Bug vBActivity 3.1.0 points calculation, competition calculation errors

[rpm]

Hi, I am having trouble with activity points calculations in general.

This occurred following an upgrade to 3.1.0.

We have now done a fresh re-install of vBActivity, and have recalculated the points as of 1 January 2013. The problems persist.

On the surface, the points calculation seems correct, but users are reporting anomalies, such as the user with the "Most polls posted" trophy, who says he has not posted any polls at all this year.

When running activity competitions there are clear errors. For example:

I have created two "Total Score" competitions running over the exact same time-frames. The results were calculated retrospectively, and I assume this won't be a problem.

The two competitions both had different criteria. For one I selected multiple criteria (points for posts, threads, polls, blogs, etc). For the other, I selected only one criteria (Points for posts).

The winner points lists generated were exactly the same for both competitions; the winner list of names was in the same order, and the points they had received were the same. Obviously this should not be the case since the criteria set were different for each competition.

I have replicated this problem with different competition setups, and it persists.

Users in the Admin usergroup are appearing in the results despite them being excluded in the permissions section.

--Previous attempts to resolve the problem--

We have our own developers who work on our forum. They have done some minor cosmetic customisation, such as how the trophies are displayed in the postbit and how the competition results are displayed to users on the front-end ; I assume this will not be causing the evident incorrect calculations in the back end, but I am mentioning it just in case.

Prior to doing a fresh reinstall, our developers tried to solve the problems. Here is some of their feedback:

This is an update regarding the project. We [...] finally found the main problem causing most of the problems mentioned. In the new version they did some refactoring, moving the code updating user's points, inserting data into contest table etc. to a new hook, and emptied the old hook file. However, they did not add the new hook into XML file, and the hook was not executed at all, causing all issues mentioned. You can report this as a bug in their product and inform them, that their "newpost_complete" hook file is empty, and the new file "postdata_postsave" is never called.

The problem with permissions (admins being included in the contests) is a little harder to troubleshoot, as it seems to be working when points are added for current contest, but not working when rebuilt from Admin CP. This should be checked further if the problem still exists.

We also experienced a problem with pagination on the achievements page (front-end) but I have not been able to see if this persists with the new reinstall as I have yet to setup achievements. Here is the feedback from our developer on this issue:

The issue with pagination not working was another bug in file /dbtech/vbactivity/actions/achievements.php, where pagenumber and perpage variables are used from global scope, instead of being populated from request URL.

This issue is rather urgent for us as we have been attempting to run an activity competition with valuable prizes for our community, and disappointing them with a delay or potential scrapping of the competition will be a very negative thing from our community management side of things.

Your swift response will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

rpm.

 

[Fillip H.]

Thanks for all the extra info, it's greatly appreciated

The postdata_postsave hook is indeed being executed. You can re-download v3.1.0 and re-import the XML file to ensure that hook is created

I've added a potential fix to the mentioned file for the pagination issues - strange that I couldn't reproduce it locally, and my register_globals is off.


I'll attempt to replicate issues with retroactively calculating contests and post back when I have an update

 

[Fillip H.]

Update: I have applied potential hotfixes to all files in /dbtech/vbactivity_pro/contesttype - can you please re-download v3.1.1 and re-upload those files as well?

 

[Fillip H.]

Update #2: I am unable to find any issues with the poll trophy at this time. Can you please check the dbtech_vbactivity_points database table, sort it by the pollposted column and see if the user with the highest value is not the person that's received the trophy?

 

[rpm]

Hi, thanks for working on the hotfix. We have installed it, and now competition winners are not being calculated.

The 'Recalculate Winners' option is there, but clicking it produces no results.

 

[Fillip H.]

Does this happen for all contests, or only those with specific criteria and/or forum exclusions?

 

[rpm]

Does this happen for all contests, or only those with specific criteria and/or forum exclusions?

Since my post #5 I see some of the test contests I created have now managed to generate points. These seem to be for contests based on calculations going forward. I.E. points are to be calculated from a time post hotfix, to another time in future.

Contests that have tried to calculate points retrospectively (from 6 August to 16 August) are not generating results. As mentioned, we need to be able to do this due to an outstanding contest result.

These contests were set up excluding certain points criteria.

 

[Fillip H.]

Could you please create and PM me with a temporary FTP and AdminCP account?

For security reasons, we recommend you create a new FTP account only for DBTech support, then disable or delete it after we have both confirmed the issue has been solved and there are no further issues.

The same applies to AdminCP accounts; they should ideally be temporary accounts created for us only. If we have created an account on your site already, you can optionally boost that account to Administrator and then de-admin this account once the issue has been solved.

If you use a .htaccess password protection for your AdminCP directory, it is recommended that you create a new authorised user for DBTech and remove this user once the issue has been solved.

