RuneScape talk:Grand Exchange Market Watch/Archive 1

Vandalism
Someone's replaced the name of the amulet of power with "dildo" in popular items. Also, there's a bug with the dragon longsword in Melee weapons.

I'd fix it myself but I havn't got a clue how. Moneybucks 22:07, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Fixed. 01:20, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Possible improvement to the market watch
I have seen some concern about keeping up with the market. I look around and see that we are at best several days behind on average for various items on the market. Perhaps we could request a general listing of current market prices by Jagex? I don't know if this has been considered, but perhaps someone who has a member's account could suggest it on the runescape forums. Even if they had a public listing on their web site we would have a better source for the current prices.

Just a quick suggestion, take it as you will.

Cheers,

Bobby

Super boy 02:58, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Jagex is notorious for absolutely lousy customer service and taking suggestions from outside of its core developers. Unless you or somebody else proposing this suggestions to go to Jagex with a fairly substantial amount of money (real-world money) I don't see Jagex moving quickly on getting a price list like this put together, even if it would sound "logical" and even help the game.  For the moment, we are going to have to extract the prices "by hand" from the Grand Exchange and interested contributors to this wiki.


 * All this said, Jagex did say they were going to introduce a "new feature" that would allow you to scan a bunch of prices at once and see history charts for what the item did in the past. If anything, I believe that this Grand Exchange Market Watch project has influenced Jagex as a concept they need to move to their own website.  Assuming that this information is going to be available through an HTML interface (and not something "in-game"), and that the information which Jagex is going to allow you to search is more than just the items on the common trade index (or something very similar), that information can be easily incorporated into this website.  But those are some huge assumptions that I can't confirm at the moment and we won't know until it is released and available.


 * I should note that the Grand Exchange took a completely unexpected format when it was released for myself, and I would expect it to be just as unexpected for any new feature from Jagex as well. --Robert Horning 12:51, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Better graph management
I love the concept of this "market watch" and have gotten a lot of great information from it in the past couple of days. However, for it to really work and really give accurate price graphs, I think we need to change how new data points are entered. I'm thinking we should create a php/mysql system that would manage all the data (still user entered, of course) and a series of interactive flash graphs to display it. [look on google finance to see the sort of graph system I'd like.] All of the non fluctuating price data that we have right now could also be converted and displayed in conjunction with the graph.

The reason I want to spend so much effort on these graphs, is that this is how any people seeking to invest in the GE will do it. The graphs you have right now are useful, but could really be a lot more useful.

So, what I'm offering to do is make this php/mysql/flash site within the next couple of days/this weekend. Any help I can get will be much appreciated, especially if anyone is proficient in flash (this is where I'd have the most trouble in the current plan.) If anyone else wants to help with the noncoding portions of the site, their help would also be much much much appreciated. Email me at patedm@gmail.com if you'd like to get involved.

But first off, I'd like to pass this by you to see what you think. If we take the up-to-dateness we have now and transfer it to a more usable site, I think we'll have much more success getting more people to contribute to the market watch. Thanks Patrick

PS: As someone suggests below, I would like to put in a "price last entered" time listing, along with some other indicators on the price's accuracy.

Keeping up with the Exchange
I'm not sure this can realistically be kept up... JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot 12:06, 29 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not suggesting here that we are going to get all prices for every item updated every day. I'm not expecting that at all.  But what I'm trying to do is to set up a place that people can find out what the rough prices are for something they may be making, and get a pretty good idea on some ways they can make money by working some of the "in-between" steps for many of the skills.  This is particularly for things like bars, uncooked food, and other items that would be great for helping a skill to gain experience.


 * Also, we won't know if this can't be kept up if we don't try in the first place. I think we can get a huge response from the Runescape community if we get this "advertised" properly.  Word of mouth alone is likely to get many people coming here to help out.  --Robert Horning 21:48, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It's going to be even harder than street prices. Blazel 19:53, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * How is this going to be harder than street prices? Street prices implies that you have actually performed the trade on that item regularly, and have a strong understanding of economics to identify supply and demand.  I was able to do that with gemstones and make a modest profit, but it was incredibly tough.  I never got into the ore market at all because I simply didn't have the cash to make it... and the street market was so tight that a wrong move and you could lose your shirt financially.  A little bit before the Grand Exchange I was making a very minor amount of money off of purchasing talismans from lvl-3 players, but it was more charity than actually trying to make a serious profit from them.  I bought body talismans for 10 coins each, and earned some modest money crafting them at the alter (good Runecrafting exp too!) and selling tiaras at the general store.
 * On the contrary, exchange prices are very easy to find, and can be verified by somebody who hasn't even been involved with trading that particular item. You just have to find an empty slot at the exchange and "buy" the item (but don't put any coins into the transaction) to get the price.  It took me all of about 5 minutes to update the entire Runecrafting price page... including editing the pages and putting the updated numbers in there.  This includes the talismans and tiaras... not just the runes themselves.  There is no way I could have possibly done this sort of price search on street prices before the grand exchange... and even now I think street prices that are substantially different from G.E. prices are just merchants who are scamming (for the most part... there are some valid exceptions).  Once the Grand Exchange settles down into some realistic price ranges for some of the wacked out prices (Body runes, for instance), you will only find a price difference due to "local" demand... such as selling air tiaras at Falador on world 16.  --Robert Horning 02:08, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Last Priced Date
Can I suggest including a 'last priced date' column somewhere in the tables which will let people know when each individual price was last updated. That will tell how fresh/stale a price is and roughly how accurate it is. It will also give a feel for how relevant the figures are as a whole and whether they are keeping up with the more dynamic nature of the exhange (as compared to street prices). Pointy 02:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to think of a method we can use to put this date in easily and painlessly. I'll have to dig through the MediaWiki help pages to see how this could be done.  This is an excellent suggestion, however.  It would also help to identify what items perhaps would need a quick check in terms of updating to something more current.  --Robert Horning 03:12, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Five tildes gives you the date... JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  09:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That "works" and does solve the immediate short term problem, but it makes updating the prices something much more complex. I'm trying to see how we can "automate" the process where the date of the last page edit will show up instead of forcing the people updating the prices to have to manually delete the previous date and add the five tildas, as you are suggesting here.  And not mess that up with four or six tildas by mistake.  The goal here is to simply type in the price with one quick edit and not make this any more complicated than that.  --Robert Horning 12:23, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * FYI, I got this featured added in (I hope... it still needs to be "tested" to see it works properly). Instead of the 5 tildas, I'm using the "Magic word" (A MediaWiki term) of "REVISIONMONTH", "REVISIONDAY", and "REVISIONYEAR" to calculate the date a page was last updated.  I tried to throw this formula into another template, but instead it grabbed the date of the last revision of the template rather than the date of the page it was included on.  Sometimes MediaWiki can be very frustrating.  I'm using the American standard of Month/Day/Year for the date, and this can be easily changed (well, sort of) if this should be updated to a more "British" standard.  How is this used in England anyway?  "Continential Europe" is Day/Month/Year, but I think English society does things a little different.  I do think this will help to note stale numbers.  Thanks for the excellent suggestion!  --Robert Horning 17:39, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * English is day month year. JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  19:03, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll try to switch it to that format.  I need to fix this problem anyway, as it seems to be now returning the date that the Market Watch page was last edited, and not when the actual price was changed.  Arrrrgh!  And the documentation on this stuff is about as terse as it gets!  --Robert Horning 19:06, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, the "REVISIONMONTH", "REVISIONDAY", and "REVISIONYEAR" return the month, day and year of the modification of the actual page being displayed, not the date of the included template page. For example, the price on the steel pickaxe was updated on Dec 3, but the Grand Exchange Market Watch/Mining page still shows Dec 1. This is because the Grand Exchange Market Watch/Mining page was last edited on Dec 1. I do not know of a way to get the last modification date of the template itself shown (I would love to know). 10:49, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have an open request on the MediaWiki Support desk asking for some help on this. I think, unfortunately, this is going to turn into a low-priority bugzilla request (it happens), but it certainly would be cool to accomplish.  I'm going to try and work on some other parts of the items and do some more tweaking... and try to put the Market Watch prices into the item pages.  The goal here really is to edit once and update everywhere.  --Robert Horning 14:34, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * As a middle-ground you could consider using 'dd MMM yyyy' if the templates support it - e.g. '01 Dec 2007'. That will avoid confusion on both sides of the ocean :-). You might also want to check if the "wikitable sortable" javascript is able to sort rows in your chosen format before making a decision. Pointy 21:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Updated Prices Of All Discontinued Small drops Ltr96 Rocks 00:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Tasks to get this working
I'm trying to work on a generic "template" that can be used to help update this price throughout the whole wiki. Think of it this way: If you know that the price of air runes has changed, you can "edit" the information in one place, and all of the associated pages (including the "item" page in this wiki) where the G.E. price is going to be listed will update simultaneously.

