Online list and privacy [split from: TMW promotion]

[Nard]

Nard, it is understood that this information Can be gathered by anybody. The point is, how many WOULD go to the trouble, before being given the tools to do so? I never had a problem with Pjotr having that data, or even posting the data that he did in my GM poll. He is not some random player - he is a developer, and I have some amount of trust towards them, as well as being friendly with him. This was only my time online for a certain period of time - it is not the same as giving everyone the tools to easily have an up to date list of my online times. I do not have any such trust for every random player who can make more mischievous use of them.

mrgrey I admit Frost's and your fear about these data even if I don't agree with your opinion about them. I am one of those random players who could make a mischievous use of them because I have skills enough to
extract some information from these data and have some programming skills while I can't get information in the past. As I said to Chicka before she began to post out of reason, (lets say she was tired or in trolling mood), I could find a possible use to annoy a gm more than I can do actually. Let's say it is a sufficient reason not to publish the data as is.

What about my former "simplest suggestion"?

Code: Select all

Name----> random name in random language dictionary

decryption algorithms are unusable because they are based of semantic meaning, and character or syllabic transcoding. A list such as this one has no semantic content, is single use and would require extra unavailable (to my knowledge) information to be decoded. More, useful information can be retrieved easier from other sources. I will not say how.

Players can also harass people and whisper each other insults - this does not justify releasing a feature that will automatically do it for you, and pick choice insults for you. Sure, somebody could make an InsultBot... but would that be authorized by TMW? Surely not.

Insulting and botting (any automated action) are already forbidden. I will answer with a similar comparison: screen copies were used in the past to troll badly and unfaithfully. Is it a sufficient reason to prohibit their use (even if it was possible). I answered to an upper o11c post by a (small) joke, I see I was wrong to do so because it pointed possibly our main difference: I trust a priori other players, he said he didn't. I think that usually rules penalize the great majority to prevent abuse from little (such as the follow rule did), I prefer to trust judges (and gm are), but in present case, to prevent possible abuse, I suggest something like:

• Publishing nominative player connection data in explicit form (such as argul did in GM poll), over any time period, for any purpose, and in any accessible location, without express consent of concerned player(s) is a violation of privacy and is forbidden. transgressing is worth a forum and game ban.

Such rule punishes a nasty use not the data.

When it comes to the bad things players can do with data like this, the saving grace is that most are too lazy to go to a huge effort, especially when they don't have the knowledge to do many things themselves.

I totally agree with that last point: the fact is that the huge effort is to retrieve significant information from that data, far more than getting them. (even if it is impossible to get the past data)

edit: typo typo typo ...

[tmwTroLL007]

Chika is right I have seen a few already leave. a few has left my guild to be honest I do not like something we have worked so hard to put together destroyed and I myself am thinking of leaving. Since I am a pvp person I kill many Peaple and I know with this list being out there they can now narrow down my alts to prevent me from levling killing farming or just to troll me, and my fun now has been compromised why stay when everyone I play with has left now due to privacy being invaded most don't even know this is going on!! and to be honest should have been voted on not slung out there.There is something called the privacy act!! I am a type of person who usually deals with my own issues and do not call a gm often nor do I need to be a cry baby and run to them now every time I feel I am being took advantage of or seeing I am being molested by some twerps bots since he knows my alts most client's offer a online list why even take the time to throw it out there for someone to data mine.All you have to do is narrow names down when they log off take two month's of info bang I have most of your characters... not cool at all.Hopefully you can come to a better conclusion and to be honest that information should have been dev gm privalage only as for Nard made his own up smart man, but there is always someone as smart as you are even you 011c so thinking this information is going to be fine it is not think what could you actually do with it worst case scenerio. wait for the complaints to pile up?? all it will do is drag the game down and force Peaple to leave as they already are. I do not think it is even a decision its common sense I think there should be a complaint post about this and all should be made aware of it. the ones for it should stay out of the post so others who are not can be herd just so the powers that be can listen to everyone not get stomped on every time they say something.To be honest I want to know what Platna thinks of all this since her decision is the final one.

[Nard]

Trollie. I understand your fear, but online list even cumulated over a year doesn't allow (I am 100% sure) to find your alts (other than on one account) faster than you can do it with your client The result would not be 100% reliable, and you would need extra information to do it. This becomes impossible when the names are randomly changed.

