Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

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damo666
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#81 Post by damo666 » Thu May 17, 2018 1:47 pm

Few points:
1. Get a life. It's not that important.
2. Broadly agree with change but don't really give a fig
3. CB infinite?
4. This one actually a serious point; why not consult via forum before implementation?
5. When retreats or builds/disbands have no choice make them automatic.
6. Have an option that phase length= phase length regardless of readying up
7. Hungover.
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Tom Bombadil
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#82 Post by Tom Bombadil » Thu May 17, 2018 2:28 pm

Kremmen wrote:
Thu May 17, 2018 12:45 pm
Tom Bombadil wrote:
Wed May 16, 2018 2:39 am
I still disagree. But even better. I also hate being targeted for using deadlines everyone agreed to before the game started.
The point of having a certain period for turns is to have time for the turn planning itself and the press. The deadline is a longest-case scenario and while players have the right to use the whole time if they wish, there's nothing good about players delaying for the sake of delaying. (esp. in retreat and build) The whole point of the rules excluding press in retreat and build is to speed the game up, which clearly doesn't happen if some players then just arbitrarily wait anyhow. Wanting anonymity for game reasons is fine. Wanting anonymity so that you can get away with anti-social behaviour and not be spotted, not so much.

(I have long wished for a game-creation option for retreat/build phases to be a proportion of the standard phase length -- e.g. 1/2 or 1/4 -- but most players are decent and don't drag out turns anyhow.)
I like the idea of having an option for shorter build/retreats. But I don't think players should be shamed or targeted because they don't finalize - whether they need to send more press, or if they simply prefer to have the deadlines fall at the same predictable time each phase.

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#83 Post by CommanderByron » Fri May 18, 2018 1:51 am

damo666 wrote:
Thu May 17, 2018 1:47 pm
Few points:
1. Get a life. It's not that important.
2. Broadly agree with change but don't really give a fig
3. CB infinite?
4. This one actually a serious point; why not consult via forum before implementation?
5. When retreats or builds/disbands have no choice make them automatic.
6. Have an option that phase length= phase length regardless of readying up
7. Hungover.
CB infinite? That sounds like i just got my omega-level character name.
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#84 Post by Lazy Bones » Fri May 18, 2018 11:45 pm

I beleive i have a problem with the new system. Currently a game i am in is showing that one person has not input their moves however everyone says that they have. Its been like this for three days. The phase ends in an hour.

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#85 Post by JECE » Sat May 19, 2018 12:16 am

Lazy Bones wrote:
Fri May 18, 2018 11:45 pm
I beleive i have a problem with the new system. Currently a game i am in is showing that one person has not input their moves however everyone says that they have. Its been like this for three days. The phase ends in an hour.
Obvious, I know, but have you entered you own orders?

That said, with the changes we should be expect that people will lie about entering their orders to try and gain an edge in the game somehow. This may be the first complaint for the mods about the players abusing the new system.

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#86 Post by Peregrine Falcon » Sat May 19, 2018 1:24 am

Awesome to see these changes live. Way to go, jmo!

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#87 Post by jmo1121109 » Sat May 19, 2018 1:47 am

Lazy Bones wrote:
Fri May 18, 2018 11:45 pm
I beleive i have a problem with the new system. Currently a game i am in is showing that one person has not input their moves however everyone says that they have. Its been like this for three days. The phase ends in an hour.
There was a bug that was making "Defeated" countries count as not having entered orders. This is fixed, confirmed in the game you referenced. Thanks for the bug report.

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#88 Post by Kremmen » Mon May 21, 2018 7:01 pm

jmo1121109 wrote:
Mon May 14, 2018 4:52 pm
We don't want people doing this. We want them to email the mods if they notice an impending NMR instead.
And for an example of why this is totally impractical, we need only to look at what's happening right now. We have an announcement that some people have used some fake link to go to another site, so some games have been paused. There's no information as to how long the pauses will be. There's no information as to why particular games have been paused. Apparently, the mods don't have even enough time to let us know this.

Apart from the disruption to a game, pauses mean players (esp. if they are only in one game) are likely to get out of the habit of even visiting the site if this goes on too long, resulting in more NMRs!