There are a few ideas I'm working on, and borrowing heavily from Wikimedia projects on how some of the templates have been used to compartmentalize the information into a sort of database.

Mainly, it is trying to get this to be easily updated is why it is taking me a bit longer to get all of this put together. --Robert Horning 21:48, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Why would any page outside the item pages have the Exchange price? =/ JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  19:05, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I brought this up in the forums, asking if this was something that would be reasonable to include here on this Wiki. I got several supportive nods, and the only detractors were those who thought it was a waste of time.  Not one person thought this would be inappropriate for this Wiki... if you disagree, please note the reason why this shouldn't be here.
 * The purpose for doing all of this is to put all of the market information together in one neat package, so you can review pricing information efficiently. Jagex could do this as well, but they aren't for some reason or another... I'm just trying to fill an information niche that could also be used to help promote this Wiki as offering something unique that the other Runescape fansites currently don't offer.  I really believe this is something that is almost uniquely qualified as something a wiki does best... in terms of a collaboratively edited list that many people can update simultaneously.
 * If you don't think this information belongs outside of the item pages...please let me know now before I waste any more of my time when you are likely to get this all deleted. --Robert Horning 19:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I can't "get things deleted", nor did I ever say this was inappropriate. O.o I just think this won't get kept up. JalYt-Xil-Vimescarrot  19:32, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I see no reason why the prices should be anywhere but the item's infobox on its page. A user can simply go to the item's page and see the GE value there - there's no reason to make it more complicated. Oddlyoko talk 19:44, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * On second thought, seeing that the items are all grouped up into one page - not to mention I like how it's all presented - this has some potential. Perhaps updating every "grouping" every so often, but at different times than other "groupings" so there's not a ton of work on some price-update-day :P Oddlyoko talk 19:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Why this will be kept up
I understand Vimescarrot's skeptical view that this is something that won't be kept current on all of the items all of the time. That is certainly a strong opinion on the topic, and something that certainly has some justification for thinking this may be a serious problem.

First of all, I'd like to point out that this "project" is going to be used to keep the item pages current as well as setting up a page to scan for related items. Even if we just keep the information on the item pages alone, there still is going to be a need to update the value on the item pages from time to time. This way we can get the items updated quickly...and have those who like to concentrate on certain kinds of items to be able to help participate on keeping them current.

My experience in this matter is as a Wikibooks administrator, where I spent a small bit of time working on the Runescape Wikibook and keeping a close tab on the "street market" price page that was added. At the time (about 2 years ago) this was one of the busiest pages on all of Wikibooks, with updates to the prices coming about 100 times per day or more. And that was hardly what would be called a hot spot of activity for Runescape fan sites. Without going into the ugly details, the Runescape Wikibook was deleted from Wikibooks (along with all of the other game-related material), but it still gives me some knowledge that once word gets out that something like this exists... it will be used and will be kept current. Obscure items like a half an anchovy pizza may not get updated as often, but think it is reasonable to see things like runes, ores, and maybe even abyssal whips being tracked very closely.

The worst-case scenerio is that I put together all of these pages and they have very stale numbers. Nobody wants to come along and help update them, and they simply take up sever space on the Wikia webserver. IMHO that would also imply that nobody is reading these pages at all, and that they aren't really serving their purpose, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. If that is the case, it would be worth simply deleting all of these pages and be done with it.

I don't think these pages will be ignored, and on the contrary, I think it will actually bring people to this wiki that haven't been here before. But that is to be seen and isn't a sure thing. --Robert Horning 01:44, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Direction signs
Please help correcting the texts in "direction" column into the three icons. 15:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

General Information
Sorry to interrupt your project, I wanna ask what is meant by "direction" ? (and also I found that you've used both "Unch" and "Unchg" for "Unchange") Xdragonaite 14:00, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Direction is supposed to mean how the market went from the previous update. If the price is lower than the older price, the market is "down" on that item.  Or "up" if the price is going higher.  I haven't standardized abbreviations on the exchange yet, and the word "unchanged" is IMHO just too big for that column for how little real information it sends.  A suggestion to have the old price and the new price used for calculating the price movement has been made, and that perhaps is the solution to making this more clear.
 * Please keep in mind that this is still at a beginning stage of development for this whole project, and nothing is set in stone on how this can be accomplished. Please help me out and make this something worth participating in.  --Robert Horning 16:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Combination Runes
I think you forgot the combination runes. I can't add them myself since I'm not p2p ATM. 23:02, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I just added the combination runes, but like you, I'm generally not P2P, so I don't have some initial price values to put into these. --Robert Horning 13:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * ELemental talisman? Rich Farmbrough, 03:20 16 December 2007 (GMT).


 * Added, although I don't have a price on it. --Robert Horning 05:10, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

great idea
this is a good idea, i use it a bit now. ps is the dow jones up or down? :P 11:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The Common Trade Index is definitely up. And has been climbing at a very steady pace.  In other words, fears of a "collapse" are completely unjustified... at least for commonly traded items.  Finished goods is another story, but I've covered that on the forums for this website and elsewhere... and talked about by even J-mods on the official forums (but in a state of denial on the official forums).


 * BTW, thanks for the endorsement. --Robert Horning 17:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

not a problem, this thing is really great now, I'm a constant runecrafter, and buy ess and sell runes according to this, which I can afford to with a lot of ess and cash in reserve its helped me make extra money. Also your rares page is brilliant it helped me track my santa to its peak over xmas, i made bout 5m, i buy one every year now and this helped me track the turning point. Thank you for creating this. ;-) 12:49, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

A question
Shouldn't all the groups have an up or down symbol? and how do we calculate the market value? The pie 11:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ideally I would love to have some way to set this up in a real database, where we can do some calculations based on the previous price. Some suggestions have been made to me in terms of manually entering the previous price, so we could do something like (down -5) or something like that.


 * For now, the way I've been updating the "arrows" is simply looking at the old price, and as I'm performing the update, I just note the direction from the last time it was changed. Nothing more complicated, and you can do a page diff if you think the arrow direction is wrong.


 * As for how you calculate the "market value"... all you have to do is go to the Grand Exchange and grab one of the empty slots you aren't using for either buying or selling at the moment. Attempt to "buy" an item (even party hats work for this, even if you don't have the money) and just look at what the "average" price of the item is listed at the exchange.  It shows up right below the item.  In short, you don't have to be a merchant to help in updating these prices.


