New Hub Authentication in BYOND Discussion

ID:133241
 
Jan 13 2009, 11:06 pm (Edited on Jan 13 2009, 11:15 pm)
Since the main reason for letting all the rips fester and grow on BYOND seems to be the lack of staff and/or the large amount of effort it would take from the staff to delete them, how about this:

When a new hub entry is created it as marked as un-authenticated. It will still have full functionality like it does now, but admins will be able to browse the hub for un-authenticated games, check them out, and if they're a rip they can force-hide the hub entry. If its not a rip, they can simply authenticate the game which will prevent other admins from having to review its content.

Once a hub entry is hidden in this manner, the account/key which created the hub will have any new entries it creates start out in forced-hidden mode, requiring the authentication of a staff member before they will even be allowed to broadcast to the hub, of course this could be easily avoidable by them simply creating a new key.
Staff will of course need to be able to search for new hub entries that were force-hidden by default if this is used as well. Or some message could be posted on the hub entry edit page that instructs them they'll need to file a formal request if they want their new hub to be visible, using an actual form from the hub so they can only file one.

All currently existing hubs would be marked as un-authenticated so staff can go back to review them, possibly even with a 3rd, back-marked, setting so staff know the hub was created before this system's implementation.

I figure this method should be somewhat simple to implement and use, and would allow for even a small amount of busy staff to slowly weed out the weeds. They can just check into a few hub entries whenever they're bored and/or have free time... or are just in the mood to destroy some rips.


Hiding the hub entries could just prevent them from being displayed in normal hub queries, but still allow them to function when being directly linked to. This way anyone who wants to create a rip for whatever reason can still advertise it to their friends.

EDIT: Also when this is done the creator should receive some sort of notification: pager, email, a message on the hub edit page, etc. Just as long as they know what happened and why.
#1 Jan 13 2009, 11:22 pm
To me, the issue boils down to, how do these rips influence our site, and is it really a problem?

The hub is basically an open directory, with various methods of displaying the data. The most popular methods (as determined by our site stats) are via the guild game listings, particular the "all games" link from the menubar (http://www.byond.com/games/ and http://www.byond.com/members/?command=search&type=games). Just eyeballing these, they show a decent representation of the community, and logically so, since these are the games voted on by our members. I like this system because it doesn't require intervention on our end.

As far as I can tell, the main place the rips show up is in the general search query (searching for a particular title), and while we could work on that, I don't see it is a big deal. Certainly rips are accessible via the hub and pager but they are not exposed to the general public unless their friends are playing them... and they will get that traffic regardless.
#2 Jan 14 2009, 12:55 am (Edited on Jan 14 2009, 5:55 am)
In response to Tom (#1)
How are votes weighted?

and: http://www.byond.com/ members/?command=search&type=games&sort=live&live=1
Page 1 is only about 20% rips, by page 2 that number doubles, beyond page 3 its 50+% rips per page
#3 Jan 14 2009, 7:28 am
In response to Falacy (#2)
Since you're looking at the live sort there, the results you get will always be in order of the number of players in each game. That may show a lot of rips, but basically all it's telling you is which games are being most played right now. Since rips come and go though I don't think that's too much of a problem. The live sort won't tell you anything about the long-term popularity of a game, just the short-term popularity--and that'll include test servers, alpha versions, etc.

The default Popularity sort order takes overall BYOND rank into account, and whether the game is a favorite in one of our banner guilds. The number of rips on the first few pages is thus much lower there. If you look at only live games in order of popularity (which would just mean changing the sort order for the search you were already using), I think you'll see a much better list.

Lummox JR
#4 Jan 14 2009, 8:20 am
In response to Lummox JR (#3)
Lummox JR wrote:
The default Popularity sort order takes overall BYOND rank into account, and whether the game is a favorite in one of our banner guilds. The number of rips on the first few pages is thus much lower there. If you look at only live games in order of popularity (which would just mean changing the sort order for the search you were already using), I think you'll see a much better list.

With that sort method (showing live games only, sorted by popularity) the first page only had 1 rip, but the 2nd had 10, and the 3rd had 20. Granted these are just estimations, assuming any DBZ/Naruto/Bleach games I've never seen are rips.