Forum:Ads

I've recently opened Wowpedia in a private browser window, clicked the Recent changes link, and saw... this. It appears that Gamepedia is now using the same ad delivery tech that Wowhead was so reviled for -- loading the main page with this experience takes 20-40 seconds, attempts about 500-1000 HTTP requests, and renders the ads, but not our actual content.

Now, granted, this probably only happens on some browsers/ad blocking configurations, and probably not (yet?) for logged-in users, but is THIS really the future we want?

P.S. The "new topic" button on the Wowpedia:Community portal doesn't properly pre-load the forum header for new topics, so there's a chance that some of the topics people have recently attempted to post have been happily sent into the void.

P.P.S. Found at least one such example. — foxlit (talk) 22:50, 24 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Never saw any problem as a gamepedia pro editor (I'm not paying for anything, it's automatically given once you reach a certain contribution threshold), but I'm reporting this to the slack channel. Xporc (talk) 08:38, 26 August 2018 (UTC)


 * This is very odd and I can't say I've seen something like this before. Can you gather some more information so we can troubleshoot? What browser are you using? Are there any errors in the console? Is it just on Wowpedia? -- 15:38, 26 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The screenshot shows Safari version 11.1.2 (13605.3.8), on a network where direct connections to some ad networks are not possible (DNS resolution). Here is a console log from loading the main page; it contains something like 700 errors, mostly of the "oops we couldn't connect to an ad network" variety. This seems to affect all Gamepedia wikis for me (tested by visiting dota2, lol, postscriptum). A similar issue was affecting Wowhead for about the last 6+ months, but they appear to have changed something at around the time of the BfA launch. I haven't noticed it on other sites, but I also don't think any other sites I regularly visit use this ad delivery tech.
 * Currently, this does not appear to apply to logged-in sessions. Of course, those sessions eventually expire, and if you look carefully at the screenshots, the log in link is nowhere to be found either.
 * This also makes referring strangers to Wowpedia pages problematic -- you might think you're linking to the page that looks like what you see as a Pro Editor, but what your recipient might see is the "Welcome to !" version with all links removed (added a screenshot of how It's a Waist of Time renders when affected by this). — foxlit (talk) 17:07, 26 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you for this information. We were able to use it to reproduce the issue. We're working on it and will let you know once we have more. -- 19:23, 26 August 2018 (UTC)


 * This is still an issue (on Safari, with requests to www.sdad.guru blocked; switching the UA header to Firefox makes it go away). — foxlit (talk) 12:24, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

New problem

 * A related problem is now also happening when logged in: all pages essentially load twice, with the initial page load flashing broken content (failing to load images, having incorrect sizing and margins for some &lt;div&gt; elements, etc.), and a secondary load through a /g00/ URL eventually correcting this 1-2 seconds after the initial flash of broken layout. Having this extra latency on every page load is annoying. — foxlit (talk) 00:04, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The responsible parties have been notified. -- (•) 02:04, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * This continues to be an issue. — foxlit (talk) 01:13, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Additionally, this makes it impossible to navigate to redirect pages (such as File:VZ-Azeroth.jpg), as the reload removes the redirect notice; additionally, error messages appear when submitting some forms (e.g. when moving pages), suggesting that the secondary load appears to attempt to repeat the action. — foxlit (talk) 12:24, 21 December 2018 (UTC)