 * For some items, we have just started to keep track of the items. I'm using a F2P account for grabbing the prices of most items, so I am only getting prices on items available on F2P worlds.  I'm not even using this account for training or much of anything at all, except for hanging around the Grand Exchange and looking up prices.  If I had more real-world money, perhaps I would use this account for looking up member prices, but for me, it isn't worth it.  I'd rather spend my time on a member account doing stuff like member-only skills or member-only quests... in other words, playing the game.  For this reason, I expect member items to be updated much less frequently than stuff available to F2P worlds.  There are still plenty of F2P items that can be added to a general market watch.


 * I hope this helps to understand what we are doing here. We do need to write a guide for how to help update these prices, and to watch for vandalism.  --Robert Horning 16:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Thnks but you have got me wrong. When I say market value I mean the index values on the main grand exchange watch page. And by all groups I mean how the indexs the top of the page have up and down arrows but the other groups don't. The pie 09:18, 21 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This is something that is user-contributed. The values for the indexes are automatically re-calculated when you make a change to the index price, but the arrows are something that (unfortunately at the moment) need to be "manually" adjusted or even added in the first place.


 * As for how the indexes are calculated, I'm using a "weighted average" of the prices of all of the items, under the assumption that a 5% rise in the price of an air rune is just as important to the rune market as a 5% rise in the price of nature runes. It is just that air runes are 5% the price of nature runes, so they have a different "weight" than the nature runes.


 * The whole theory and philosophy of market indexes can get real messy, although Stock market index is an excellent place to start if you want to get a basic introduction to the ideas behind it. The real point to a well-designed index is that it can give a single figure (like the Dow Jones Industrial Average) which can indicate the overall health of the market.  I'm still trying to tweak the Common Trade Index, but at the moment I'm looking for somebody to step up and reliably report the prices of several key items before I include them in the index.  Remember, this is a very new feature to this wiki.  There certainly will be some things to try and fix, as is true with nearly all similar wiki projects that never are quite completely finished.  Your contributions to making this better are always appreciated.  --Robert Horning 13:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, does that mean I can add up/down arrows to the other groups on market watch?

The pie 01:16, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Last price column?
A thought - d'ya think a "last price" column would be helpful? Or would it just add too much to the price editing process?

Example: I'm currently in the market to buy some, say, glory amulets. I check the Market Watch for the current price and see that the price has declined in the last day. But how much has it come down? If there had been a 10% price change from yesterday, this tells me that the price is unstable and that I might get a better deal by waiting a few more days. However, if the price has only nudged a few gold pieces downwards since yesterday, then I conclude that waiting won't make much difference and would want to buy them now. Conversely, a rapidly declining price would tell sellers that it might be in their best interest to unload their goods now. --Nightshade1862 02:25, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Changes
It took me a while, but I managed to make some changes to the system of templates used by the market watch pages:


 * There are now parameters for last price and last date on the exchange item pages. Since the vast majority of pages don't yet use these parameters, they are optional for the moment, and there is no last price column on the tables yet. Additionally, the direction parameter is made redundant by last and last date, if used (more on that below).
 * If an exchange page has the last price and date given, direction arrows will show up on the table based on the change between the prices. 0 change = unchanged arrow, 0-2% change = one arrow, 2-4% change = two arrows, 4+% change = three arrows. These values can be adjusted if need be.
 * As a side effect of this, exchange pages that are moved over to the new format will need to omit thousands separators in the price, due to the use of expressions in determining the number of arrows to display. To accommodate, whenever the price is displayed through the GEPrice or GEItem templates, the thousands separators will be added there.
 * Whenever expressions are used to manipulate prices through GEPrice, they will need to use the syntax   to remove the formatting. This includes the price indices, which I've changed for this.

Thoughts? Skill 05:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, that addresses my point about the last price (see above). Sounds good. --Nightshade1862 05:34, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * First of all, I would like to say that the idea of a last price and last date added to these templates is a good idea. My only real concern about adding these fields is more on the "ease of use" in terms of updating the prices, but I'm certainly willing to take a "wait and see" approach on that point.  The benefit is certainly worth the extra effort.  For myself, I still want to get rid of the date field altogether, but that appears to require some fundamental changes in MediaWiki to get the dates to work "automagically", or in other words be pulled directly from the server.
 * I'm going to do an update for the kiosk items (everything that shows up on the various kiosks that surround the Grand Exchange), and I'll try to incorporate these changes into that round of price updates. Again, thanks for the help!  --Robert Horning 01:52, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Having done some updates using these new fields, is there a way to get a subst template to set the old price and old date into the "Last" and "Last Date" fields, set the "Date=" to automatically be 5 tildas, and leave the new price area empty? I'm thinking something like the preload page for new prices, but with the other fields transferred over somehow.  Basically, the current way of updating prices is a huge PITA and I have been required to do at least 3 passes (sometimes 4) in order to get all of the information correct.  this is something very easy to mess up if you aren't careful.


 * One other huge area that needs to be added here, somehow, is dealing with the price ceilings and floors. I thought originally that Jagex was a little more sane in terms of the relationship of the floors and ceilings to shop prices (price for store stock) and alch values.  I couldn't have been more wrong, and it seems to be simply nuts on how it all works.  One guy who is posting on the official forums has found a way to make over 500k/hr just by taking advantage of this whole mess Jagex has created, where he is buying stuff on the GX and selling it at shops who buy for high alch prices.  BTW, no response from Jagex as to the logic of this or how the prices really are set, other than some vague references that are obviously contradicted by GX prices themselves.


 * Anyway, I can identify some floor and ceiling prices for several items... as the prices have hit one or the other. Sometimes the price drops or rises away from these values temporarily, but the economic situation pushes them right back to the floor or ceiling very quickly.  Regardless of if you like this idea or not (I hate it personally), it is useful somehow to know what these values might be if they are hit, and how it affects your ability to buy or sell that item.  Obviously an item price hitting the floor means you simply can't sell the item easily, as you can't offer it any cheaper.  Hitting the price ceiling means nearly unlimited demand for an item, but you can't buy them no matter how hard you try (or you might get a few every now and again).  A few items are set at both the price floor or ceiling, or have such a narrow trading band that it isn't even worth looking at for using the GX on that item.


 * The question I'm raising is if this sort of information is worth recording? I'll also note here that I've spotted Jagex tinkering with these floors and ceilings, so these values may also adjust from time to time.  I'm talking a hard minimum price or maximum price here, not just the +/- 5% trading range that does adjust from day to day.  --Robert Horning 02:57, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

AHHH IT'S BROKEN
The template has gone CRAZY... I'm not smart about advanced templates and things like that, so I can't really help. I hope it will get sorted out soon --  19:15, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oo, I think it's fixed now. --Atlantima 20:44, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that. I really need to move these "tests" to my user space first, so they don't have as much of a significant impact when they are widely used like this.


 * I've been trying to automate the process of updating the index direction arrows, which required digging down and working with the basic template schema of this whole system. And in the process I forgot a couple of parenthesis.... which is really hard to trace down when you are debugging these advanced templates.


 * Again, sorry about the inconvenience when you were trying to use these pages. I'll try to be more careful next time.  --Robert Horning 04:46, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Removing Exchange items from Mainspace edits?
I have noticed that edits to those pages show up under mainspace edits when the "Recent Changes" page is visited. Due to the frequency at which those pages are being edited and the fact that updating prices add to your total mainspace edit count, some users have neglected to mark edits to these articles as minor. Therefore, removing the exchange templates from the mainspace will be very useful, not only clearing up the recent changes section but also preventing abuse to gain high edit counts. It should not be a handicap to users contributing the wiki for the sake of helping other players. Doomedrusher|Talk| |Contributions| 21:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem and the huge question is what namespace should the Exchange items be moved to? It was suggested originally that they get moved to the "Template:" namespace... but as you pointed out they are a very frequently edited item... completely unlike most edits in the Template: namespace.  Shifting these out of the main namespace as a short-term problem is only going to shift this same administrator monitoring issue (why I'm presuming that you bring this up at all in the first place) to some other part of the wiki.  Most templates should be edited... well, almost never once they have been "debugged".  There are several templates that are being used like traditional templates on the Grand Exchange as well, and it would be nice to keep them separated from the Exchange items.


