is OK. THe good news is that this is prompting a shakeup and Tech and I will be learning more on the server maintenance side. The wiki is back up. We will be moving forward soon ourselves with changes towards STEP 3.0 Sorry all for the inconvenience.

I was able to reach s4n, and he restarted the php processes.

The wiki is huge and complex, so it has outgrown our server capacity. We are planning on changing servers and offloading some of the wiki programmability onto a CMS ... hopefully in the near future. Our server guy (s4n) may need to tweak some performance settings, but I will see about getting the service provider to hard reset the server. Will post back after.

I seem to remember s4n mentioning that he removed the CSS plugin. You can check on the wiki ... Special Pages > Version EDIT: NM, just checked, and it is still installed, so I would check the template or the template call.

Things have been OK for me, but I tend to get on at around this time of day, which may be lower traffic. Better server and software is on the horizon in the next few months.

OK, I will piecemeal through the thread and learn more then. Probably not until the weekend tough

WOW, you guys have a novel already going in here! I have nowhere near the time I would need to read it all Based on the first few posts: Lots of work went into MP, and I assume (without having used it ever), that is is or will be a great utility/service. My gut tells me that it is not a plugin solution for STEP though. As I said, we are looking for a developer to configure a new relationship-management system (RMS) to replace Semantic Mediawiki functionality ... Drupal could work, so if that is not an option, I suppose we can play around with MP for kicks and ideas (but I don't think that is the 1:1 replacement we are looking for).

Fixed, thanks

Just look at the page history, and you should see the last edit coincides with the updated time stamp. Templates are transcluded, so editing them only effects the template page itself and not pages calling them. Updates won't trigger an edit either. It is accurate, and anyone can edit a page, so some human must have made a change, however small. EDIT: no, I just checked page history, and the update time is not in sync with the update timestamp, just as you say. My guess is that the code itself that you used for the timestamp must be the cause, perhaps the switches used with the magic word? {{ #time: G:i:s j F Y|+1 hours| {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} }} Would need to look into it to determine. Try testing that code snippet on a user page to see if the result is same as your mod guide page

Seems like you may be joking, but in case you are not and for posterity: First, I respect your Christianity and your right to your own opinions. Second, you are obviously intelligent. However, facts are not up for debate or subject to a belief system or opinions ;) Agree with Tech: Most Christians have reconciled the factually-measured age of the Earth (~4.6 billion years) with their creationist belief systems. The two are not mutually exclusive. ... now, can we all agree that the Earth is flat, or do some of us really question the hard, all-but-provable logic of math and science? OMG, yes, some of us do! ... anyway, I am not one of those that thinks Trump has any more intelligence than the average guy (again, agree with Tech). I think he has been fortunate in his life, that's all (and he has personality going for him). He has a lot of gall, and he doesn't play the traditional political games. People have come to really hate politicians. Trump actually manifests all of the textbook behaviors of narcissistic personality disorder (according to many experts ... and me of course :D). My personal mantra on politics: From the perspective of the governed, the desire to be a politician is itself the disqualifying agent for being a good one for the people.

... so are the largest proportion of American voters (Trump actually lost the popular vote). Our electoral college and even state distributions of senators and lack of term limits and the weight of supreme court justices are all illogical ... except from the POV of the elite political class (it's chess to them). American voters seem pretty fickle to me, most of them seeming to sway from one candidate to the other almost daily and certainly weekly. Then you have the fact that the DNC was colluding with Clinton against Sanders. Collectively, Americans finally want to shut down the political class, and they probably would have elected Sanders if he hadn't been cheated out of the Dem nomination. Trump was the 'rebellion' vote, because he was the only choice for a lot of misguided people. Groups do not function rationally, because they are collectively unintelligent --nearly half of Americans don't think the Earth is much more than 10,000 years old or that climate change is a grand lie. I could go on, but ... my guess that the same dynamic exists in the UK and Australia and many Western European nations (to greater or lesser degree).

@Tannin I think that this was a very smart move by Robin ... bout time we had more consolidation of key resources and innovators in the community ;) If you think file-system links can work as smoothly and transparently as VFS, then I am game ... works very well in Linux! Now, stop reading this thread and get that thing built already :P

Yeah, I saw that and forgot about it when I wrote. Good move. We should start breaking up the others though and implement a post limit per topic ... maybe archiving the rest into subforums within adjacent to their own Topic forums. The big topics with lots of page views, I mean that are under the forums I mentioned.

