A while back I got a request from a grad student studying international conflict in at Florida State University. The short & sweet is he would like to look through anonymized game messages for research purposes.

Me and the mod team were discussing it and came up with a few conditions:
- The site must get credit for the data
- Only game messages from games which finished N years ago will be provided
- The data will be anonymized
- We need an NDA which states that the data won't be provided to anyone else

He agreed to all that, but then some server issues came up and it got put on the backburner.

Now what I'm wondering is;
- Would everyone be okay with anonymized game messages being provided for this purpose under these conditions? There is a theoretical risk that anonymized messages could be traced back to games by someone very persistent (it would involve matching up provided data to games in what would be a very tedious process)
- If so, how many years would people be comfortable with? Personally I might not want the messages I sent in a game which just finished sent to anyone for any purpose, but if it were e.g. 3 years old I'd consider it historical data that I wouldn't mind being disclosed.

Note that this definitely won't happen unless people are comfortable with it. I'm not about to send the data off, I just want to get a feel for what people think about this.

Personally I'd like to see our data used for interesting purposes, especially seeing our website cited in an academic paper, which is why we provide already public order/map data in a database format to anyone who wants it, but information which isn't publically available might be interesting to mine but not worth it.

Any thoughts are welcome.

1. Encrypt gameid s.t. It is uniquely matched to a randomly generated unique key =\= gameid. Only you, Kestas, will have the encryption table. This will sufficiently complicate the privacy violation efforts.

2. I will PM you about point #2.

I think I'm fine with it, as long as it's as least a few months old and he treats it as, well, confidential. Also, he can't be in the specific game I'd say. Not sure about that though.

Also I would really like to know what he's exactly researching. Since he would be researching cold data we can't influence the results if he tells us, can we?

But ava, if he can see the game, he can rule out almost every game as possibility, right? Since I don't think there are a lot of games where everyone makes the exact same moves.

Ban his account for the duration of the study.

Ok maybe that's harsh. But if we trust him and only don't trust the people who could potentially misuse the data then the key could work.

... Why? So the cold data is a bit more cold when he can use it against you?

I would like to ask that all games involving myself are excluded from this study, unless upon my personal consent for using it, on an individual game basis.

We don't even need to trust him/her - all we need is to trust the agreement that Kestas makes the student sign.

That was to the first of the 2 messages, now it doesn't count anymore I suppose...

redhouse, may I ask why? Are they that personal?

Sounds rather fun. Why not? :).

I think 3 years is a tad overly cautious though. 1 should be more than enough time.

Out of interest, will the data be filtered at all? I'm sure some games will be a lot more useful than others. Old Masters and World Cup games and the like are a lot more what I imagine he'd be looking for.

I sort of feel like if leaking my messages would hurt my ability to play this game so much, i need to get better anyway. So I don't really care at all.

I have no problem with my messages from past games being used for this. I think this is an awesome opportunity to get this website cited in academic literature. Several years ago back when I was PBEMing I came across a PhD someone had completed about the game of Diplomacy & conflict - or some such, and found it to be a very interesting read.

A minimum of one year would be fine by me. I'd like to see the results of his research when it's done.

Would data from games where metas or multis took part (especially where the game finished before the cheater was caught) be excluded or would they be indicated in the data in some way?

Would data from games that were cancelled also be included?

I am fine with this, except that I do not grant permission for those of my games in which my in-game messages contain the word "plutonium."

I am fine with this request. I don't even care if he gets access to recent games and i have no worries about him misusing the data... what for anyway? Some guy named Partysane lied to someone named "ENTERYOURNAMEHERE" then stabbed him and then got set upon by all other players to be torn apart in the process. That is the usual course of my press games and i don't see a way he could hurt me with it.
Except, if he found out my name, cited it in his paper and then showed it to my girlfriend... she would ridicule me with it forever.... :P

It's a little sketchy considering some of us use out real names and frequenty message our social insurance numbers and lists of biggest fears.

If it were to happen, I think it'd be nice if the researched introduced themselves and maybe told us a bit of what they were doing.

Hearing more about what he wants to do would be nice. Not because i am in any way concerned but rather because i am really curious what he thinks he can get out of it.

Give him all of it. I have nothing to hide. It's a game.

I also have no problem with any of my completed games being shared, regardless of age or anonymity.

Agreed, he can have all of my completed game press, without restriction. I would really like to see his results though.

As long as we get a TED talk out of this.

I am *not* OK with this. I did *not* agree in advance to allowing my messages to be revealed and you can *not* guarantee the anonymity due to the fact names may have been mentioned in the press itself. I say no.

I would not allow it for any games involving me. I haven't even been on for half a year so my games probably would not be considered, but I think that games should stay confidential. If info is to be released, it should be put in the terms of agreement first and then released upon consent of Kestas and the mods. This request for game data by a player however, I feel does not warrant release of such things. If you find a game that would be suitable and all players agree, fine by me but I do not wish to have my chats revealed. Especially not private games.

I may be naive, but I don't see an issue with this. Assuming he read through the text and then matched the text to the particular game out of thousands, he would found out that I lie. I don't see the big deal. It won't hurt my future employment, he won't find sensitive information, and anything that he finds about me personally would be fairly obvious to guess.

Having webdip in an academic paper does seem pretty cool though!

Anyone that wants to look at my in-game messages is more than welcome to.

lol TED

Given that this is just a game, and is not a reflection of who I am; given that my avatar here is just that, an avatar, not my name; given that this is for research and I'm curious to see how it could be used; for all those reasons and more, I say please use any of my press, anon or not.