 * When I started this, I envisioned a genuine "Exchange:" namespace, but I wasn't aware of the Wikia rules about this issue. MediaWiki allows you to establish over 100 different namespaces, but Wikia only allows you two additional namespaces.  I don't know for certain if this is a hard and fast rule, or simply something to keep groups like this wiki community from creating dozens of namespaces that will seldom be used.  Regardless, I can see these pages becoming an issue in nearly any namespace other than their own.


 * As far as the "high edit counts" are concerned.... yeah, I suppose this is an issue for those who like to compare things of that nature. What is considered a "minor" edit and what isn't is often very relative.  For myself, when I'm updating a whole bunch of items at once, having to add the extra click to mark a "minor edit" is really a PITA.  I'm trying to come up with a 'bot interface to help out here on this issue, which could help out in terms of adding the minor edit mark and could be filtered out in terms of being a 'bot edit (assuming that you can trust the 'bot making the changes).  I don't want this to be a one-man effort here, but instead to be a community effort which could allow even wiki novices to help join in the action.  --Robert Horning 13:55, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

All the available namespaces other than "Main" have been assigned to a very large category. It could be a problem, since if the 2 namespace restriction is indeed a hard cap, it would be impossible to crate an "Exchange" and "Exchange talk" namespace, since we have already used those two for "Runescape" and "Runescape talk". It's a genuine problem. The suggestion of a bot is a viable idea, since with little programming the bot can be prompted to update the Exchange prices. I could see a bot being programmed as follows, in PseudoC++:

Include and and other used stuff Declare all variables and strings

int main { Input number of articles to edit and store that to variable numoftimes Set counter = 0 Do the following until counter equals numoftimes {    Prompt the user to input article name, store to array articlename, element counter Prompt the user to input market price for that item, store to array itemprice, element counter increment counter } Set counter = 0 Do the following until counter equals numoftimes {    read element counter of array articlename, store to string temp store the following to string URL after concatenating them to each other: {         http://runescape.wikia.com/index.php?title=Exchange: temp &action=edit }    replace address bar content with string URL wait until page loads find "|Price=" string in text box replace all content in the same line after that string with element counter of array itemprice check "This is a minor edit" checkbox click "Save Page" button wait until page loads increment counter } return (0) }

Doomedrusher|Talk| |Contributions| |Edit Count| 14:26, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The only real problem is trying to get the prices themselves. Ideally, I would love to get some sort of RSS feed from Jagex that would give a daily update of prices... but then I wouldn't need to make this a wiki project either.


 * I did toy with the idea of updating the MediaWiki:Common.js file to help provide a specialized editing interface for updating the Exchange items. It may be something to try and follow up on... as it would allow even new users to update the prices quickly without having to screw up the template heirarchy.... and hide the gruesome details on how the prices are being kept as a psuedo-database.  This editing interface could also "force" all of these edits to be marked as a minor edit.  This approach also removes the requirement of having to "download" a special C++ application or trying to figure out differences due to operating systems and other such BS.  I'll have to experiment elsewhere first before something like this is rolled into the main server script, but some collaborative experiments on this certainly could be put together.


 * Anyway... just some thoughts on the topic. And thank you so very much for your feedback on these issues.  I do want to seek some sort of resolution on this particular issue, and I know that you aren't alone with these concerns.  --Robert Horning 15:02, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

If Jagex allowed macroing for non-profit purposes, there is a way to find out the market prices for all listed items. Since the search engine lists every item starting with the search term in alphabetical order, entering A would give you all items starting with A, entering B would give you all items starting with B, and so on. So, it's feasible for a macro to be made that checks the market price for every item on the Grand Exchange, and it can be set to loop and store data. At the current rate that items pop up, checking 1 price takes about 7 seconds minus the scrolling, and the macro can be set to go "back" and cancel the offer and start again. Just a thought. Doomedrusher|Talk| |Contributions| |Edit Count| 15:19, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, that is against the formal "terms of service" agreement. I understand why you started that suggestion with an "if", but I don't want to encourage breaking rules... even for something so innocent and ordinary as scraping prices from the Grand Exchange by directly sending ip packets to the Jagex servers on a custom client.


 * Yes, I've seen that software, and as an intellectual exercise it would be fun to dig into them some more. I've also seen some pretty interested "Runescape" server code that attempts to simulate the official Jagex servers... but allow you to "own" your own private Runescape-like world.  IMHO, I don't completely understand where Jagex can legally stop you from exploring the algorithms and message packets being sent to and from the client to the Jagex servers, but I can understand the issues in terms of directly manipulating the servers that Jagex does own, and on that point Jagex can stop you from a legal perspective if you are messing with their servers in an unauthorized fashion.


 * It is for this reason why an RSS feed provided by Jagex would be preferable, as it can be automated, throttled (Jagex can put this on a whole different server and control bandwidth on that server so it doesn't overwhelm the rest of their servers), and doesn't really give any real advantage to any other player. A "side client" could be used to look up items and find prices on the Exchange without having to access the Runescape servers directly.


 * With this, Jagex could also provide nearly all of the same information on an ordinary HTML web page... for those players who may not be quite so savvy about how to interpret RSS feeds. In fact, the RSS feed would mainly be there to work with the heavy users of this data to lighten the server bandwidth.  A full GE price dump would be between 300 Kb and 900 Kb of data as an RSS feed.  Not exactly chump change, but trivial compared to other items on their download page.  An HTML page would be an order of magnitude over that, but then again they could put together some sort of navigation like I've done here with the market watch to allow users to concentrate on certain skills that they are interested in at the moment.  You don't need to know about construction supplies if all you are interested in is the price of lobsters.


 * BTW, if we had a data feed that was for "non-profit use only"... we couldn't really use it here on this wiki. I know it is splitting a fine hair here, but the GFDL requirements that we are using here prohibit a non-commercial use only type license on anything added to this wiki.  This isn't to say that anybody here who is contributing or reading this wiki can ever make anything of a profit off of this content, but not making a profit isn't the same as being non-profit.  --Robert Horning 17:05, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


 * What if a user created a data feed? 69.5.147.175 04:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Doomedrusher|Talk| |Contributions| |Edit Count| 17:10, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Some "bugs" or questions about the arrows
I want to ask if it is okay to have more than one arrow for an object template. Example: fire tiara(triple "down" arrows), rune essence (douple "up" arrows) 13:22, 1 January 2008 (UTC) I have checked Template:ExchangeItem. I know where and what is the problem I saw. Well, should we indicate that double or triple arrows mean that blah blah blah E.G. the two arrows mean the difference(x) is x >= 0.04, one arrow means the difference(x) is  x <= 0.02


 * A nice "English" explaination of this perhaps should be explained. User:Skill set up this template in this way to help explain not only that there is a price direction, but how strongly the price has been changing.  If the "average" price change is greater or less than 4%, three arrows will show.... two arrows mean a price change of more than 2% per day.