Yes, we are still having issues related to limiting resource use on the server so that we don't risk our hosting relations. s4n has made some tweaks as a possible short-term fix. There must be an issue with thread size for forums, but the real issues are more likely the wiki, which is muuuuch larger than the forums in terms of storage by an order of magnitude at least. However, LordOfLA makes a good point about DB query efficiency, and I am not sure if forums and wiki DBs differ in terms of optimization. Breaking large, popular threads into chunks might help, and we have some doozies like Skyrim Revisited, which is getting the largest number of topic views this year by far and second only to MO support in 2015. Mods, MO Support, General, and Sheson's DynDOLOD are other large and potentially high-trafic forums with hot topics that should be archived. Sheson's thread has not had nearly as much traffic since early 2015 though (probably due to DynDOLOD wiki supoort).

Get the Lazarus plugin for FireFox. You will never lose a thing again in a free-text field ;)

@Aeradom I agree that most people don't understand the mechanics of the nation's or the world's economy and governments well enough to make informed political decisions (leaving out racism and xenophobia). I actually think that most people understand so little that they probably should abstain from even casting a vote! Most people vote on banal/superficial things like personality or appearance of the candidate ... and the government as well as the lobbyists KNOW this and manipulate the system likewise. Make no mistake: corporations rule the world, and individuals are mostly behaving like very predictable cattle --corralled, fed, and sidelined accordingly. The two-party system is a manifestation of two basic corporate agendas: nationalism versus globalism (a bit of an oversimplification, but applicable). Both of these general agendas have a common goal though, and that is 'power', which is in turn a major driving force of human nature. Let's face it: the ambitious rule the world, and ambition has at its core a fundamental weakness as a manifestation of animal nature driven by self preservation. Animals don't play 'fairly', and "intelligent animals" have even more potential power along a sliding scale of intelligence. I also agree with you about term limits --specifically and conspicuously lacking in the judicial branch and the Senate of the US government. Why don't we have them?? ... corporations and their lobbyists (and existing career politicians), that's why. I somewhat disagree about the CNN issues you have though. Sure, they have been slightly biased due to bias of a few of their people, but for the most part, they are the least biased of the corporate news sources ... nothing to the extent of Fox, IMHO. All corporate news has some general and pervasive problems though, because they are driven by profit in a capitalistic system. The racial majority will always have the most political power and the least social power in a capitalistic democracy (and other types of governments aside from a theocracy, I am guessing). One day, brown people will lose their social power, and being white will be more socially fashionable. ... OK, back to bumbling complacency ... baaaaaahhh, moooo ...

Just a quick point about 'evolution' in response to some of Mono's and SRB's comments: Evolution cannot 'stop', and it has no 'purpose' at all. It is a result of random and not 'chosen' effects. It simply represents the phenotypic result(s) of some genetic event(s) due to some selective pressure. Humans do subvert natural selection, since we impose artificial selective pressures ... but make no mistake: evolution is still progressing. We are just incorporating artificial selective pressures that have, as yet, unseen evolutionary effects. Humans are messing with all kinds of dials that say "DON'T TOUCH!", and we here may never know the true ramifications ;) Back to the original topic though: I have seen a lot of good points about the craziness of PC these days. It is socially fashionable to stand up for anything or anyone that could fall into the 'minority'. Social media and mobile devices really have made it so easy for us all to be social heroes (and Mother Teresa wannabees) ... never mind how we REALLY think or behave. We're all looking for a new group to follow and fighting to be of the most influence. I think a lot of people are simply disingenuous in so many ways ... such silly creatures we are! Animals with relatively small but varying --and sometimes significant-- capacity to perform logical computations! Back to the argument of altruism! (or you could say, pathological altruism, with is what I think Sparrow is alluding). Does altruism actually exist in its own right? ... or is it really a form of selfishness at individual, and possibly kin levels? Mono: I trust you will have much to say on this topic!

Agree elenhil ... kids represent the unbiased nature of humanity, and they are inherently unreasonable for at least a few years (possibly the most important and ingrained part of social development). Agree SRB ... humanity has largely countered evolution by way of natural selection; however, our nature represents millions of years of evolution, and Homo sapiens sapiens are all but unchanged since they arose from Homo erectus (arguably, of course), and both of these exhibited similar sexual dimorphism with regard to social roles. It will take a million years or more to wash that out of our genes ;) ... and I doubt the Earth can support our twisting of the natural order due to the process of farming and fertilization alone, not to mention all of the other unsustainable 'cheats' humanity has undertaken.

