Working on a player list.

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BegoneThoth
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by BegoneThoth » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:49 am

Cihparg wrote:Old theme is now switchable with the adjust button.

And look, I get that you don't want your character names or account names to appear, but think of it this way;
How would an opt-out feature be implemented without any form of user authentication on the site?

An alternative is for every single person who doesn't want their account visible to send me a PM personally, through the forums, to hide the username they have on the forums hidden from it.

Assuming that you're seeking anonymity, the username you have on the forums is not the same you have in game.
Nor would it contain what characters do you play.
I send you a PM on here from the account I want removed and you remove it. Instant authentication. Simple and easy. If I make a new alt account and don't want it scry'd, a new PM.

I can't imagine you would get more then one a week after the first day.
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rookie
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by rookie » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:11 pm

Eh, I've actually never been a fan of the Arelith supported Server Status page (specifically the player/character list) or the fact that you can click on people's names in game to see their player name for things like metagaming disguise or player/character connection.

As far as expanding on it to allow for time played etc that this page does I don't really see a further issue with it.

Personally I see the data being public at all being an issue, not data mining of the available public data.

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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Cihparg » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:36 pm

BegoneThoth wrote:..
That's actually a very good way of going about it.
Haven't received a PM yet though; are you certain you sent it?

For the others that need to have their information hidden, I do encourage doing so in the way suggested. That way I know it's the account itself that wants to be hidden.

Beep boop.


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greatfanfare
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by greatfanfare » Wed Nov 29, 2017 4:27 pm

Cihparg wrote:@greatfanfare; Alrighty, that's a pretty dark monitor you got.
I'll see if there's something I can do.
No, the monitor it's fine, I'm the one who can't stand a monitor in high brightness for hours.

If so many damn apps didn't use white backgrounds, I could raise the brightness as I do when I'm in game.

Ah, the old color scheme it's back.

Thanks a lot! :D

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BegoneThoth
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by BegoneThoth » Wed Nov 29, 2017 6:24 pm

Cihparg wrote:
BegoneThoth wrote:..
That's actually a very good way of going about it.
Haven't received a PM yet though; are you certain you sent it?

For the others that need to have their information hidden, I do encourage doing so in the way suggested. That way I know it's the account itself that wants to be hidden.
PM sent
\

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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Cihparg » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:04 pm

Threw around a workaround to hide the majority of information from the scry window.
See this this for an example.

Code: Select all

https://old.cih.fi/arelith/?scry/^Cihparg$&format

Beep boop.


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Wytchee
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Wytchee » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:10 pm

This is MUCH better. Just a playerlist with the ability to add friends? That's pretty neat, I'll be honest.
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Cihparg
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Cihparg » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:28 pm

I suppose I should say it but; the site does still cache the same data it did before.
It's just not as easily accessible now.

Slightly more tech savvy breakdown of what was changed:

Code: Select all

?scry - Dropped [h, l, r, x, t] for "hide on demand" accounts.
?s - Hasn't had [h] for a long time for net delivery purposes.
    Could potentially drop other keys that aren't used anywhere else.
    Scratch that, all keys but H are used for sorting.
Hopefully this at least helps.

Beep boop.


All The Sinners Saints
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by All The Sinners Saints » Wed Nov 29, 2017 9:14 pm

I am not sure why whats essentially a cyber stalker tool was needed when the portal already exists.

Nitro
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Nitro » Wed Nov 29, 2017 9:57 pm

Honestly, it's nice to be able to find out the playtimes of someone you're trying to get in contact with who you don't know on the forums/discord/skype.

Gods_Kill_People
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Gods_Kill_People » Wed Nov 29, 2017 10:18 pm

ask them IG via a PM?

