WarcraftRealms.com

Do I need to purge the data before I submit? The bottom on the lower right of census mod...

no u dont. Purge erases all the data. Don't wanna do that. Just run the census, then upload your data file.

They should make that clear in the instructions...

Actually, that's not entirely correct =)

Deleting your data does indeed purge your old data. But as for the character history it actually helps ensure better data.

Since there is no way to do a timestamp from within the UI mod, the only date we have to go by is when the data is uploaded.

If you will purge your data in between updates, then it will only get the latest information on the characters you actually see since the last time you updated.

While this does help the site have better information, it will cause you to not have as complete information locally on your machine (which you may want to do) and is why I haven't said anything to encourage people to do so =)

Hmmm, I'm a little at a loss here, the data will be continously updated locally, when it's added to the site doesn't really matter as I assume that you keep whatever is the higher level for the character.

Admittedly guild membership will be slightly out of whack at times but if the new file added has a lower level character I assume it won't update any data on that character?

//Alanthus

Not having the actual date of when the character was seen impacts 2 places.

When enough time has passed, I will be able to generate trends in race/class populations. Also it impacts the character history page:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/charhisto ... serverid=3

As you can see, let's say you never purge your data and you catch a character (we'll say Joe) today, Jan 2. Now, let's assume Joe is never played again. If he's in your local census data and sent up every time you send in data, I'll assume the last time Joe was seen was when you uploaded data instead of Jan 2 which was the actual time he was caught. Catch my drift?

Hmmm, problem is I don't see people purging, logging off, transmitting data all that much. The behaviour I expect to be most common is to log on, play, run census since it's time for a break, play, break time (census)... etc. and then every cpl of days when logging off transmitting what has been collected. This is propably the way to capture the most characters too, with a purge you would effectively only catch data from just before people log off, most likely missing most daytime characters completely. As for char history again I assume that you only validate an entry if level is equal or higher than what's in the database already? That should mean except for level 60's a reasonably accurate history.

//Alanthus

Is the census update going to include time stamps maybe? Should ask IanP

From my understanding, no. He is supposedly working on a new release and then will no longer be working on the project.

I have already begun making updates and will probably release my own version of the Census mod soon (a mod to a mod? hmm..).