You are inferring the old biology vs environment argument. I think it is reasonable to say that each contributes significantly. Therefore, generally speaking, women are biologically predisposed to nurture and child care, while men are biologically predisposed to protection and procurement. Environment and behavior reinforce these biological tendencies ... hmmm, are such environmental reinforcements largely governed by biology (e.g., hormones). It's reasonable to conclude that they are. We are all largely victims of our biology, and society reinforces these behaviors, I think ;) ... but feminism and social justice represent environmental pressures against the behavioral 'norm' I think. Which is why I think it is so difficult to swim against the biological tide. It can be done, but at uncertain cost.

@Grant & baronaatista I can drink to both of those comments

This is the Banter Inn. A perfect forum for such discussions. It has nothing at all to do with STEP. We just have the sense to host such a forum so that our members can vent and rant without having to log on as a member on some other forum. If anything, this strengthens our community by allowing everyone to express themselves. Modders are humans too. Express your opinion. It is valid due to the very fact of its existence. --------------- @Mono ... wow, you are philosophically beyond me, my friend. I am not inclined to spend the time it would take to properly critique your assertions or to back up my own ... I rely on my own logic and interpretation of the world around me. I do not need evidence to corroborate or refute my own experiences and observations, and I think that my conclusions are sound based upon the evidence. Women ARE more apt to nurture than men, just as men ARE more apt to commit violent acts than women. Isn't it obvious? Hasn't history demonstrated these facts for millennia? Indeed I say, it is so. Perhaps social influence does teach men to behave more man-like and women to behave more women-like (as defined by historical norms), but the root cause remains the same: varying levels of hormones like estrogen and testosterone (to name only a tiny fraction) that are associated with the sexes in predictable ways. It is, in fact, causal. Rather, social pressures are teaching us to ignore our biology, and it is not necessarily working out so well, IMO :) I think Sparrow has some good points, and so does SRB ... and Mono. It's complicated. Would that humans could think past their daily grind. Oh how much better the human world would be if we all put so much thought into social problems. The blinders are on, and the narrow-minded ultimately control the world. Why? Because it is easier. I am just calling it like I see it and nothing more ;)

@SRB Good points, all. I'm at odds with the feminist movement beginning at your "phase 2" or thereabouts. Women's suffrage and equal pay for equal role are one thing, but the trend of the movement to position family women into society as bread winners is another. Women now dominate the corporate workforce, and children are being raised by-and-large by daycare factories. Part of this is due to corporate dominance of industrial society, particularly in the US, but much of it is due to this crazy idea that women are equal to men (and the reverse, which is not often alluded). The sexes are NOT equal. One is no better than the other, sure, but the fact remains that it is a major fallacy of our society to posit that the genders are equal in all respects besides inherent value. The sexes are built differently due to the evolutionary advantage of being so (see sexual dimorphism), and I think that our societal roles should be largely reflective of our biological roles ... for the most part. There are always exceptions, which is fine. I am pretty traditional in that I think it is best for the family unit if the man goes out and earns the money while the woman stays home and teaches the kids to be proper people ... again, there are always exceptions. Just look at the increased age of mothers at first childbirth. Way up since the 70s. What's to blame? I think it is a combination of the feminist movement and corporate culture. I think careers are now more important to many women than family. And I think that individuals are far less respectful and respectable than they used to be, on average. I know I sort of sound like a Republican on this point ... eeeewwwwwww! I am proud to be a political nonconformist. Aspects of all party agendas are agreeable or disagreeable to me. Women are biologically engineered to bear and raise children, and on average, they are temperamentally much better equipped to do so. Men are, on average, physically and temperamentally better equipped to protect and procure (... and commit violent acts, BTW). In much of Europe, women get paid vacation for a full year to bear and begin the raising of their children ... not so in the US. Big problem. We promote the idea of gender equality in all respects. Corporations generally win, families (and society) generally lose. I really think that the general deviation from this fundamental sexually-dimorphic role playing marks one hallmark of the downfall of modern society. People in modern society are more selfish, self-important, individualistic, and narcissistic than ever before, particularly in the US. Again, corporate culture may be the major vehicle of this problem at the core. I am all for equal human rights, but I suppose I disagree with the idea that we're all equal and that we all should espouse the idea that we should be competing for everything at the same level ;)