Online list and privacy [split from: TMW promotion]

[gagolthegreat]

I think detailed logs (maybe I misread you post...) would only interest wanna-be hackers. I do not think it would be of much interest to the general population (original promotion thread...). That does not mean we cannot use it to create awards of some sorts... but keep the details private please.

But that is my personal opinion...

[Matt]

I don't think this is an issue. But I collected the stats for years, so ...

[Nard]

I think detailed logs (maybe I misread you post...) would only interest wanna-be hackers. I do not think it would be of much interest to the general population (original promotion thread...). That does not mean we cannot use it to create awards of some sorts... but keep the details private please.

But that is my personal opinion...

My personal opinion is that making deep data mining and for sure some interpretation, without giving source data and the way you made summaries or got indicators is simply dishonest. I perfectly know that most people cannot do or understand most calculations, but at least they can reproduce them if they want to or ask for information about them. I sincerely do not think that there is a way to cheat these data or to use them in a nasty way more than you can do actually, but, as there are some solutions to preserve privacy feelings of sensitive players, I cannot understand why raw data could not be published.

Awards are a different idea more content or game animation related. some have already been suggested in the past: I sugested the Golden Mouboos of the developer of the year, the GM of the year, the friendliest player.... and now why not the black skull of the deadliest player, the green moggun of the best troll...


@ Matt: I didn't forget you stats that can be very useful aside with players connection data; At the moment I think there could be accessed directly from the web site and that you could also post about them under the "Website Redesign Proposal : Big Menu" topic.

[Frost]

The argument is over. It ended the minute argul said "I can and I did," and walked away.

All that's left is to pick up the pieces and decide what to do from here.

My concern is less about the result of this situation than how it was decided. I'm perfectly familiar with power tactics from business. For enough money, I'll wear a suit and be as brutal as anyone. That's not how I choose to spend my leisure time and energy. I certainly didn't sign up to hold the bag for this nonsense when I volunteered to help as admin.

Call me naive if you wish, but I'm surprised and disappointed to see TMW operating in this way.

[mistergrey]

I agree there, Frost. This was not done the right way..

Nard, I know you feel it is dishonest not to release ALL the details used to calculate statistics, but when something causes a big, bad reaction in people, especially ones who normally don't complain, there is a problem. My problem never had anything to do with keeping stats, or saying that is wrong - but a game should respect the players' privacy, rather than give out information that can affect them without asking, and in this case there are a lot of concerns, whether you think they are valid or not.

Honestly, I feel like keeping stats is nowhere near as important as keeping the players happy, and when I see people truly upset by something, I wonder how necessary it really is. I would love an interesting player stats page, but the need to have all the data in the public doesn't justify leaving people angry and upset that this info was kept and posted, while their objections were seemingly ignored and picked apart.

[o11c]

It doesn't take a lot of skill to understand "fetch online.txt continuously".

Removing online.txt would prevent the statistics from being publicly available in the future.


And I really want to stress this: if you're being harassed, report the harassment, and do NOT complain about your decision to have no way to verify whispers.

@mistergrey: Who is complaining that doesn't usually complain?

[mistergrey]

o11c,

I never claimed it took much skill, only that it's a bit unusual for a developer to be giving out such information about players, and can have consequences.

Removing online.txt would also deprive players of an online list, something most self-respecting games have.

You seem to have a skewed idea about how these things work. If a player takes a bunch of gm logs, makes up a story completely out of context just to spite me, and posts an official complaint... I can't simply make my own opposing complaint topic and call it abuse - I am expected to defend my actions when called into question. That situation has happened, a number of times, and this is without those people having access to my daily online scheduled times.

In case you have not been reading, I, Chicka-Maria, Big Crunch, and others have stated why we feel this is a privacy issue. Frost has repeatedly stated that he feels this is a problem, as is the attitude with which it is being done. While we often give our input on the forums, I would not say we are all the types to complain about every new change. Content does not pass in game despite tons of protests, so why should a feature like this?

[Crush]

On one hand, the online list could be seen as a violation of privacy.

On the other hand, there are many useful tools which rely on it, like the ingame online list of the Manaplus client. Removing the online list completely would break these tools.

As a compromise I would suggest an opt-out or opt-in method to allow people to choose if they want to be on the online list or not.

@hide can't be used for that, by the way, because enabling it also prevents monsters from attacking you.

[o11c]

I never claimed it took much skill, only that it's a bit unusual for a developer to be giving out such information about players, and can have consequences.

Except that a developer is not giving out that information, he is aggregating the information that everybody already has.

What would you think if manaplus had an option to show which players had joined/left between times it fetches online.txt? What about over a larger period of time, like an hour, or a day?

You seem to have a skewed idea about how these things work. If a player takes a bunch of gm logs, makes up a story completely out of context just to spite me, and posts an official complaint... I can't simply make my own opposing complaint topic and call it abuse - I am expected to defend my actions when called into question. That situation has happened, a number of times, and this is without those people having access to my daily online scheduled times.

I don't see how this is relevant. There's a difference between GM logs, and a simple table of when a player is online. GM logs can be taken out-of-context to harass GMs. A table of when a player is online cannot be taken out of context to harass; that harassment has to happen over other means, which could happen even if online.txt were taken down.

--

The ability to opt-out of online.txt is conceptually valid, but I cringe at the thought of trying to implement the interface.

[Nard]

I agree there, Frost. This was not done the right way..