Please test any temporary accounts you create to ensure that the FTP account has access to the forum files, and that the AdminCP account can access the administrative controls for the product we are assisting you with.

Ensuring this is all in order before submitting the information will significantly speed up the process of assisting you. We will alert you via PM if there's any issues with the login information you have provided.

When sending the PM, for your security you should also un-tick the "Save a copy in my Sent Items folder" checkbox. When the access details have been received, we will delete the PM from our inbox. Ensuring you have not kept a copy of the PM reduces the risk of security breaches.

Thank you for helping us debug our products and allowing us to assist you, we appreciate it

 

[rpm]

I have done so. Thanks for the help!

 

[Fillip H.]

I believe I've fixed the recalculation for the Total Score contest type on your site. I successfully recalculated 2 contests on your site.

 

[rpm]

Hi there,

I tested the system again, and there are still many errors with the contests. Some of these include:

--I have recalculated a large competition and one of my most active users (InSanity) is right at the bottom of the list.

--I have set up the points system to award 2 points per post made. At a glance it is easy to see that this user makes many posts each day within the competition time frame; multiple more posts than he has even been awarded points for (21 points for a competition that only calculated posts).

--The problem with the Admin accounts being calculated in the competition points remains. Another example of a bug is the user being awarded a trophy for creating polls, when he has not created any polls this year.

A QUESTION

Can you successfully run contests on other boards? Hence, are the same bugs present on other boards?

Why I ask: Our users are frustrated with no contests, and if these bugs remain we will need to roll back to the previous system which works.

 

[Fillip H.]

--I have recalculated a large competition and one of my most active users (InSanity) is right at the bottom of the list.

As before, I will need to know the exact specifications of your contest in order to determine whether this is an issue or not. I will also need to know the expected output (i.e. what users should be first, and how many points should they have for the specific contest) so that I can compare it when testing.

--I have set up the points system to award 2 points per post made. At a glance it is easy to see that this user makes many posts each day within the competition time frame; multiple more posts than he has even been awarded points for (21 points for a competition that only calculated posts).

Please provide the exact specifications of your contest, as well as the expected output (i.e. what users should be first, and how many points should they have for the specific contest) so that I can compare it when testing.

--The problem with the Admin accounts being calculated in the competition points remains.

I will need to know the exact specifications of the contest as well as which user is being erroneously included, as I am unable to replicate this issue in my testing.

Another example of a bug is the user being awarded a trophy for creating polls, when he has not created any polls this year.

This would be a separate issue 100% unrelated to this topic, so I'm going to address the other issues first

Can you successfully run contests on other boards?

Yours is the first and only forum that has reported these issues, but it's also possible that other forums have not availed themselves of these features yet.


Each contest uses different code to re-calculate past contests, so you can't simply say "a large contest" - feel free to point me to a specific contest on your forum (assuming the access details are still active) but you need to be very specific otherwise I have no hope of fixing this

 

[rpm]

Hi,

Here is the contest I am trying to get accurate calculations for:

Total score: Number of winners = 80

Start: 6 August 2013 - 11.00AM
End: 15 August 2013 - 23.55PM

Scoring Criteria:

Points for Posts
Points for Posts (Own Threads)
Points for Threads
Points for Thread Ratings Given
Points for Thread Ratings Received
Points for Polls Posted
Points for Poll Votes
Points for Reputation (Given)
Points for Reputation (Received)
Points for Referrals
Points for Social Group Messages
Points for Social Group Discussions
Points for Calendar Events
Points for Blogs
Points for Blog Comments

No excluded forum sections.

Points Settings: You can obviously go look at the points settings as they are set up in the system; these do not change for competitions.

A good example of a user with an incorrect score is InSanity. This user made 118 posts during the competition period.

At 2 points per post, he should have 236 points for posts alone.

In the competition he has only received 22.25 points.

Even in a separate competition with the same setup, except that it only calculated points for posts, InSanity received 21 points.

Another example is Wyvern: 189 posts over the competition period - (189 X 2 = 378). She only has 56.6 points.

Saint_Dee is yet another example of an active poster with a very low score. I can continue picking out examples, but hopefully my point is served.

Admin accounts in scores:

Admin/mod accounts that are appearing in the points calculations despite being set for exclusion include: James, Qornea, Jeremy, Wesley

 

[Fillip H.]

A good example of a user with an incorrect score is InSanity. This user made 118 posts during the competition period.

This is incorrect. vBActivity has only recorded 10 posts from this person in the period between Aug 6th and Aug 16th.

Please let me know if you would like me to check the other users as well. For our reference, the query used was this:

select * from vbulletin_dbtech_vbactivity_pointslog where userid = 2226 and typeid IN(26,27) and dateline BETWEEN '1375736400' AND '1376600400'

You may wish to try re-calculating points if you believe this to be inconsistent with the actual forum posts.

