Stats - The 100th mass promotion topic thingy

[LordMatt]

• Greater lobby moderator flexibility.
  Moderators are few and far between and some of them feel that they're restricted unnecessarily. I vote swiftspear be given the right to recruit moderators in the lobby and that #main be registered and a new moderator level be introduced (operators in #main, for people who can be trusted to keep the peace in #main but cannot be trusted with server wide moderator powers )

Please explain in more detail why you think we need more lobby moderators. Does anyone else agree with AF on this, and why?

[AF]

I predict TASServer cannot handle more than 600 users for performance reasons. However if it could, past 700 users the lobby becomes unmanageable and you start to see signs of stress resulting from basic design issues.

Imagine joining #main with 700 users in the channel? There's a reason most other game lobbies either have multiple versions of our #main or don't force the user to login to such a channel to begin with. 700 active users in #main would be a great strain for the TASServer implementation.

[Peet]

Adding several #main-style channels would be about 3 lines of code in tasclient, simply choose a random one of these channels on login

[AF]

Lordmatt at the moment moderation techniques follow the same set of principles. Little has changed in the methods and options available to moderators since the server first started save for chanserv adding auto spam protection.

Of the people capable of appointing new moderators only tobi is active. Betalord has not logged into the lobby in a long time and he hasn't spent a sizeable amount of time in his lobby for possibly a year or longer. In the last year the only moderator he's appointed is belmakor, tobi for all intensive purposes is a single point of failure, and however good he does the job he's still just 1 person. He already takes up most of the responsibility for fixing TASServer exploits when they come along if he can in betalords absence.

On top of that most of the active moderators are on during daylight hours for europeans and US time zones. The other end of the twilight zone is still largely unmoderated

[SwiftSpear]

• Greater lobby moderator flexibility.
  Moderators are few and far between and some of them feel that they're restricted unnecessarily. I vote swiftspear be given the right to recruit moderators in the lobby and that #main be registered and a new moderator level be introduced (operators in #main, for people who can be trusted to keep the peace in #main but cannot be trusted with server wide moderator powers )

Please explain in more detail why you think we need more lobby moderators. Does anyone else agree with AF on this, and why?

ATM we don't really need more lobby moderators, but we do need more intelligent/powerful moderation systems. Things like

• The ability to mute, ban, tempmute, tempban, via a system that shortcuts to IP for channel operators
• Game moderation accessable by hosts in a robust way
• A temban feature
• More robust user account tracking (why user accounts still aren't attached to a unique identifier is beyond me)
• mutes that still work when a user renames
• WAY more highlight control
• The ability to modify user accounts for password recovery/enforce renaming in the case of TOS. By far preferable to banning the account.

However, as the size of the spring community grows, more moderators will be necessary, and more sensical options in terms of access to moderators specific roles will be increasingly a pressure that becomes more and more desirable. Speaking with a couple of third party lobby server developers and spring contributors, I'm personally of the opinion that a lobby server based on access control lists could/would revolutionize the way we run the lobby community.[/list]

[SwiftSpear]

AF: ever been in an IRC channel with 700 users?

It's a pretty cool experience... needless to say it's nothing like your run of the mill chat room...

[AF]

What exactly do you mean by 'highlight control'?

[Linebacker]

[*] Remove XTA from the spring installer
We should have either rotating mods (with TA based mods all counting as one slot on the cycle not 1 per mod). Mod makers (mod makers not players) would put forward a version theyd like as the latest official release and those would be cycled through on each major release.

That would confuse anyone new to the game, who downloads, installs and tries to get the hang of it, as well as occasional players.

[SwiftSpear]

What exactly do you mean by 'highlight control'?

Right now if someone says "sniggers" in main I get the same highlight as if someone said "SwiftSpear". Same sound, same color, same popup box. It would be immensely useful if I could customize my highlights so that...

A: "sniggers" doesn't set off my "nigger" highlight, It doesn't help me catch racism in #main when it's that inaccurate
B: I had a different sound for highlights referring to me specifically and general moderation highlights. It'd be nice to set up highlights so I know when people are advertising/chatting about an EE game or something, since it's rarely played these days, but I can't right now because if I'm in game I can't tell the difference between content that needs moderation attention or just casual content of interest. If someone needs to be banned I may leave a game for it, I'm not leaving a game because someone says my name or starts talking about EE though.
C: I could set up channel specific highlights. I don't care if sleksa is chatting about weird shit in #warc, it's his channel, he can do what he wants there. I care if it's happening in #main though.

[SwiftSpear]

[*] Remove XTA from the spring installer
We should have either rotating mods (with TA based mods all counting as one slot on the cycle not 1 per mod). Mod makers (mod makers not players) would put forward a version theyd like as the latest official release and those would be cycled through on each major release.

That would confuse anyone new to the game, who downloads, installs and tries to get the hang of it, as well as occasional players.

No it wouldn't. We'd still include a showcase mod, it would just rotate between releases. It's unfair that XTA is always the default showcase mod for no apparent reason. It made sense when SJ was maintaining it, because he was also the head man for anything spring related. It makes no sense at all any more, the current XTA isn't even as good as SJ's version was.

[Neddie]

• Greater lobby moderator flexibility.
  Moderators are few and far between and some of them feel that they're restricted unnecessarily. I vote swiftspear be given the right to recruit moderators in the lobby and that #main be registered and a new moderator level be introduced (operators in #main, for people who can be trusted to keep the peace in #main but cannot be trusted with server wide moderator powers )

Please explain in more detail why you think we need more lobby moderators. Does anyone else agree with AF on this, and why?