Xerah
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Xerah » Wed Nov 29, 2017 10:27 pm

You don’t necessarily know who to contact
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Cortex
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Cortex » Wed Nov 29, 2017 10:40 pm

You can ask on the forums like some people usually do.
:)

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BegoneThoth
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by BegoneThoth » Wed Nov 29, 2017 10:58 pm

I'd still prefer to not be on it.
\

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Twily
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Twily » Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:55 pm

I've always felt that website shows a little more than needed, but I do like a lot of the features that it has which the other server status page doesn't.

Being able to see what characters are under the username I'd have to say is my favorite among the options, and isn't really a privacy violation as there's no limit to the number of log-ins someone can have, there's no limit to the number of forum accounts someone can have.
*If someone is genuinely concerned about privacy, they're not going to put all of their characters under one log-in name when other players out there are still going to remember what other characters each log-in has had.


On the other hand, Arelith offers tools to players that are far more intrusive than anything on your page.
If people here are really concerned about privacy specifically, I'd think their primary concern would be the fact anyone can read every forum post they've ever made and exactly when that forum post was made*.
*This is why I don't write what character I play as, and why I don't use my Twily log-in for characters anymore.
This has the potential to reveal just as much about their active/inactive times, but also shows when they joined the server, and can give a relatively clear view into that persons behavior when online.
The profile page also shows the last time you were logged in, the forum you're most active in and the thread you're most active in(which again, can reveal anywhere from a little to a substantial amount about someone's personality).

For those genuinely concerned about privacy, regardless of your reason, there's bigger fish out there.


That said:
The forum is opt-in, where as the player list is not.

This sole reason is why I do feel like the player list does show a little more than players need to see.
This mainly comes down to things that reveal playtime. The H/M/S that characters were made (the D/M/Y I see as fine), and the last seen time being the two biggest offenders as they reveal specifically when someone plays.

Total playtime comes a little behind that, but this is more to meta-gaming concerns.
When coupled with the above one can form a quite possibly inaccurate estimate on how active a player is/will be, and the possibility of being responded to different as a result(especially in regards to joining factions, running for elections, etc) is very real.

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Lorkas
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Lorkas » Thu Nov 30, 2017 4:48 am

Gods_Kill_People wrote:
Nitro wrote:Honestly, it's nice to be able to find out the playtimes of someone you're trying to get in contact with who you don't know on the forums/discord/skype.
ask them IG via a PM?
What I mainly use it for is when I get a message on my character's door saying "So-and-so wants to meet up with you for such-and-such reason" and I've never made contact with them in person before. I have what amounts to a flexible work schedule on the weekends a lot of times, and knowing what time someone might be on helps me to plan what times I should try to get a lot of work done and what times I should check the playerlist to get in game and RP.
All The Sinners Saints wrote:I am not sure why whats essentially a cyber stalker tool was needed when the portal already exists.
It's not a cyber stalker tool, or it's a very poor one. First of all: the most stalkery information there is what time you played most recently, and you get no information beyond the most recent play session, apart from when the character was first made. I struggle to see how anyone could be put in any danger in real life from this information--the very nearest someone could get is maybe a guess at your time zone, assuming you have a typical work schedule.

As far as getting online when you're online to try to stalk you in-game, there are DMs to deal with that, and the server portal shows the information about who's currently online anyway. I don't see how cihparg's playerlist is helping a stalker do anything they wouldn't do otherwise, while it does help those of us who are not stalkers make connections with people.
Cortex wrote:You can ask on the forums like some people usually do.
You can try that, but there are 696 forum accounts and 20281 unique players (only 973 active over the last month we have data for, but we don't have an easy way to say how many of the forum accounts were active over that period). The forums don't catch everyone, while the playerlist does.

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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Durvayas » Thu Nov 30, 2017 5:01 am

I have a poor memory for names of player accounts. The scry function has helped me reconnect with old friends from years ago whose account names I couldn't remember, but could find using their old character names. It told me who they are playing recently, and let me reach out to them with that information. I like it as is.