With your client the result is certitude, thus it would be faster to program a bot or modify an existing one to do this task. Maybe one of these sitting bots in Hunrscald already does this job. If I know how to do it, someone else already had the idea or will have it soon. These ones are far more dangerous.

I am sure of what I say because I began to collect information just after I computed this 0.85 characters per account ratio to have a rough estimate on the active accounts one, thus on the actual number of empty accounts: If x is the proportion of active accounts with an average of R chars per accounts , (1-x) is the one of others with an average of 0 chars (strong hypothesis that makes me get an upper estimate of really active accounts) number of active players is speculation after that, but lower anyway. Thus x*R should equal to 0.85. I could get enough data in 2 weeks, with a pencil and a spreadsheet to be able to compute
something. (No I will not give you the results nor the estimates and no, I didn't discover a lot of alts that I didn't already knew about). Argul's data are useless (or so little) for this!

Nard

edit typo

[o11c]

Just for reference, there's no way to make a hash of player names that can't be trivially broken. If you think about it for a little bit you'll understand why.

However a one-time pad (as has also been suggested) would work.

--

For tmwa-adventures I'm playing with the thought of not allowing players to choose their names.

[tmwTroLL007]

first its very simple elimination kinda like the green dye.If I have which I do now thank you Nardie two month's of full activeity the 5 minute timer can be reset and put to 1 minute then choose somebody's main character well... so and so logs off and for two month's and so and so logs on right after and the same guy logs on seconds after for two month's strait this goes on... your tell'n me there is no chance I cannot narrow down to someone's alt? hogwash it more than 98%.Now finding all alts yes would be a issue. But anyone can tinker with anything you both should know that. and thinking everyone is so less intelligent to figure it out your just fooling yourselves expect others to be as smart as the both.it is easy to watch a player when he or she logs out then come on right after over time you get a general idea where a person sits and who is who and now with this you just made it gift wrapped for trolls to compare it side by side and they will make good use of this information.Either slowing Peaple down during there farming or haveing multiple players set up bots on this guy because he or she is upset for some reason called a gm on him or plain killed him in pvp. knowing when a certain pvp player is online so you and your bros can get revenge and attack him from behind just because hes killed ya. im a pvp player and i did enjoy it not anymore.. i feel my game fun has been compromised for some time now caves empty now we have spy's got a time list ??from someone's pet project?? I do not think peaple quiting the game seems to be a big deal to either of you it is to me and many others and what about worse case situation?I am open to others opinions and feeling about the situation unlike what I have seen here looked like it was a veto to me or a spit in the eye at someone or it would not have been posted as quick is it was also I would have liked to have herd what platna still has to say.... regards

[Nard]

[quote="tmwTroLL007"]first its very simple elimination kinda like the green dye.If I have which I do now thank you Nardie two month's of full activeity the 5 minute timer can be reset and put to 1 minute then choose somebody's main character well... so and so logs off and for two month's and so and so logs on right after and the same guy logs on seconds after for two month's strait this goes on... your tell'n me there is no chance I cannot narrow down to someone's alt?[...]/quote]

You are perfectly right to imagine such a trial. I would check the difference of logging on and those of logging off times, now I am sure that, before you and I knew these files' existence, you (just as me) had already thought about that and took care not to connect/disconnect the alts you want to remain secret at the same time. You almost surely (just as me) also took care to play with these alts while none of your main chars were not online.

• Thus:
• the difference of connection on/off times will be almost surely non zero , and deviation will increase over time sample.
• meanwhile the mean deviation or standard deviation between the on/off times between your main and those of close friends you play with, and/or players who live in the same time zone will decrease over the time same sample.
• you need to have already an idea of which chars to compare, if not you have to compute the time cross correlation functions (mobile mean) over the whole set of players which makes N*(N-1) functions of time to compute and analyse. considering the fact that (list restricted to actual players from purge list, thus to last 6 months) about N=20,000 chars that makes 400,000,000 functions to sample over time! Most of the calculations are useless and will lead to a zero result. There are for sure means to reduce the number but anyway it will remain very high.
• chars on the same account have a zero correlation function (reciprocal is false). It becomes false as soon as you increase the sampling time range /list]
  Is the result worth the job? I don't think so. I would not do it even to get information on players who annoyed me over a long time period. And what is a troll's interest? Obviously to troll, not to perform calculations and find a way to warp them. Anyway the result could only lead you to a strong clue, not to a certitude. As I mentioned, earlier, such clues leaded elkaida, a pvp killer who doesn't like to be killed to insult-troll v0id because he thought we were the same person .
  A troll who has programming skills would spend less time to modify an existing bot to do the same job and get the same results or better.
  