 * In other words, you should pay very careful attention to those items that are changing very rapidly, and they can significantly impact how you are using those items. Now to just get this written down somewhere....  --Robert Horning 14:00, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that using arrows is a bit whacky. You have a specific bit of information, a percentage of change from one update to the next, and it gets turned into less information by transforming it into the simplified "arrows". A plus or minus followed by the difference in GP is much easier to understand and use, and more readily available. The other problem with a change indicator like that for each item is that lately the items have not been updated every single day. I think a good standard would be to note changes compared to the value when the item was last updated. Whether that was an hour, a day, a week or a month ago, it would still be true that the price had gone up or down. The relevancy of a particular item's market value (reflected against the reputation of the wiki) can be shown through the loose updating of values according to when somebody's interested and does so rather than regimenting regular updates, which should ease the conscience of anybody who doesn't manage to update as frequently as they would like to (for whatever reason). In any case, if there is no change in the item's price since the last update, then it's quite simple, that procedure asks the editor not to make any change at all but let the item stand as it does with the date of last update still intact, indicating how long the price has been stable. The arrows are just an added complication that actually result in less overall information getting across. GabrielAPetrie 21:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

This article..
Who's the crazy guy who came up with this huge idea? Salutes to him/her. Now, I'm not familiar with how commodity exchanges work, nor economy in general. Can someone write some short explanation on how to interpret some of the data given? For example, what does "index" mean and how was that calculated? Also, weren't Jagex planning on doing something like this? Maybe they'll put a graph up on the website. When they do, this project could instantly become meaningless. 17:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I desperately need to create a "FAQ" page that can explain the indexes and other features of this page. It is on my "to do" list, but I haven't been able to get around to it yet.  If you want to help with starting a stub, I'd be more than willing to help in writing that page.  Or I'll just start up a stub about it real soon.


 * As to if Jagex is going to do this or not... yeah, I suppose I'm working on this because Jagex refuses to provide this information to its players. Jagex claims that they will eventually have some more information on their website that covers the Grand Exchange, but they don't have it there yet.  In addition, there are some really cool statistics and user help pages that can be added that combine this information with experience point calculations and other features to help you in your Runescape character development.  I'm hoping that these pages can be complimentary to the whole website.


 * If you want to see something real cool, check out the main user page at User:PointyBot where there are some graphs that show some of the prices of many different items on the Grand Exchange.... this is but one more direction we can go to really improve this interface and make this information something useful.


 * In regards to the indexes.... the calculations get perhaps a bit fancy, but their purpose is really just to get an "average" price of a whole bunch of items and to show broad changes in prices rather than to just track the price of an individual item. Again, I'll have to add some info on this with a FAQ page, but if you want the Wikipedia version, check out Stock market index.  I'm trying to apply this idea to the Runescape economy.  --Robert Horning 16:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Jesus! That is awesome. seriously, all these neat features added at the second part of last year is really something that I couldn't even have thought of. I get the idea that there are a huuuge amount of mathematical formulas and scripting involved in this one project only. [[Image:AuroraSig.png|I'm buying addy ores 1k ea]] 15:27, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * What about using something like this for tracking the prices of each product? Maybe there are better plugins or programs for this purpouse, but anyway, would be great to follow the prices progression with a graph, it's more intuitive. [Wiharr] 00:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I started a FAQ page at Grand Exchange Market Watch/faq but Im not really involved much in the project and I have only a very basic knowlege of indexes and things like that so it probably needs quite a lot of work still.

gold bars
just to answer a question a few people seem to have, the 210 coins floor on gold bars is based on its high alch value, a smithed gold item eg helm or bowl alchs for 420 coins, 210 is half that value. (bowl and helm require two gold bars, so according to that high alchemy one gold bar = 210gp) 11:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Faster Edits
After editing an item's price page, I need to go back to the GEMW subpage (herblore, farming, etc) so I can enter another price point. It takes a while to load all the template pages and images each time, which slows down my editing. Is there a way to go directly from an edited item page to another item that needs new price information?

Something like a link to "Edit Next Item" after you save an item's price, but that would require each price template to know which item comes next. That won't work.

The special:random function does not limit pages within the /Exchange group, so it cannot be used to pull up a random item page to edit.

There is a list of item pages that can be found at: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/Exchange But this is not sorted by last date or item type. If we could get this page with date of last edit, sorted by oldest first, it would be a quick way to move from editing one item to another, and prioritize those items that are most out of date.

Any ideas? Am I missing something? Jimmetzler 19:35, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I've been trying to figure out how to update the content in the edit page in the first place "automatically". I've actually written the template so it will work with the information and automatically add in the five tildas for "today's date", and switch the previous price and date with the last price and date.


 * The only problem I've encountered is trying to get the page to "preload" the text into an existing page with text. The text renders exactly as I want it to (with a few minor tweaks that I can overcome) if I render all of the information to a completely new page, but from what I've seen MediaWiki won't allow pre-rendered text to be put into the edit window of some existing text.  If anybody knows MediaWiki better than I do, please offer a good suggestion (besides joining the MediaWiki dev team.... which does look appealing at the moment :)


 * One thing I do when I'm editing a whole bunch of prices at once is to open all of a certain type up as a dozen or so tabs in Firefox. As I've fixing up the information (aka replacing the Last and LastDate with the old prices and adding the 5 tildas for the new date), other pages are loading at the same time.  This way all I'm doing is hitting the Grand Exchange for the price, clicking on the tab with the item I'm updating, hitting save, and moving on to the next item.  I can update about 1 price per minute (including shifting the old prices around) doing it this way.  It isn't perfect, but it does allow semi-rapid edits.  Yes, I would like to speed it up, but it has to be clumsy for a little while.


 * I could try to whip up a C# app that would allow more rapid updates. If I targeted Mono as a platform, could be used on a Mac, Linux, or Windows with varying degrees of success.  If there is some interest in getting this going, let me know.  --Robert Horning 00:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

sorry
sorry i'm new to this how do i state the time that i post it; if i sign it with the timestamp then it has my name. I don't want to manually look up the time for every single thing i edit. --Duckisking 01:51, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Use 5 tildes rather than 4 Christine  <font color=LimeGreen>TalkFlickr 02:06, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Category parameter
There is a Category parameter listed in Template:ExchangeItem. What is it used for? I don't see it used anywhere. Chrislee33 09:18, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

History Graphs
How are these being made? And how is the old data being gathered, as it seems that in the template only the last value is saved. 18:47, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
 * They're made automatically by a bot, and I don't know where the data is from, but you could ask the owner for more details. 18:51, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It reads each page's editing history and gets the price out of each version of the page. E.g. The page versions for Coal are at - the bot reads the text from each date and builds a history from it which it plots the chart with. If you want more info leave a message on my talk page and I'll be happy to explain. Pointy 00:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Runecrafting gear
I would like to add items like the amulet of glory, duel ring and home tele tabs to the runecraft watch page. These have a massive impact on abyssal crafting, especially the tabs. Is this ok with everyone? -Mikelid109 15:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I have 74 rc and use the abyss alone to do my runecrafting (bout 75k nats to go, for what I'm currently doing), however I do think this should go under a teleportation section, as although it is used by abyssal crafters it is in essence a general section, as we are not the only group to use these. 10:58, 19 February 2008 (UTC) ps it also makes it less confusing and easier to find.