On a live gaming site, I totally agree that prodding players to move or pausing to find replacement players is the way to go. On a turn-based site like this, it's much harder to achieve without major inconvenience, and it's pretty clear that there aren't the resources to do so in a reasonable period of time.

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#89 Post by Claesar » Mon May 21, 2018 7:34 pm

Kremmen wrote:
Mon May 21, 2018 7:01 pm
And for an example of why this is totally impractical, we need only to look at what's happening right now. We have an announcement that some people have used some fake link to go to another site, so some games have been paused. There's no information as to how long the pauses will be. There's no information as to why particular games have been paused. Apparently, the mods don't have even enough time to let us know this.
You have no idea how much time the volunteer mods with daytime jobs took out out of their schedule last night to minimise the damage caused by the phishing scam. We're trying to reinstate the original users to their hacked accounts, which takes more time and effort. Please be patient until we can share more information.
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#90 Post by Kremmen » Tue May 22, 2018 3:12 am

Claesar wrote:
Mon May 21, 2018 7:34 pm
You have no idea how much time the volunteer mods with daytime jobs took out out of their schedule last night to minimise the damage caused by the phishing scam.
Not exactly, but I'm pretty sure the amount of time consumed daily would be greater if they were contacted about every possible NMR that might be about to occur.

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#91 Post by ghug » Tue May 22, 2018 3:17 am

You realize that the people encouraging you to email the mods about impending NMRs are the very same people who handle those emails, right?

I don't think we've had an event as serious as yesterday's except for maybe the time when jmo and I broke the site for two hours trying to add icons.. The mods did an excellent job handling the pressure. I fully believe in the team's ability to handle a few extra NMR emails.
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#92 Post by jmo1121109 » Tue May 22, 2018 3:23 am

Kremmen wrote:
Tue May 22, 2018 3:12 am
Claesar wrote:
Mon May 21, 2018 7:34 pm
You have no idea how much time the volunteer mods with daytime jobs took out out of their schedule last night to minimise the damage caused by the phishing scam.
Not exactly, but I'm pretty sure the amount of time consumed daily would be greater if they were contacted about every possible NMR that might be about to occur.
They have nothing to do with each other. The problem with someone phishing other people's passwords, logging in as them, and messing with games is something that required a dev (me) to handle with an admin's help. My time as a dev is limited because there is 1 of me. There is a whole team of mods around to help out with daily emails about nmr's. I don't really see why you keep trying to tell the mods what they are capable of, since you clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about.
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#93 Post by bo_sox48 » Tue May 22, 2018 3:29 am

Kremmen wrote:
Tue May 22, 2018 3:12 am
Claesar wrote:
Mon May 21, 2018 7:34 pm
You have no idea how much time the volunteer mods with daytime jobs took out out of their schedule last night to minimise the damage caused by the phishing scam.
Not exactly, but I'm pretty sure the amount of time consumed daily would be greater if they were contacted about every possible NMR that might be about to occur.
You're being an asshole right now. Take your attitude elsewhere. Stop wasting my team's time that they could be using helping to ensure that all of our accounts are secure.

We'll get you more information when we can. Right now, we think it is a hell of a lot more important to keep you, me, and everyone else from getting hacked, so some of your games might be paused so that we can make sure everyone has their account back in their own hands before their games go on. I'm sorry that you find this inconvenient. I'm a lot more sorry for the people who are victims of a phishing scam.

Between what ghug, jmo, and myself are telling you, you should have enough information. If not, you can direct any further questions to [email protected]. This thread isn't your personal complaint box for all of your perceived inconveniences.
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#94 Post by Kremmen » Tue May 22, 2018 2:30 pm

ghug wrote:
Tue May 22, 2018 3:17 am
You realize that the people encouraging you to email the mods about impending NMRs are the very same people who handle those emails, right?
I do realise that. It's astounding. "A few extra NMR emails"? More like a few hundred or a few thousand.

In my experience (mostly playing larger map games, not classic), roughly one player NMRs or is close to it per two phases. Let's say classic players are more serious and it's only phase in five for them. Most games are one phase/day. There are currently 570 games running here. Of that total, approx. 350 playing Classic. If a single player emailed the mods about every possible/likely NMR, that would be 220/2 + 350/5 = 180 extra emails/day. If every other player emailed, that would be about 1400 emails/day!

