Combatting anti-social behavior on the mp serv
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Combatting anti-social behavior on the mp serv
I have a few proposals for how to combat anti-social behavior that we see on the MP server.
First, I think we should make it possible to register user names. Registration wouldn't be mandatory, but guests wouldn't be able to use registered names. This would stop people from impersonating each other. Also there'd be a reasonable limit on the number of names that could be registered from the same IP address.
Next, each player would have a 'reputation' or 'karma' ranking. The ranking would work somewhat similarly to eBay's system for ranking other users. After playing a game, players would get to 'vote' on the behavior of other players in the gameThis ranking would be created by asking players to vote on their experience in playing with other players. After each game, players would have the option of "voting" on the behavior of other players involved in the game (good/neutral/bad), and perhaps making a comment.
Votes would get combined to form a ranking (the ranking system could be somewhat sophisticated -- for instance, a higher karma rating would mean your vote means more).
Any thoughts on this? I think it could cut down on having to play with so many obnoxious people...
David
First, I think we should make it possible to register user names. Registration wouldn't be mandatory, but guests wouldn't be able to use registered names. This would stop people from impersonating each other. Also there'd be a reasonable limit on the number of names that could be registered from the same IP address.
Next, each player would have a 'reputation' or 'karma' ranking. The ranking would work somewhat similarly to eBay's system for ranking other users. After playing a game, players would get to 'vote' on the behavior of other players in the gameThis ranking would be created by asking players to vote on their experience in playing with other players. After each game, players would have the option of "voting" on the behavior of other players involved in the game (good/neutral/bad), and perhaps making a comment.
Votes would get combined to form a ranking (the ranking system could be somewhat sophisticated -- for instance, a higher karma rating would mean your vote means more).
Any thoughts on this? I think it could cut down on having to play with so many obnoxious people...
David
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
The karma thing seems quite dangerous, imho...
Weighing it through karma could be a solution, but even then, depending on how things start out, this could get out of hand (the first 10 players you play are bad, so you rank each other as "bad", and you now have 10 "bad" rankings, while the "bad" rankings you gave don't weigh as much because your own karma is quite low).
A solution to this could be to set higher (fixed?) karma values for some people (the MP devs, among others). Their word would be worth more, then.
Weighing it through karma could be a solution, but even then, depending on how things start out, this could get out of hand (the first 10 players you play are bad, so you rank each other as "bad", and you now have 10 "bad" rankings, while the "bad" rankings you gave don't weigh as much because your own karma is quite low).
A solution to this could be to set higher (fixed?) karma values for some people (the MP devs, among others). Their word would be worth more, then.
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It sounds like a good idea to me. There would probably be some initial seeding of karma values by the MP devs. After all, it is trivial for them to associate current players with IPs.
"you can already do that with WML"
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This karma system would be hard to manage. I know a fair few places that use a karma system, and they need to maintain sanctions on top of that system in order to make sure everybody uses it correctly. It is so easy to abuse - revenge karma is a popular nasty trick that is sanctioned against. But this sanctioning system for abusing the karma system requires a fair bit of work to maintain.
Doesn't the karma system give you flash-backs to school? Did your school have student representatives? A lot of kids complain about how those things are all popularity contests, they are quite right. Kids also play Wesnoth. The same flaws would extend into this system: A person might be obnoxious and unpleasant, but have excellent karma because they mostly play with their cliques. Then they join random games and what strangers see is a person with high karma who is nasty to them. Then we have revenge karma, which will be very difficult to eradicate. Then there are other people who just want to be nasty to some people and always give them bad karma. Run into a few of these people and their buddies and karma would plummet. Then it would be difficult to find people to play against to regain positive karma due to the natural prejudice people would have against those with lower karma (even if it was undeserved). I'm afraid this is going to add a lot of strain to the already stressed interactions on the MP server. Then we have people who will be afraid to play random people because they don't want to lose their karma.
I absolutely love the registration idea, though, and this should be more than adequate without a karma system. We all know who we like and who we don't like. The added knowledge that this isn't somebody impersonating somebody we like will make things a lot more pleasant. Instead of a karma system, perhaps just have some way of identifying whether somebody is logged in or playing as an unregistered username (say, different colour or a star or something). This way, we can more easily identify people we like or do not like playing against based on our own experiences and those of our friends, without any prejudice or fears or limitations associated with the karma system.
Doesn't the karma system give you flash-backs to school? Did your school have student representatives? A lot of kids complain about how those things are all popularity contests, they are quite right. Kids also play Wesnoth. The same flaws would extend into this system: A person might be obnoxious and unpleasant, but have excellent karma because they mostly play with their cliques. Then they join random games and what strangers see is a person with high karma who is nasty to them. Then we have revenge karma, which will be very difficult to eradicate. Then there are other people who just want to be nasty to some people and always give them bad karma. Run into a few of these people and their buddies and karma would plummet. Then it would be difficult to find people to play against to regain positive karma due to the natural prejudice people would have against those with lower karma (even if it was undeserved). I'm afraid this is going to add a lot of strain to the already stressed interactions on the MP server. Then we have people who will be afraid to play random people because they don't want to lose their karma.
