A few problems with milling data

Post by ccox

The milling data for herbs on wowhead is still contaminated by data from the WOTLK betas -- it includes many items that were temporarily available in the beta, but removed before the release (beetle husks, berries, mushrooms, etc.) For instance, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=3357#milling - shows "Spongy Morel" and "Nightbloom Lilac" as results - despite both being removed during beta testing of WOTLK.

Another example is http://www.wowhead.com/?item=785#milling -- showing it returns 3 possible types of pigment and a mushroom (2 of which were only present for a few LK beta builds).

Also, the presentation of the percentage yields is still a bit misleading. Yes, the primary pigment is one of the results 100% of the time -- but just saying "100% of the time you'll get 2 to 4 of these" doesn't tell you much useful. Saying "you will, on average, get 2.70 of these per milling attempt" provides much more useful information. Or, alternatively, "out of 10,000 milling attempts, the result was 27,345 of this item" would also be useful.

At this time, I can't use wowhead's milling data for enchantrix - because you have contaminated data, plus the web site presentation of the data doesn't have the required information (actual yields). A few fixes to the website data and presentation would make the milling data useful to myself and a lot more users.

Post by Skosiris

Thanks for the note, I'll see what I can do.

In the meantime, is there any way you can use the site still? Maybe by ignoring entries with a chance to drop lower than say 10%?

Post by ccox

Yes, I can ignore the items I know are no longer possible milling results.

But I can't use your current data because you don't report the correct yields (see paragraph 3). The details should be in your data, but that isn't visible on the web site.

Post by Skosiris

I gotcha. We'll figure something out to make that information visible.

Post by ccox

I also just noticed that prospecting reports powders that no longer drop in 3.0 and later. (only adamantite powder drops now)

Post by ccox

Sigh, you edit your posts faster than I can reply :-)

Post by Malgayne

Just as a side note – screen scraping or otherwise pulling data from Wowhead without permission is against our terms of use. I know we had an arrangement already to let you guys pull data for Informant, so it's an understandable mistake and of course we're not going to stop you – but we DO wish you'd ask about these things! :P

Post by ccox

My understanding of the agreement is that it covers all of the auctioneer addons. Of course, I'm a lowly peon and haven't seen any written agreement...

But your data just confirms or guides what goes into enchantrix, in combination with results from other sources. Most of the raw data needs a large amount of smoothing, averaging, and sometimes intuitive extrapolation (W.A.G.), to be useful.

Post by ccox

Any ETA for repairing the milling results?

Post by Malgayne

Shoot, sorry about this. Sko's been swamped under school and make-up work here. I'll make sure he gets reminded.

Post by ccox

"swamped with work" is something I understand all too well....

Post by 291051

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Malgayne

Well we're no less swamped with work than ever. But it IS still something we want to do.

A few problems with milling data

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