Nard, I know you feel it is dishonest not to release ALL the details used to calculate statistics, but when something causes a big, bad reaction in people, especially ones who normally don't complain, there is a problem. My problem never had anything to do with keeping stats, or saying that is wrong - but a game should respect the players' privacy, rather than give out information that can affect them without asking, and in this case there are a lot of concerns, whether you think they are valid or not.

Honestly, I feel like keeping stats is nowhere near as important as keeping the players happy, and when I see people truly upset by something, I wonder how necessary it really is. I would love an interesting player stats page, but the need to have all the data in the public doesn't justify leaving people angry and upset that this info was kept and posted, while their objections were seemingly ignored and picked apart.

My reaction is because people are frightened that something bad could be done with these data with tools that they do not understand a lot; and not try to imagine how it could be done which would be far more constructive to find a solution. I've always thought that brain is a more useful tool than guts about such problems.
Maybe dishonest was a tough word, though it is sometimes easy to turn statistical results to your advantage: I could show you very simple examples which demonstrates that point, but in another topic.
TMW is a public space, the presence of my chars is a public thing not a private thing and I don't see anything more wrong publishing it to other players. I still think the privacy concern of these data is a bit exaggerated whether you agree or not. Anyway there are workarounds that could be used so anybody could be satisfied.
You are at the moment, mrgrey the only one who have given an opinion about these workarounds. Until other contributors who gave a rather negative opinion speak about it, I understand that they consider the data themselves and not only the char names as a violation of their privacy which is nonsense to me (except if the data could reveal a rule violation: number of alts online could be revealed as long as the alt names are know; it is impossible to do if char names are encoded ).

Actually I am not the only player to feel unhappy because I feel water fills the boat: I can see very few new players compared to previous year. the original title of this thread is significant about this feeling as the other major active one about the website. I an unhappy when I see a character per account ratio of 0.8 and we go on without asking ourselves any question. Having better knowledge of what makes player happy and unhappy, of what makes them leave the game without a word, should make administrators, developers, and players happy.

[Nard]

This discussion turns to fantasy. opt in and opt out is nonsense to me.
In my opinion there are two solutions:

1. we stay as is
2. we adopt the other role playing games policy: you can see only players you are friend with, and befriend requires both parts agreement

[Nard]

Once again these file appeared a year ago:

http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 02#p110402

At that time no one worried about tracking others including GM schedule.

The only one to comment was Mistakes.

[mistergrey]

o11c, when somebody gathers information that Could otherwise take a long time for those who don't know how, and makes it easily available to everybody with no work needed, I would consider that "giving" it out.

The situation I described is relevant, because that is the kind of harassment I could expect, before a convenient way to map out my online times is handed out. If I felt I was alone in this concern I probably would not have bothered joining this debate - but I am clearly not. These issues are brought up so far by 2 GMs, an admin, a developer (all of which seem to understand why my point relates to the GM logs, amusingly enough), along with a few players.

If manaplus added such a feature, I would be fine with that. I would also probably not use manaplus anymore, not that it would make a difference. The point though, is that it would be a third party distributing the gathered data in that case. If some random person wants to do this and make their logs available, that is their choice. Some people would not take it as well knowing that the game offers these out to everybody,

Nard, while you could be right that a lot of fun things can be learned with statistics, you are expressing frustration that people are so upset by this, while dismissing their feelings on the subject. A lot of things can be learned through keeping stats like this, even without making the logs of the online list available, but your main concern seems to be making everything open to everyone. I am not the only one to explain my opinion - Frost was quite to the point, as were most others. You can laugh off our reasoning, but abuse is not a funny matter even if it is unlikely to happen in your opinion. And, from the perspective of someone who deals with player - player conflicts a lot, this is exactly the type of thing a number of people would make great use of. You would be surprised at how unwilling people can be to go to the trouble of gathering this kind of data - this is a good thing in many cases. When it is logged, made available for everyone.. well, there are already players who go to obsessive lengths to observe others, troll them, whatever. Just wait until you pick a fight with one, they make note of the exact time frame you are online, and fill your timed schedule (which you may not be able to change due to work) with trolling and abusive whispers.

[Nard]

[quote="mistergrey"]Nard, while you could be right that a lot of fun things can be learned with statistics, you are expressing frustration that people are so upset by this, while dismissing their feelings on the subject. A lot of things can be learned through keeping stats like this, even without making the logs of the online list available, but your main concern seems to be making everything open to everyone. I am not the only one to explain my opinion - Frost was quite to the point, as were most others. You can laugh off our reasoning, but abuse is not a funny matter even if it is unlikely to happen in your opinion. And, from the perspective of someone who deals with player - player conflicts a lot, this is exactly the type of thing a number of people would make great use of. /quote]

Dear mrgrey I am far to find anything funny or worth to laugh to laugh at in this topic.
I have been trolled almost every day, in various ways , by various players for more than a year long, so I have nothing to learn from you about abuse, lying, spamming and stalking and even scamming. "various players" includes at least one member of dev team and one of the players you, Frost and B.C. have good relations with.

I just cannot imagine HOW these data can be used to annoy anyone MORE than it can be done actually. And when I suggest to make them anonymous, it does not change a thing. That makes me a bit upset and wonder if the real problem is privacy.

[mistergrey]

Nard, I've presented my personal issues with this as clearly as I can. If you cannot see this as a problem that is fine, but it does not mean that there is no problem. I don't know anything about encoding, so I can't say yes or no to that. Someone who has a better idea about security might have a better idea of how that would work, and any potential problems. I cannot help if you think there is some other reason for this, but there truly is not, at least not that I'm aware of.