  Nard

[mistergrey]

Nard, you are doing a lot of assuming there. You assume that everybody already plays very cautiously, and even what tricks they may have used to avoid their alts being detected. You assume that nobody could be bothered to get the kind of information one can gain, with work, from online logs. This is fine, but your opinions are not necessarily facts. You should try to respect that someone who is upset over an issue, will not feel very reassured by your opinion that their fears are invalid and unlikely to happen.
Many players do not play with the cautions you mentioned. Many have all the time in the world to waste on such an endeavor, if they imagined it might yield some useful results. Not to mention, if someone is using this information for trolling purposes, their target list is very much narrowed - they have only to check on the player/s they have problems with, and any suspected alts (or, perhaps players that sign in immediately after they sign off, every time). I do respect your opinions, and you do have more knowledge of this type of thing than I do - I could easily be wrong about many things, yet nobody has really said anything that makes it clear that there is nothing at all to worry about.

I did not intend to continue answering posts in here, but I don't want this ridiculous debate continuing forever until it becomes a flamewar for somebody. As far as I can see, this will only continue or escalate, with 2 sides shouting their opinions over each other, until the topic ends up locked. So, I urge you all to put yourselves in the other side's position for a moment. Those complaining, consider what good could come of keeping detailed logs, despite the worries. Also consider that the more emotionally outraged your response, the more it will push someone who disagrees to reply to you in a frustrating way. Those rejecting those complaints, please consider how you would feel if those same logs ended up causing you the problems discussed here, and perhaps how you would feel if you complained and only had people tell you how wrong you are, without ever showing more proof than an opinion. Empathy is a lot more helpful than stubborn frustration, after all .

[Nard]

Nard, you are doing a lot of assuming there. You assume that everybody already plays very cautiously, and even what tricks they may have used to avoid their alts being detected....

mrgrey I don't assume anything. I can see only 2 possibilities with my alts.

1. they are official, then I don't care they are discovered or not
2. I want to have role play with another role that I don't want to be cofused with myself such ad a nasty terranite cave killer, or a scandinavian lady who has a lot of difficulties with english, or a religious fanatic . I would then take a great care that my different roles cannot be discovered

You assume that nobody could be bothered to get the kind of information one can gain, with work, from online logs. This is fine, but your opinions are not necessarily facts. You should try to respect that someone who is upset over an issue, will not feel very reassured by your opinion that their fears are invalid and unlikely to happen.

Once again I do not assume anything,like that, and never said that. I said that there are actually other ways to do the same things faster, and with less skills and efforts.
I am sure about what I say, it is a fact that If I have skill enough to make a program to analyse these data I also have the skills to make a bot which sends the right packets to the server and retrieve the info faster than I could do with these data. You also could try to respect the knowledge I have upon data analysis. I would be totally dumb to do anything else.

I am sorry but I'll never let anyone say that these data are more dangerous for role play or privacy than the game itself, it's client, it's players, developers and administrators, or GMs. Definitively, it is not because people complain even if they were the vast majority that they are right. emotionally I am outraged by such a lack of will to see reality. I proposed solutions that could be nice compromises and it seems that they are rejected without having a deeper look upon them (except to be honest some words from you, o11c and, a forum alt) . I call this and such sentences as "without ever showing more proof than an opinion", I call that bad faith and I am surprised that you could write this mrgrey. and I totally agree with your sentence:

Also consider that the more emotionally outraged your response, the more it will push someone who disagrees to reply to you in a frustrating way.

One person made outraged answers and tried to explain me what data are while I have been teaching and practicing data analysis and statistics for over than 25 years now and that person knew it, thus I considered the answers as a troll, not as serious ones.

consider what good could come of keeping detailed logs, despite the worries.

I deeply think that these worries have no real foundation but I took them into consideration. The good? I already told what it could be for the game.

please consider how you would feel if those same logs ended up causing you the problems discussed here...