Regarding the metagaming thing... the normal server portal has the same issues.
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One Two Three Five
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by One Two Three Five » Thu Nov 30, 2017 5:16 am

Sure, sure, but does it have to list so-darn-much information? Down to the second? Every character? Total time played and time played at last login?

It's not the tool itself I object to (mostly), rather the granularity of each piece, compounded together.
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Maladus
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Maladus » Thu Nov 30, 2017 5:36 am

At the end of the day, no one really needs to know how long you play down to the second. But at the same time how does that matter?

Improv
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Improv » Thu Nov 30, 2017 6:06 am

On a personal and specific to me level there are two things I am uncomfortable-- read, embarrassed-- by:

1. Through a little detective work you can link two of my alts who I don't want linked, because I remade one when I first joined-- she was originally on the same player account as my main before I knew you could make more than one account (and well before I knew this tool existed, as it seems to be something like Discord you have to find out about through word of mouth.)

Since the alt is kind of a troublemaker I would have preferred this not be something someone could uncover easily. Oh well, ship has sailed on that.

I do think this tool for one player to track another is a "word of mouth" kind of thing a new player would never know exists. I think this should be something you find out about when reading new player guides as I don't think the specific amount of info provided is common practice in NWN or other games. I also think people should be able to opt out at the get-go.

2. I'm embarrassed that six versions of one character are listed as I remade her that many times with slightly different names when trying to get it right...! Likewise I am embarrassed that deleted characters with names I decided I didn't like are attached to my account. For obvious reasons this tool doesn't know a character has been deleted, but if a character is deleted I would prefer trace of them just be gone, especially if they were a failed experiment.

For this and perhaps other reasons I think this database should clear after a reasonable and relatively short period of time. If you must track, track active characters, don't make it a research tool for who was doing what in 2016.

Being able to "opt out" via PM is... okay, but I am not about to provide another player I don't know a list of my alts nor do I want to make five forum accounts and have each send a PM (which will be obvious as to how they are connected, of course, and also not how I want to spend a half hour.)

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Marsi
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Marsi » Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:47 am

From what I understand the information is provided by a public API. Anyone (not to diminish Cih's good work) with a bit of know how could reproduce this. Even if there was no API they could just web scrape the portal. Making a fuss about opting out seems a bit fruitless to me imo -- it's already all out there.

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Nitro
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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Nitro » Thu Nov 30, 2017 11:35 am

It would be extremely easy to make a very basic script to look out for account names off the Arelith portal and log down the player name attached to it, and the time it was logged. Making a tool to grab it directly from the API like Cihparg is a bit more complicated.

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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Cihparg » Thu Nov 30, 2017 12:58 pm

I've been listening to some concerns and tried to cause discussion through Arelith Discord 3.0's #codenerds channel, and it's not fruitless.
If more people could come have a discussion down there, the better.

What I'm thinking of doing right now though (and I said it in #codenerds as well), is have plenty of the scry window hidden by default, until proper authentication can be implemented.

The history section of the scry window I figure could be replaced with something else; Rather than show every character under the account, show what characters match the used scry query, so you can still tell why a specific account was picked up from the cache.

Beep boop.


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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Shadowy Reality » Thu Nov 30, 2017 1:34 pm

What it seems to me is that people are worried others will see how much they have played Arelith. If you feel ashamed you played that many hours there's really only one person to blame.

If you don't care about that, then the playerlist is just harmless, and quite useful as stated in other posts.

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Re: Working on a player list.

Post by Gods_Kill_People » Thu Nov 30, 2017 1:51 pm

Shadowy Reality wrote:What it seems to me is that people are worried others will see how much they have played Arelith. If you feel ashamed you played that many hours there's really only one person to blame.

If you don't care about that, then the playerlist is just harmless, and quite useful as stated in other posts.

Sorry but I don't believe its your place at any time to invalidate the feelings and opinions of others, your not a psychiatrist and you don't own the server. Thus your opinion is only as valid as the opinion of the other players that have stated valid opinions on this board, weather or not you agree with them.

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