 * I wasnt a suggesting that they be exclusive to that section, but just there as well. :)
 * I too use the abyss, and like to keep a track of prices for home tele tabs (for mounted glorys) and the glories themselves. -Mikelid109 17:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

not many people bother to keep track thoug, they buy alot of glories, and a few home tabs, they are only ever used when escaping a revenant after all, I haven't used one since pking was still around and I have made about 22k nats since then, amongst other activities, I just don't think this is necessary. 10:41, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Market Indexes expression error
This has happened before and resolved without explanation. So, when someone fixes it can they explain what the problem was and its solution so others can fix it? Today it is the Food Index, OK (Food Index - As of today is 99.11) until the up arrow and the + signed then followed by [[#expr: (-37

/887 + 1

/32 + Template:GEDiff/175 + Template:GEDiff/195 + Template:GEDiff/81 + Template:GEDiff/272 + Template:GEDiff/233 + Template:GEDiff/657 + Template:GEDiff/1264 + Template:GEDiff/1794 + Template:GEDiff/52 + Template:GEDiff/150 + Template:GEDiff/135 + Template:GEDiff/22 + Template:GEDiff/1031 + Template:GEDiff/3491 + Template:GEDiff/381 + Template:GEDiff/657 + Template:GEDiff/100) * 100 / 19 round 2]]


 * Metal Index - As of today is Template:GE Metal Index Template:GE Metal Index/Change

The first expression Grand Exchange Market Watch/Food Index is for Ugthanki kebab but looking at it seems ok. Tell us how you fix it, thanks Chrislee33 23:16, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Today, the Food Index is working normally, but now the Metal Index has a different error. When I edit and preview the Market Indexes section I have found by moving the Index that had problem higher up, then that Index works Ok but a lower Index starts having problems. This will occur for every index that I move down. The lower index will start have problems. Seem like it may be a buffer problem somewhere. Not sure if it is computer or browser dependent. Does anyone else have problems with the Market Indexes?? Chrislee33 06:33, 22 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The problem appears to be that there are too many pages transcluded onto the page, so MediaWiki ran out of pre-expand include space. I think I can try to compress some of the templates used so that they all fit. Skill 07:10, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that was the issue. It seems to have been caused by the addition of dozens of items onto the common trade index. Should be fixed now, but if it happens again, there might not be such a simple solution. Skill 07:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks!. Chrislee33 07:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Problem is back after King Dharok9 reverted changes. See Talk:Grand_Exchange_Market_Watch/Common_Trade_Index. Chrislee33 20:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Was not working yet, so revert back to edits by Skill. It's now working again. See Talk:Grand_Exchange_Market_Watch/Common_Trade_Index . Chrislee33 21:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Snakeskin showing up as Snake hide and Yak-hide going to Exchange:Yak hide
Problem on Grand Exchange Market Watch/Crafting where Snake hide showing up twice even though template GEItem|Snake hide and GEItem|Snakeskin were correct. Error tracked to Exchange:Snakeskin which had Item = Snake hide. replaced with Snakeskin and GWMW/Crafting now showing Snakeskin correctly. Also had same problem with Yak-hide going to redirect page for Yak hide because Exchange:Yak-hide had Item = Yak hide instead of Yak-hide. So, make sure the Item= in Exchange:Item matches the correct item name!! Chrislee33 07:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Adding "edit help" when manually editing exchange prices
I made a recent change on the "Exchange Item" template to add in instructions for users who are manually editing prices. The page I'm using (for now) is GEMW\Edithelp, which I choose to use that name instead of Template:GEPriceUpdateGuide mainly to cut down on the number of additional characters in the exchange item template. We've already had enough problems due to parser overflow that I don't want to add too much more into that template, but I thought this would be a very useful addition... and perhaps we could eliminate some of the extra text in each of the Exchange: pages that duplicates this same information.

This also gives us a more central place to edit these instructions. I should have added this awhile back, but late is better than never. Sorry about that! --Robert Horning 17:32, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Great work. However, still getting some editors who are updating the price only and not bothering with updating the 2 dates or old price which may make the price directions inaccurate. That would create extra work for us to double check and correct the edits.  Not sure what the solution to this would be.  Chrislee33 21:20, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not completely sure here either. There has been some "gaming" of the prices here as well, along the lines that the old price guides used to be gamed... although since you can simply look the prices up on the Grand Exchange it is possible to identify genuine vandalism.  This is an ongoing issue.


 * One potential solution would be to write a Javascript applet that could help perform these updates, but that has it own set of problems and would have to be completely debugged before being added to the Javascript for this wiki...and would require enabling Javascript for those users who want to use that tool. Other solutions might be possible as well for a custom interface that could make the change.


 * I also tried to use the "preload text" option in MediaWiki.... but unfortunately that only works if the page doesn't already exist in the wiki database. I got the preloading part to work as a modification of the ExchangeItem template, and it comes as close to getting the job done as anything else I've tried.  Unfortunately due to the issues of the internal template expansion memory issue (which is an issue also related to CPU bandwidth for processing templates for each page generated), I reverted those changes on the template.  This is a bleeding edge concept for MediaWiki extensions, and why it is harder to push this any more without additional support from the MediaWiki dev team.  --Robert Horning 12:01, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Grand Exchange Market Watch/Documentation
First attempt at a GEMW technical background article for editors at Grand Exchange Market Watch/Documentation. Please help improve it. Chrislee33 08:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Creating new Exchange:ItemName articles
For new Exchange:ItemName articles (such as Exchange:Bones), when in edit mode after creating the new article, you can now Insert template ExchangeItemNameText to add the basic text for the article instead of using Copy & Paste. More info at Grand Exchange Market Watch/AddItem. Reminder, the old Update Price instructions are no longer needed in the text area as they are now included as part of the edit page when editing/updating from GEMW or main item article Bones (see above ). Chrislee33 06:08, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

What is limit for items on a GEMW page?
User:Kytti khat reported a problem when adding black and white items on Grand_Exchange_Market_Watch/Melee. ..."it appears that the quantity of data in this page is causing problems at the bottom, i found this when i added the black and white weapons sections and as such have temporarily commented them out". At the bottom the items are not being processed?. Seems like a limit was reached. What's the limit? and How to fix it? . Chrislee33 06:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I have no idea if this is a limitation of wikia or a possible problem inside one of the entries, however the problem is clearly seen at the bottom of the page in both FireFox 2.0.0.12 and IE 7 so it doesn't appear to be browser specific. It can clearly be seen starting following the Rune claws item and below section 2.8's header (Weapons -> Rune) in the version Chrislee linked above.




 * With the sheer quantity of GEItem entries the page takes a good while to render. I tried isolating a potential offending entry but found that the time waiting for re-renders checking blocks of entries was simply too much for the time i have available. Is there anyway to check the entries via a script or macro?  [[Image:Bob.PNG|21px]] k ytti khat 15:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The problem is just due to the number and size of the nested template calls. There is a limit of 2097152 bytes allowed for template expansion. When this limit is exceeded, template expansion stops working, the rest of the page just shows errors from incomplete expansions, and the actual expansion errors are written in the page "source" as hidden comments.


 * If you go to the page and use the browser's View &rArr; Source (on the browser's toolbar menus), then "Find" in the web page source the string "Pre-expand include size". If the size is near the 2097152 limit, then problems will occur if more is added to the page.


 * The only way I know that this can be improved upon is by reducing the number of template calls, or the contents of the templates. However, I'm not sure if these can be reduced much more in the current scheme used for doing the market watch. Maybe someone else has some ideas?


 * 15:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Well the obvious solution in that case is to break the Melee section into pieces such as Grand_Exchange_Market_Watch/Melee armour and Grand_Exchange_Market_Watch/Melee weapons.