ATM we don't really need more lobby moderators, but we do need more intelligent/powerful moderation systems. Things like

• The ability to mute, ban, tempmute, tempban, via a system that shortcuts to IP for channel operators
• Game moderation accessable by hosts in a robust way
• A temban feature
• More robust user account tracking (why user accounts still aren't attached to a unique identifier is beyond me)
• mutes that still work when a user renames
• WAY more highlight control
• The ability to modify user accounts for password recovery/enforce renaming in the case of TOS. By far preferable to banning the account.

However, as the size of the spring community grows, more moderators will be necessary, and more sensical options in terms of access to moderators specific roles will be increasingly a pressure that becomes more and more desirable. Speaking with a couple of third party lobby server developers and spring contributors, I'm personally of the opinion that a lobby server based on access control lists could/would revolutionize the way we run the lobby community.[/list]

That list pretty much covers the functionality I've been contemplating for a while - whenever somebody ban/mute dodges while I'm idling in lobby, really.

As the community grows, we will need a larger moderation staff. With peaks of 300, we should be able to function with two or three on from a timezone at any one time but as our moderators are also players, I'm of the opinion the ideal number is slightly higher.

[AF]

And always including a TA mod with the installer is damaging, almost as much as always including the same content.

Users don't get the feel that content is moving forward or that new content is being generated. All they see is XTA and BA/AA. So what if we added new sfx and swapped out a few models fixed a units balance, its all the same to them.

[iamacup]

1) make load and save work
2) someone make a bloody campaign and some propper AI

we have a game people who are crap can play, get good then go online.



this is all we need for a larger player base.


UF is undergoing a user friendly remake anyways

[LordMatt]

Lordmatt at the moment moderation techniques follow the same set of principles. Little has changed in the methods and options available to moderators since the server first started save for chanserv adding auto spam protection.

Of the people capable of appointing new moderators only tobi is active. Betalord has not logged into the lobby in a long time and he hasn't spent a sizeable amount of time in his lobby for possibly a year or longer. In the last year the only moderator he's appointed is belmakor, tobi for all intensive purposes is a single point of failure, and however good he does the job he's still just 1 person. He already takes up most of the responsibility for fixing TASServer exploits when they come along if he can in betalords absence.

On top of that most of the active moderators are on during daylight hours for europeans and US time zones. The other end of the twilight zone is still largely unmoderated

Belmakor was appointed the same time as quantum and I. Since then we have also added trepan, licho, det, and MelTraX. I agree with both of you that it would be nice if more tools were available to mods.

[Neddie]

You know I'm including UF in all my plans, Cuppy.

[Licho]

Spring is very hard to setup. It's hard for newbies to figure out where to get maps, mods, how to control the game, how to chat in game, how to draw on map, where to get help etc.. Many even don't know what they are downloading due to lack of proper media and description on main site.

These things are imo needed:

Proper resource(map/mod/widget/AI) management:

- there should be central database of mods/maps/widget controlled by spring server.

- database should provide mirror discovery service for lobby (pointing it to UF copy of the file or copy on some other server)

- central database should also provide bit torrent tracker for backup reasons.

- lobbies should automatically download missing resources (you want to join game with new mod and map, click it and wait) - while downloading mirror sponsor banner could be displayed.

- in the case of failed mirror lobbies should have backup bit torrent mechanism for download. Each person with idle lobby could work as a seeder for resouces he has. Even with very small bandwidth allocated per person (like 4k/s) hundreds of people sitting in lobby would provide significant bandwidth.

- lobby mechanism for browsing lua widgets and/or other enhancement (like AIs) from lobby itself and ability to download/delete them without going down to files.


Other lobby enhancements:

- proper configuration interface for more advanced spring config features like key bindings, ctrlpanels tweaking etc.

- more intuitive access to single player games

- better spring/lobby integration (chat working both in game and lobby at once, ringing from game etc.) - this is possible with SVN version of spring already.

- ideally just one high performance multiplatform lobby

"New player" enhancements:

- "full" installer should include most popular mods and maps (even if it means bigger size).

- tutorial (even web based) explaining basic things with screenshots

- more advanced walkthrough describing ALL advanced features most people haven't even heard about. From control tricks (like repeated area commands, air transport bridges, "surrounding" modes for group building etc.) to hidden features like bonus shield.

Better website:

- we need need up to date high quality media, some short texts highlighting key features of spring and its mods etc.

- central resource DB accessible from web (providing lists of maps with rankings, comments, lists of widgets tracking their historic versions and compatibility with mods etc).

[Licho]

Oh resource management should also allow seamless upgrade of lobby and spring itself allowing much shorter spring dev cycles.

[Tobi]

There are some good ideas mentioned in this thread; many of the ones related to Spring itself and the installer have already been on my to do list for a while but I have lacked the time to do anything with them yet. I may bump them a bit though so I might get around to one or two things before release..

EDIT: I don't think the full installer should contain the most popular mods and maps, since this would cause a viscuous circle only making the popular content more and more popular.

[Linebacker]

It's unfair that XTA is always the default showcase mod for no apparent reason.

Of course you know the details much better than I. But I thought XTA was the closest mod to OTA. And so far I looked at Spring as the state-of-the-art version of Total Annihilation. If I am wrong here (correct if need be), then it would make sense to include this Classic TA-mod from zwzsg?

[AF]

imo the whole stuff about management there is way overcomplicated licho and is far too much work.

Instead, allow sdz archives that have a tag saying for the archive mover to extract their contents as is directly into the spring directory. This would sole distribution of all non native media involving multiple files, while giving support for AI configs, lua widgets etc... And it would require far less work and could be integrated into the archive mover tool