So, without further ado, here is my complaint and how it could possibly be beneficial with some security measures in place.
Why do I want to use this?
In my utility, BYOND Hosting/Shell Server, there are quite a few people on there who have yet to sign in again after receiving their hosting privileged. In time it will create a clutter in the save file and I'd like to reduce that while also warning them.
Sending out a pager to a mass amount of people after a weeks time of absence and inactivity would allow me to tell people "You have [#] days left to sign on to [byond://link] to keep your hosting." so they won't have to reapply if they ever so happen to log on again.
Why would you want to use this?
Well, after doing some research on SendPage() and peoples previous posts I came across something peculiar. A referral option. You can read up more about it here. I'm sure that would come in handy for influencing your players to advertise.
I also came across another post that would be beneficial for those wanting to do bug reports or contacting an admin. As I read through that post I came across some problems where if it were to be abused that it could cause some stress for BYOND.
What can be done to prevent any problems?
Well, there's a lot of things as it seems that any person with some knowledge can already abuse it. I don't see anywhere in the reference saying there is a limit on how many people you can page. Nor do I see a limit on how fast you can page. You now have two things down. But this is only for the pager.
So, to make it as safe for BYOND as possible here are some safety measures that will be updated if anyone posts something beneficial to add to it:
- Limit pages to 10 people (50 for BYOND Members)
- Limit the wait time between both pages(each recipient) and mass pages. How long? As long as needed to keep things nice and smooth.
- For e-mails, be a lot stricter on the limits presented above.
- A "Ignore Mass Pages" check box available to all users along with the old prompt.
- Developers should be able to prompt users if they want to join a pager list
Supporters:
Since I want this to be more of a petition topic since the feature is already in BYOND, this will be a spot for those who have posted below to support and what their reason was for supporting.
1. Rushnut "It's been discussed 9001 times, that alone should be enough reason to give this some more serious thought.
As far as I can tell, if done right there's little to no downsides, all aboard the pager train choochoo."
2. Jittai "Sounds good. We're kind of stuck using the pager system (for better or for worse) it might as well have more functionality with DM."
3. FIREking "I think this is feasible and not a bad suggestion by any means. The only additional feature that would have to come along with this is an available option to all users: "Prevent games from automatically sending pages on my behalf" (in addition to the old prompt) and you're good to go!"
4. MasterSpectra "I don't see why they even removed it, it could be a perfect way to, for example, message a certain, set group of people with information such as "Your host service is going offline for X time" etc. Well, I hope it gets implemented again."
5. Wissam "+1"
6. Holycalvin "SendPage if it were working would change my life. With sendpage I would be that one guy that was special and actually had value in the world. I demand that sendpage has its functionality and becomes the best proc in the world like it should be."
7. Eternal_Memories "It would be really nice.
Think about it, some game owners could use it to send themselves pagers when important changes happen. The problem comes with the responsability of each person.
If a programmer tries to send pagers to players for something which could annoy them, you should get the option of ignoring the pages of that game. Maybe adding a new var which can only be changed on the source so you agree on using some functions which have to be accepted by the player when he joins the game, or something like that.
I really think it would be a huge improvement to BYOND, the HUB is great, but I think we should also get the option of sending players pagers related to the game when needed, or even ourselves if we are offline and some event has happened.
Edit: I am not talking about the previous SendPage proc, it was useless imo, you had to accept every single alert when you tried to page someone."
8. Appelstroop "Hmm I fully support this,it should help out the community and byond as a whole quite a bit"
Thanks for supporting! :)
As far as I can tell, if done right there's little to no downsides, all aboard the pager train choochoo.