<font color="#800080"> k ytti khat&#150; 16:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Expression error: Unexpected / operator
Today's Grand Exchange Market Watch/Metal Index which goes back to Template:GE Metal Index (lasted edited 22 February 2008; was working last few days) has an 'Expression error: Unexpected / operator'. Tried tracking it down by checking all the Exchange:item articles. Not able to find it. Any one else want to try?. Chrislee33 20:07, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Working OK now. Only thing I see in Recent changes is Exchange:Copper ore where someone changed the comments tags earlier and someone else corrected it.  Did not notice this when I was looking only at the edit window Price and date data. Chrislee33 00:58, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * That was a tough one to find, I found it with the dead end pages. Glad to see it's working again. --[[Image:Emerald_amulet_ms.png]]Makemesmile[[Image:Mud_battlestaff.png]] 01:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, next time I better look for any earlier recent changes in related articles!!! Chrislee33 01:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Not working. Take a look at it and it now reports and index of over 6000! Surely this is a mistake? -Mikelid109 17:41, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * OK now, Runite ore was the source of problem when someone else entered a price range instead of the average price. Chrislee33 18:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

CTI expression error
CTI expression error today. Problem also in Log index and tracked back to Exchange:yew logs where an editor changed price= to price-. Now working OK after returning the equal sign. This error was one of the easiest to find...just followed the error messages until I got to the malfunctioning Exchange:Item article. Chrislee33 00:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

More ideas to use this data
I've been toying with a little side project that makes use of the GEMW data that might be of interest to others here:

User:Robert Horning/Cooking

I'm using this as an experiment, and wondering where or how we could use a table like this. Similar tables could be set up for nearly any other skill such as this:

User:Robert Horning/Prayer

I have them in the user namespace just as some experiments on how something like this can be done.

Should this be something added to the skill pages themselves, or perhaps used in the GEMW pages? Both approaches have their advantages, but one of the reasons for using this price data is to get the GEMW data more embedded into the articles in a useful way. I'd be curious about what anybody else thinks of these ideas. --Robert Horning 11:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The price comparative information could be useful for most skill pages. It can be a way of "costing" the different methods of doing a skill.


 * For example, in my personal summoning plans page, I have a column (on the tables) that is the gp per xp for each summoned creature. This "cost" takes account of the cost of the tertiary component as well as the shards.


 * I personally find this more useful for the summoning than the section on Minimum cost shown in the Summoning article, that only takes account of the shard prices. If based on shards alone, the Rune minotaur is the best. However, taking into account the price of the runite bar, it is not (as can be seen on my summoning plans page).


 * I think the "cost" could be added to existing tables in most of the skill pages.


 * For the case of the "cooking" skill, it needs the cost/xp of training cooking (cost of raw items - cost of cooked items). I don't know whether the cost per hp belongs in the cooking page, or whether it would be a page of it's own giving information on the cost per hp healing of different foods.


 * 12:08, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * One thing to add to the equation for cooking skill costs would be to establish ingredient costs minus resale value. Another point to be considered would be some sort of time factor as well, noting some food items are considerably more involved in terms of preparation steps than others, like cooking lobsters vs. cooking chocolate cakes.


 * I'm just glad that some additional ideas are coming forth, and thank you for your example of summoning plans. This was just a hint at some of the things I wanted to accomplish with this project.  --Robert Horning 18:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Two more articles which use the price data include: Vinesweeper section which compare the prices of several reward items as well as calculating the coins per points to help decide which reward to select and  Yew longbow Profit analysis table comparing Hi alch and GE price alternatives. Articles listed at Grand_Exchange_Market_Watch/Documentation. Chrislee33 06:00, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

GE Exchange Closure?
jagex just started his own GE Exchange market Ver Beta.. what you gonna do with yours?:/--RFZ 13:20, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Keep it running as long as there is a demand for it presumably. 13:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm going to keep maintaining it for awhile. Certainly Jagex isn't doing anything like the Calculators page, and the items are jumbled on the Jagex page that can only be searched by alphabetical order.  If anything, the Jagex page is only going to help out by providing the raw data that can be more efficiently added to the RS Wiki.


 * BTW, we got data here that goes back longer than the 30 days that Jagex is providing, and for some items (like Steel bars) which show long-term price trends. I'm trying real hard to see if I can get some sort of easier data feed from Jagex so we can at least develop a "bot" to update the GEMW prices.


 * Also.... and I challenge anybody to prove otherwise... I believe it is precisely the development of the GEMW that pushed Jagex into developing its own variant of this page. It was something that certainly was needed back when the Grand Exchange first opened, and should have been done with that initial release.  That it has taken them 5 hard months of major developer time to put their version together proves that it was something they weren't originally thinking about.  If anything, this little "project" has served its purpose if it was only to help push Jagex into doing something right.  --Robert Horning 15:25, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Lots of points: First of all, Jagex started recording GE price data on January 1st. Set the three graph URL's to "scale=2" and see for yourself. Secondly, GEDB prices in the k's and m's do not show every digit, which means traditional in-game price gathering (and therefore GEMW) is still needed for precise data. Thirdly, many in the RSOF have suggested or even implemented their own price trackers and indices mere hours and days after the GE's release. Qeltar of TruthScape in particular has produced an impressive array of price data and analysis. The point is that I believe the GEMW was neither an unique concept nor the sole dominant reason for the GEDB's development. Lastly, prices can be pulled from the GEDB via a bash script that uses wget and grep. You can use sed to remove the extraneous html and leave only the numbers. If you add the script to your crontab you can automate this process on an periodic basis. I do not know much about automating wiki edits using data from a local drive however. Dromedarii 09:25, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


 * As a matter of fact, I was one of those who worked with Qeltar to set up his data analysis pages and have been involved with his Truthscape website for several months now. It wasn't here in a vacuum as you are trying to suggest, and there have been other synergies with other similar projects with other fan sites.  I'm not taking all of the credit, but at the same time I think it took Jagex to seriously evaluate the various fan sites to come to the conclusion that they wouldn't have control over their own data... as it would be.  The fan sites are what is driving Jagex, not the other way around.  Yes, I've seen the "scale=2" version of the graph pages (not all of them work for all items on the Jagex page).  The actual application tools that you would use to scrape the Jagex pages can be a point of discussion, but it really doesn't matter.


 * BTW, have you seen anywhere... anywhere at all.... that suggests that Jagex is fine with 3rd parties scraping their HTML pages and republishing the data in alternative formats? From a legal standpoint, it would be much harder for Jagex to shut down the Runescape wiki's republishing mainly because we would have prior art compared to their own project.  Something to think about at least.  I sure hope that Jagex doesn't get stupid and try to shut down those who would try to scrape the HTML pages (by changing the HTML format regularly or other games) or try to pull out the copyright infringement strategy for those who are republishing the data.  --Robert Horning 23:46, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It is interesting to know you are more involved with the non-Wikia RS "technical" community than you let on. If I may, I encourage you to look at my user page and comment on it if you so desire. Regarding the HTML scraping, various fansites had been pulling hiscore data from the main site for years. Jagex didn't care so much for the (possible) copyright violation as they did for the bandwidth usage, so they came up with this. I would assume, given the good-natured attitude evident on this page, that Jagex would have no legal problem with us scraping their GEDB pages, but may possibly be displeased with excessive bandwidth use. Dromedarii 09:39, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I was just about to ask this. I was gonna include that Jagex's GEMW is much more professional looking, no offence to this one, but I'd use Jagex's over yours. 65.93.57.178 00:46, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't understand "professional looking".... Jagex has direct access to the data while we must try to recruit people to extract the grand exchange data by hand. There is no way we could "compete" against Jagex in this fashion.... and I'm saying good for Jagex!  It was something long needed and not provided for how many months?  There is still value to having these pages updated, so far as volunteers can still update the Grand Exchange prices of items in a central place.  And Jagex doesn't have indexes (yet) for commonly traded items or by skill.  This is a project designed and used by genuine amateurs in the true sense of the word, meaning those who give freely of their time to help the community at large.  Nobody is getting paid to make these pages or update them... but the Jagex ones are being done by paid staff so I suppose they should look more "professional" as they are made by people whose "profession" is maintaining information about a game.  --Robert Horning 09:08, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Scrap it and use jagex's.......
I understand that people put plenty of contributions to this part of the website, but I believe personally that the grand exchange market watch be scrapped and replaced with a link to jagex's grand exchange database. Why?