I absolutely love the registration idea, though, and this should be more than adequate without a karma system. We all know who we like and who we don't like. The added knowledge that this isn't somebody impersonating somebody we like will make things a lot more pleasant. Instead of a karma system, perhaps just have some way of identifying whether somebody is logged in or playing as an unregistered username (say, different colour or a star or something). This way, we can more easily identify people we like or do not like playing against based on our own experiences and those of our friends, without any prejudice or fears or limitations associated with the karma system.
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The idea is great, but there are certain consequences that are glued to it. The major one is abuse. My idea is this: Make it so you can only have one username, you're able to edit it, but when you edit it, you still keep your "score". People have a "black" list, or something. These people show up as burgandy when in game, and grey when in lobby. The "score" is the amount of people that have the person on their blackmail list. A number would be associated with that name, or a color next to their name to represent this rating.
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I would be against the whole "karma" thing for similar reasons to the ones Imp states. Some people would still be jerks, people would abuse the system, and it would end up being another feature to code and maintain for little or no gain.
As for the nick registration, I am ambivalent. I wouldn't object to it, but I also thought it was an FPI.
As for the nick registration, I am ambivalent. I wouldn't object to it, but I also thought it was an FPI.
For some reason this proposal rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps it goes against my perception of Wesnoth. I myself have always viewed Wesnoth as pretty casual, and relaxed. Ratings, registrations, the and all that other red tape/restrictions don't really exist. You get to know peoples personalities and skill level from personally playing and intereacting with them, or other people that know them. It kind of resembles real life in the way that everyone isn't walking around all the time with this or that rating or title strapped to their forehead.
Oh the other hand, Wesnoth is getting bigger and bigger, and perhaps 'red tape' like this are starting to become necessary. But I personally prefer the relaxed system that we have now. With all the ratings and red tape... I just don't think it would be Wesnoth anymore...
P.S. It would be a lot of work to set up and maintain a system like this. Instead of deticating manpower to police the Karma system, why don't the just be general cops instead?
Oh the other hand, Wesnoth is getting bigger and bigger, and perhaps 'red tape' like this are starting to become necessary. But I personally prefer the relaxed system that we have now. With all the ratings and red tape... I just don't think it would be Wesnoth anymore...
P.S. It would be a lot of work to set up and maintain a system like this. Instead of deticating manpower to police the Karma system, why don't the just be general cops instead?
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As nice as it is to be anonymous, it is very easy for some clowns to ruin MP experience. Any system will be exploitable. Karma can altered incorrectly (even by trusted players who are in a bad mood).
Registering with IP is bad for those players with non-static IP's (wireless laptops for example). Even for people who move/play from work etc.
Registering with email addresses might be better. However, any login requiring an email is easily bypassed. Email addresses are easy enough to come by.
Having said that, any form of login that requires registration makes it more difficult for people to ruin others experiences. So I am very much for it. I am typing this as a player is ruining a game GMT-7: 10:56 pm - Bob_The_Mghty's game. DEATH aka Grim_Reaper aka Greenmagisniper keeps reconnecting and spamming observer chat whilst insulting players.
Registering with IP is bad for those players with non-static IP's (wireless laptops for example). Even for people who move/play from work etc.
Registering with email addresses might be better. However, any login requiring an email is easily bypassed. Email addresses are easy enough to come by.
Having said that, any form of login that requires registration makes it more difficult for people to ruin others experiences. So I am very much for it. I am typing this as a player is ruining a game GMT-7: 10:56 pm - Bob_The_Mghty's game. DEATH aka Grim_Reaper aka Greenmagisniper keeps reconnecting and spamming observer chat whilst insulting players.
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- Viliam
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My opinion:
1) Trying to do a unified rating system for all players = BAD. This will make people abuse the system... getting high score for them, and low score for anyone else. Remember: the problem is that there are abusive players. If they cannot play fair, do you think they will use the ranking system fairly?
2) Doing a private whitelist/blacklist, private rating, and sharing the ratings with people you trust = GOOD.
So I would recommend this: Anyone can register a username online. Anyone can play with registered name or as a guest -- but guests will be always encouraged to register, when logging into official server. It will be graphically indicated whether the user is a guest or registered. The only information saved on server, will be the username/password pairs, and maybe an information on last use, so that after 1 year of inactivity, the username expires.