Admin accounts in scores:

Admin/mod accounts that are appearing in the points calculations despite being set for exclusion include: James, Qornea, Jeremy, Wesley

This should now be fixed on your site

 

[rpm]

This is incorrect. vBActivity has only recorded 10 posts from this person in the period between Aug 6th and Aug 16th.

Please let me know if you would like me to check the other users as well. For our reference, the query used was this:

select * from vbulletin_dbtech_vbactivity_pointslog where userid = 2226 and typeid IN(26,27) and dateline BETWEEN '1375736400' AND '1376600400'

vBActivity is clearly calculating it incorrectly, hence the problem with the points.

Please go and look at the number of posts made by this user InSanity during the specified contest period (6 August - 15 August inclusive).

You can see it here, from page 5 up to page 9: My Gaming Forum

If you count these posts, you will see he made 118 posts. If your system is reporting only 10 posts during that period, don't you think something is wrong?

You may wish to try re-calculating points if you believe this to be inconsistent with the actual forum posts.

I have done a points recalculation numerous times and have been getting these calculation errors.

I have now done the points recalculation again, calculating points from 1 January 2013. I then manually ran all the scheduled tasks related to vBActivity to ensure the new points were applied.

I have now recreated the competition again, recalculated the competition points, and the same scoring problem remains.

 

[Fillip H.]

Okay, I'll debug the recalculate points interface and see if I can find a reason why it doesn't count those posts

I'll post back when I have further updates for you. Thanks for your help and patience, it's much appreciated

 

[Fillip H.]

I believe I've now corrected the recalculation issue.

The short version of the explanation as to why this happened is that it appears that your specific server configuration returned the MySQL data set in a slightly different way than my test environments, so it was using the thread creation date stamp rather than the post creation date stamp when determining when the post was created.

I've recalculated points on your site using 1st Jan 2013 as the start date, and the query in my previous post now returns the correct amount of posts

Can you verify the contests are now working as intended? If so, we'll move on to checking the "polls posted" trophy issue

 

[rpm]

Okay, I believe we are making progress but there are still strange results that lead me to believe the overall contest points calculation still is not working correctly.

To illustrate the problem, I have created the full contest as described above and calculated the results.

To compare, I have created contests in the same time frame, but for specific points criteria which are a subset of the full contest criteria: Calendar events; blog interactions; thread ratings given and received; thread and posts; social group interaction; and poll interaction.

When you compare the various results, things clearly do not add up. It also cannot be a coincidence that some users get the exact same points for different activity criteria.

E.G. Cara (28 points); Voicy (106 points)

Furthermore, users are receiving points for things they most certainly have not done, such as points for calendar events, social groups, polls - I would expect to see a lot of zeroes here.

I have provided images so you can see at a glance what I am describing:

Full contest



Sub-criteria test contests



We really need to figure out how far these calculation errors extend; I am worried that it permeates into all aspects of the activity system, rendering it rather pointless.

To reiterate, we have high-value physical prizes for our community, and therefore I cannot afford to report erroneous results as the basis for give-aways.

I appreciate your help thus far, but please note that from my side it is also becoming increasingly frustrating and time consuming to find myself essentially a bug tester for this activity system, with only one particular bug resolved at a time, when there is clearly a broader problem to be solved.

 

[Fillip H.]

I appreciate your help thus far, but please note that from my side it is also becoming increasingly frustrating and time consuming to find myself essentially a bug tester for this activity system, with only one particular bug resolved at a time, when there is clearly a broader problem to be solved.

Before I look at the test contests you've created on your site, I feel like I should address this point.

I do completely understand your frustrations, especially considering you're dealing with physical prizes, but please understand that - to the best of my knowledge - these issues are local only to your specific system configuration. I base this on the fact that we have received no reports of any such issues from any of the hundreds of other customers using vBActivity Pro.

If this is indeed the case, then we have no choice but to solve one issue at a time on your forum. There is no way I can know ahead of time what other issues may be encountered on your forum, if I can no longer use your forum with its real-world data to test with.

As I'm sure you understand, it's not feasible for us to obtain a copy of your database and exact server & software configuration to conduct testing.

A way to speed up the process might be for you to manually count all activities (not just the ones included in the contest) within a certain time period for your most active user (no need to do it for more than one active user) and then I can compare it to the actual values represented in vBAA for the same time period.
That way, I can immediately see all discrepancies and work towards fixing them, which should fix them for all users at once.


PS: I should point out that certain events, like friends confirmed, do not have a date stamp stored in the database, so during a recalculate vBActivity will assume the event took place at the time of recalculation. That doesn't explain all of the discrepancies you report, but it may explain some.

 

[rpm]

Hi,

Are you able to test this activity contest points system on your own forum and verify that it works?