-It is ALMOST ALWAYS up to date, unlike this one at the wikia, and every tradable item at the grand exchange is shown here.

-It is MUCH easier to search for an item on there than on the wikia. Why? The wikia takes much longer to access the melee page and view the price of the abyssal whip, whereas it can take a very short time to find that same exact price on jagex's website.

-There is no need to worry about vandals changing the prices or people forgetting to update a price;the programs and staff at jagex watch over and update every price when nessicary.

-The database on Jagex's website looks so much nicer and cleaner(Allthough this really isint much of a factor, i just wanted to point that out.)

Of course, our database isint COMPLETELY useless, but it is mostly useless. Some of our strengths that the wikia database has include:

-Longer item history. Some, but not all items have a longer history period than others.

-A link to the item's description, which gives more info on what this item is than jagex's examine option.

But I still feel that the wikia grand exchange market watch should be removed and replaced with a link to jagex's grand exchange market watch. Overall, it is more superior than our database.--Pkthis 20:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The main issue is the links to other parts of the wiki to the GEMW pages, and the use of this information in the Calculators pages... admittedly a new application of the GEWM data. We still don't have direct access to the data from Jagex except for those who want to write an HTML scraping bot.


 * I would agree that the updating of the data perhaps ought to be given to a bot here, and we certainly don't need the teams of users actively updating the data like has been the case over the past several months. I want to give a huge round of thanks and congratulations for the effort that was done to update the price in the past, and I hope that those who have contributed here will remain.  The last thing that we want to do here is to tell those contributors that have been adding price information that they should all go away now that they are no longer needed.  Far from that, we still could use help in other areas of developing the wiki.


 * As far as these pages being completely deleted... go ahead and nominate this for deletion if you really want. I think there still is some value to this layout, and the format on Jagex's website isn't necessarily the ultimate form it could be either.  Being a wiki we can make adjustments and add items that may be "missing", new, or give alternative views of the data.


 * At most, I am asking you and everybody else calling for the deletion of these pages to give it a little bit of time to see where things are going with Jagex. If they provide some tools to display the data and even further tools to develop 3rd party applications of the data... I would be not only surprised but overwhelmed.  I hate to think that the only people with ideas on how to develop information from the grand exchange is exclusively in England and are employees of Jagex.  --Robert Horning 23:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The potential for the community here to create innovative uses for the GE data (like the calculators) shows the value of the GE system in place here. Until Jagex allows similar flexibility, there will always be a place for the GE watch here on this wiki.


 * The main issue with the market watch pages is that the data may not be relaible - it could be old or incorrect. However it seems inevitable to me that a bot that can scrape information from the Jagex GEMW and update the data here will emerge quickly (legal issues aside..). Also, I have been very impressed with the efforts of the community to keep the data up to date (at least with commonly used/made items). The main motivation of creating a bot is to save all those people the trouble, improving the quality of the GE data is a (very nice) side effect!


 * For this reason I strongly oppose any suggestion to scrap the GE pages. Drevicko 10:04, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * While the price updates can now be taken over by a bot (putting legal issues aside), there is still good value of the GE pages here. The market watch lists have been ordered based on item type so it is very easy to compare prices on item groupings &mdash; granted, current prices are lacking on many items but a bot can easily solve that. I have updated prices on various items for a few months, but particularly on items of most interest to me. The GE Beta database currently does not provide this useful item ordering capability. Even searching the GE can be a bit of a pain cause you have to put things in quotes so much otherwise you usually get pages of results. Scrapping the GE pages would NOT gain my support at this time. Sagarmatha 19:39, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Adding a new view option to the ExchangeItem template : HighAlch
I'm adding another view option to the ExchangeItem template to enable extraction of the High Alchemy value of the item. This will be useful in making calculations to help decide which items are best to make for levelling, and whether it is better to sell them on the GE or alch them. This addition should not affect the existing functionality, however if you observe a problem, feel free to undo my changes. Drevicko 09:48, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Half full wine jug vandalism
someone put 32.7 trillion gp for it. the max money is 2 billion something. i dont wana go on Rs to fix it now but just lettin u know Signatures/thisguyown
 * I fixed it. You don't have to go on RS, just revert it. 23:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

dattdiff addition
I was trying to add the parser function that was discussed in RuneScape:Yew_grove but it doesn't appear to be working, anyone know how to make it work? 142.165.54.55 04:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think we have to wait for the server cache to refresh itself for the pages to appear in the category. Takes a day or two in my experience. A bit off topic, but looking at the code, wouldn't it be more accurate if we used the date field rather than the revision date (which might be a vandalism revert in some cases)? Skill 04:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah that could be it, I thought about using the date field but I couldn't figure out how to make it work with the datediff template, if anybody knows a way of doing that I think it would be a much more accurate way of generating our list of outdated GE prices. Reddo 04:28, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Using GEPrice output in expresion
Could someone please tell me how to use output of }} in expresion when value is over 999 coins? When using with small values all works OK. For example:

Code: 25 pieces of Law rune cost: 

Result: 25 pieces of Law rune cost: 


 * This work fine because cost of Law rune is under 999gp

Code: 10 Battlestaves cost: 

Result: 10 Battlestaves cost: 


 * Doesn't work because of "," in output

Is there any possibility how to get rid of that "," in GEPrice output?


 * Lord Elijen

Is this what you're looking for?

Price of 10 battlestaves per GE value is : 

For that, I used:

16:24, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes exactly. Thanks
 * Lord Elijen


 * There is also a second parameter for the   template.  Instead, add a second parameter with the letter n, such as   , giving you: .  This isn't used much any more, but it does remove the commas.  Yeah, this needs to be documented better.  --Robert Horning 13:37, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

GEMH images
I've made a change to the template to hide the "History" link when the GEMH image for a item is unavailable. I hope this clears up the Wanted list for GEMH images. 03:57, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Automatically Determine Item Name
It is possible to automatically add the name of the item to the document using. This can be added to Template:ExchangeItem, in order to make editing easier. Since this could cause an issue with not all exchange pages being named the same as the Exchange namespace article, you can use the expression. This is much easier than adding the item name to every single exchange article. 02:40, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
 * If you need help making that change, PM me. I know exactly what to change, but the page is locked. 02:41, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
 * For the "auto template" that creates each exchange article, yeah, we could do a "subst:" extraction of the page name to generate the item name. The problem comes when this is being used as a template, where  isn't the name of the template page where it is used, but rather the name of the page that is using the template.... aka the Construction article that quotes the price of Mahogany logs would give the name "Construction" instead of "Mahogany logs" which is what is intended and required for some of the linking and information.
 * The problem with the "subst:" command is that it "substitutes" the text on a one time only basis. Not bad when you are settting up a template for the first time, but it can't be repeatedly used.... well, sort of.  It gets really messy when you next subst: commands like is done on Wikipedia.  So yeah, this could be a useful tweak for a limited application, but it isn't a "silver bullet" to solve the whole problem and get rid of the name of the item within the exchange item template. --Robert Horning 09:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't see why you can't add the item names directly. Since "new items" are only added occasionally, this can be done manually.  Technically, you don't have to add "the item name to every single exchange article", because it is already there.  17:24, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Adding POH crafted items
Anybody have any objections to me adding another section with the items that can be crafted in a POH? Clockwork cats, soldier, etc.. 09:46, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Nice idea! Please add them to Grand Exchange Market Watch/Construction also.   04:55, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

|category = ABSOLUTELY USELESS
I think the category line in the Code of each exchange item is useless as it is not used anywhere and does not have a specific assigned list of options, it should be removed.  I R Zaros  16:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup. I know. However, removing it from lots and lots Exchange pages (over 1000+ pages) seems impractical, unless there is a bot which can do it. 16:17, 2 November 2008 (UTC)