Each user can keep a private list of ratings for other users, on his own machine. The rating has two parts. One is possibility to put some people into blacklist, or whitelist, or none of these. (Whitelist does not mean "a friend" or "a very good player", it only means "a person I do not mind playing with".) This allows easy automatical mechanism for joining to games. Person on your blacklist cannot join the game created by you. If you mark the game as "only for known people", only people on your whitelist can join the game. So it is possible by registering a new username to get out of your blacklist, but it is not possible to get into your whitelist. To avoid cheating with new accounts, the person should get the same message for both "you are on this person's blacklist" and "you are not on this person's whitelist" situations, so the person will not get an information whether registering with a new account would help him to overcome the obstacle. The information should in both cases tell the "whitelist" story: "This person does not know you."
The other part of rating is a short string, which can be added to any player. It is a few words describing their behavior, such as "strong player" or "noob", or "idiot, quits the game". And these ratings can be shared between players, by downloading their rating files. So when I click on the name of person, there will be described comments made by me and by other players whose ratings I have downloaded. This way I can get recommendations and warnings from people whose opinion I trust. (This system cannot be gamed if a group of idiots gives each other a good rating, or if they give bad ratings to everyone else. Unless you decided to trust them, you will not know it.) The exact system of downloading other player's ratings could be e.g. like this: If the player is on my whitelist, and I am on his whitelist, I can click on his name and choose "get ratings", which will download his file, possibly overwriting the old one. This includes the other person's whitelists and blacklists.
When you create a game, there could be options "my friends", "friends of my friends" and "everyone". In "friends" more, only people on my whitelist can join. In "everyone", everyone not on my blacklist can join. In "friend of a friend" mode, the algorithm is like this: people of my whitelist can join, people on my blacklist cannot join; for other people it depends on how often they appear on the whitelists and blacklists of people I trust... they can join only if they appear in more whitelists than blacklists.
At the end of game, the screen is displayed which allows to easily add the other players into blacklists and whitelists, and write comments to them.
By the way, despite the fact that the ratings are stored on your local machine, only registered players should be allowed to use ratings... this would encourage people to register.
1) Trying to do a unified rating system for all players = BAD. This will make people abuse the system... getting high score for them, and low score for anyone else. Remember: the problem is that there are abusive players. If they cannot play fair, do you think they will use the ranking system fairly?
2) Doing a private whitelist/blacklist, private rating, and sharing the ratings with people you trust = GOOD.
So I would recommend this: Anyone can register a username online. Anyone can play with registered name or as a guest -- but guests will be always encouraged to register, when logging into official server. It will be graphically indicated whether the user is a guest or registered. The only information saved on server, will be the username/password pairs, and maybe an information on last use, so that after 1 year of inactivity, the username expires.
Each user can keep a private list of ratings for other users, on his own machine. The rating has two parts. One is possibility to put some people into blacklist, or whitelist, or none of these. (Whitelist does not mean "a friend" or "a very good player", it only means "a person I do not mind playing with".) This allows easy automatical mechanism for joining to games. Person on your blacklist cannot join the game created by you. If you mark the game as "only for known people", only people on your whitelist can join the game. So it is possible by registering a new username to get out of your blacklist, but it is not possible to get into your whitelist. To avoid cheating with new accounts, the person should get the same message for both "you are on this person's blacklist" and "you are not on this person's whitelist" situations, so the person will not get an information whether registering with a new account would help him to overcome the obstacle. The information should in both cases tell the "whitelist" story: "This person does not know you."
The other part of rating is a short string, which can be added to any player. It is a few words describing their behavior, such as "strong player" or "noob", or "idiot, quits the game". And these ratings can be shared between players, by downloading their rating files. So when I click on the name of person, there will be described comments made by me and by other players whose ratings I have downloaded. This way I can get recommendations and warnings from people whose opinion I trust. (This system cannot be gamed if a group of idiots gives each other a good rating, or if they give bad ratings to everyone else. Unless you decided to trust them, you will not know it.) The exact system of downloading other player's ratings could be e.g. like this: If the player is on my whitelist, and I am on his whitelist, I can click on his name and choose "get ratings", which will download his file, possibly overwriting the old one. This includes the other person's whitelists and blacklists.
When you create a game, there could be options "my friends", "friends of my friends" and "everyone". In "friends" more, only people on my whitelist can join. In "everyone", everyone not on my blacklist can join. In "friend of a friend" mode, the algorithm is like this: people of my whitelist can join, people on my blacklist cannot join; for other people it depends on how often they appear on the whitelists and blacklists of people I trust... they can join only if they appear in more whitelists than blacklists.
At the end of game, the screen is displayed which allows to easily add the other players into blacklists and whitelists, and write comments to them.
By the way, despite the fact that the ratings are stored on your local machine, only registered players should be allowed to use ratings... this would encourage people to register.