Once again I did, and proposed solutions. I even started meanwhile an analysis on part of these data and my chars to show you what I mean. Your last post shows me that I lost my time because you chose to be blind. I don't know why a heap of sand is seen as ( and became?) a mountain. I can admit that we have different conception of what is privacy but you will never be able to make me admit that fear is superior to reason.

Nard

[baedamichi]

I wonder why this is discussed with so much energy...

People upload lots of data anywhere on the web, sometimes causing reallife trouble... (e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11 ... arch&scp=3)

This here is just a game... People ideally don't use their real names here. Somebody can tell me when my CHAR (which is not me...) is online and when it's not? So what?

[Chicka-Maria]

I wonder why this is discussed with so much energy...

People upload lots of data anywhere on the web, sometimes causing reallife trouble... (e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11 ... arch&scp=3)

This here is just a game... People ideally don't use their real names here. Somebody can tell me when my CHAR (which is not me...) is online and when it's not? So what?

If you read the posts above yours you will see reasons why people don't want their character names being exposed of when they're online or not online.

Regards,

[o11c]

If you read the posts above yours you will see reasons why people don't want their character names being exposed of when they're online or not online.

Regards,

I really hate to be that guy, but I don't see it. There are many posts saying "there might be abuse" but that doesn't say how abuse might happen.

It might be a good idea to have a meeting in-game on this matter since otherwise it's just the same people arguing back and forth.

[Chicka-Maria]

If you read the posts above yours you will see reasons why people don't want their character names being exposed of when they're online or not online.

Regards,

I really hate to be that guy, but I don't see it. There are many posts saying "there might be abuse" but that doesn't say how abuse might happen.

It might be a good idea to have a meeting in-game on this matter since otherwise it's just the same people arguing back and forth.

Troll explains how pretty well, and i explained examples in my old posts.
an in game meeting would be nice it would get many opinions.

Regards,

[Crush]

The problem with chat meetings - whether ingame or on IRC - is to find a date where all important people have time. They all live in different time zones and many have other obligations like school or jobs. That's why most attempts to establish regular meetings failed in my time as a developers.

[o11c]

Troll explains how pretty well, and i explained examples in my old posts.

Nothing in tmwTroLL007's posts can be called a good explanation - a run-on paragraph of bad English. At your request, I suffered through them and think he's saying *something* about people being mad at him because of PvP, and how he doesn't want people to know who his alts are.
For alts on the same account, the game client already shows this. For alts on different accounts, these statistics will reveal nothing.
If you were running a multibot stacks, it could potentially be detected with this method, but that's against the rules anyway.

I reviewed all your posts in this thread, this is the summary:
"I don't think these statistics would be useful".
"it would encourage harassment and trolling"
"people deserve privacy"
"the statistics would show when an individual player is statistically likely to be online"
"people might stay to harass people at a specific time"

The vast majority of posts (not just yours) in this thread just say "see previous posts".

In which of these do you mention how people will harass?

The problem with chat meetings - whether ingame or on IRC - is to find a date where all important people have time. They all live in different time zones and many have other obligations like school or jobs. That's why most attempts to establish regular meetings failed in my time as a developers.

Since the goal is mostly to make people aware / see if people are aware of the debate, it would be sufficient to have a couple at wide intervals.
There's no notion of "important people" in this particular case.

[mistergrey]

o11c: Many rather specific examples have been made - if you chose to ignore them, that is your own choice.

Nard: Sorry you took that offensively, but again that is your choice. Your posts are full of "I think", "surely you do this, like I do", and other similar variations. While you are indeed someone who has knowledge in this, it does not make the worries and concerns of others invalid.

I had hoped maybe this silly cycle of players complaining, being answered with ridicule and endless statements of "explain further/give examples" without acknowledging the examples given, responding angrily, and prompting more anger from those replying.... would have ended by now. This does not encourage people to give their input, when they see peoples' concerns get shot down, and then both sides just repeat their opinions with their hands over their ears. If you cannot debate with consideration/without the determination that you are right no matter what, then your posts will only continue this, as everyone feels they are right in some way. (I do not aim this at particular players - I know I have also fallen into this pattern, and this is me ending it.)

I do not discredit the logic of those who have replied in favor of keeping online logs, only ask that you try not to make your whole argument about crushing the logic of others. Just as I ask those who oppose it to keep in mind that not everyone is disturbed by these logs, and to stay rational when posting. Nothing productive can come of this unless people stay the least bit open minded.