The simple points I was trying to make are:
1) Pretty much nobody does this, otherwise you'd already be inundated.
2) Pretty much nobody wants to do this, because mod pauses are very disruptive to games.
3) That is a crazy huge amount of email and the mods encouraging us to email them about impending NMRs don't seem to have a handle on the ramifications. (Or simply know that #1 and #2 are true and that the suggestion is therefore rather vacuous.)

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#95 Post by Kremmen » Tue May 22, 2018 2:56 pm

bo_sox48 wrote:
Tue May 22, 2018 3:29 am
You're being an asshole right now. Take your attitude elsewhere. Stop wasting my team's time that they could be using helping to ensure that all of our accounts are secure.
Don't we have any rules about conduct and personal abuse on these boards?

I don't believe I'm wasting anyone's time. Nobody has to be replying to messages here if they have something better to do.
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#96 Post by ghug » Tue May 22, 2018 4:47 pm

First, you drastically overestimate the number of NMRs we get per day. I can't pull numbers at work, but I'm confident it's lower.

Second, obviously everyone isn't going to email us. That doesn't mean we aren't happy to help those who do. We can handle plenty more such emails, and they're a good fix while we work on longer term solutions.

Third, there are longer term solutions coming. Reducing NMRs is a difficult problem, and we have limited development resources. In the mean time, we haven't made anything worse except for people's ability to abuse NMRs, which frankly we don't care about maintaining because it's a shitty thing to do.

Fourth, reactions like yours are exactly the reason we have such limited development resources to solve these problems. Jmo invested a bunch of his own time to improve the site. He did improve the site, whether you think so or not. He and the rest of us have been patient with your concerns, even as they've become less constructive criticism and more incessant whining. Nonetheless, you continue to attack those changes, and now you let your disdain for them carry over to complaints about the team doing such totally unreasonable things as trying to protect user accounts from hackers. It's an attitude that makes people feel that working on the site is not worth their valuable time, which is a shitty thing to be doing and something bo and I feel little need to continue tolerating indefinitely.

I'm sorry that you dislike these changes. They're staying. You're welcome to make other suggestions you think might help the site. That's great! You're also welcome to continue complaining about them if you really want to. That doesn't mean you should.
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#97 Post by The Hanged Man » Tue May 22, 2018 11:20 pm

Thank you for implementing these changes, mods/devs/admins/whoever else. I appreciate your time and effort in incorporating this significant improvement to the site, as well as your day to day overall management.
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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#98 Post by Kremmen » Wed May 23, 2018 2:18 am

ghug wrote:
Tue May 22, 2018 4:47 pm
He and the rest of us have been patient with your concerns, even as they've become less constructive criticism and more incessant whining. Nonetheless, you continue to attack those changes, and now you let your disdain for them carry over to complaints about the team doing such totally unreasonable things as trying to protect user accounts from hackers. It's an attitude that makes people feel that working on the site is not worth their valuable time, which is a shitty thing to be doing and something bo and I feel little need to continue tolerating indefinitely.
When one post hits a nerve, you don't have to inaccurately dub it "incessant whining" and then try to concoct a narrative to support it.

I'm not continuing to attack the changes, either. I discussed some issues and that was it. I pointed out that the "email the mods about NMRs" idea is not practical and you doubled down saying it is. Why do you think I think it's a bad idea?! Because things like protecting the site are important. Reports of cheating and multis are important. Spammers advertising all over the boards are important. NMRs are, relatively, unimportant. To tell everyone that trying to protect mods from themselves so that they can do the important things is "disdain" is just preposterous.

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#99 Post by bo_sox48 » Wed May 23, 2018 2:24 am

Personally, I find NMRs far more important than spammers. In my experience, they damage just as many, if not more, games as cheaters do. Taking a moment to handle an incoming NMR is a good use of our resources.

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Re: Anonymous Changes and Online Indicators

#100 Post by Durga » Wed May 23, 2018 2:28 am

Just join discord and spam an admin until he pauses your game for you. Trust me, works every time.
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