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Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 7:20 am
by Wartorn
I have no idea what we're doing with this yet.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 7:22 am
by Dark-Assassin
I think it's fine.
Although not sure to leave the bans to the community and leave the master for the most annoying or not.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 7:28 am
by Wartorn
Yeah personally I'm a proponent of letting hosts own their property. I say let them opt out of the banlist if they want to, as long as they make sure to clean up their own shit. It won't be our fault if hosts don't take care of their own property.

We can still run a master banlist enabled by default, just let them do their own thing if they think they're a bad enough dude for it.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 9:46 am
by Torr Samaho
Wartorn wrote: Yeah personally I'm a proponent of letting hosts own their property. I say let them opt out of the banlist if they want to, as long as they make sure to clean up their own shit. It won't be our fault if hosts don't take care of their own property.
Now that we are open source there is no feasible way to prevent servers from opting out of the master banlist anyway (which IMHO is good since I never liked the idea to enforce the banlist).

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 10:34 am
by Konar6
Personally I'm not that fond of discontinuing the master banlist enforcement since this will bring known hackers back onto public servers, but if Torr Samaho wants it, we should abide. Just be aware of the consequences. It's right however that it's perfectly possible to make a server not accept the banlist right now anyway.


EDIT: But will the master send the server list to banned players too? Because it would be contraproductive if not. When I opt out of the master banlist, I want players to receive the server list even if they are master-banned (innocents caught in IP ranges).

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 10:41 am
by Dusk
Konar6 wrote: Personally I'm not that fond of discontinuing the master banlist enforcement since this will bring known hackers back onto public servers, but if Torr Samaho wants it, we should abide. Just be aware of the consequences. It's right however that it's perfectly possible to make a server not accept the banlist right now anyway.
I personally don't think this would result in cheaters everywhere. Most server hosts will probably continue to enable the master banlist, and those who opt out risk of of getting the stigma of "hacker harbors" if they don't keep cheaters out.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 10:51 am
by Konar6
I never said it will scatter cheaters "everywhere". But they can host their own servers too (which is what one known hacker, Tenchu, is about to do). And as we could see around, our players don't really know/care who they play with (the IDL community has cheaters who are banned on ST, Reck was happily playing private CTF on NJ without anyone caring etc.) The stigma of "hacker harbors" is a myth.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 11:46 am
by Torr Samaho
Konar6 wrote: Personally I'm not that fond of discontinuing the master banlist enforcement since this will bring known hackers back onto public servers, but if Torr Samaho wants it, we should abide.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not intending to enforce my views onto anybody. My intention was to point out that the whole mechanism got technically pointless now that the source is open. The master can't check whether a server is really enforcing the banlist or not. It relies on the server to report whether the banlist is used to the master. And you can easily manipulate the source of the server to let it lie about the enforcement. The whole default behavior (banlist is enforced by default) can stay as it is, but you technically won't be able to prevent servers from opting out.
Konar6 wrote: EDIT: But will the master send the server list to banned players too? Because it would be contraproductive if not. When I opt out of the master banlist, I want players to receive the server list even if they are master-banned (innocents caught in IP ranges).
The master doesn't send the banlist to players only to servers. IIRC it doesn't add servers on banned IPs to the server list, so those servers also won't get the banlist.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 6:05 pm
by Zap610
It's not like people actually want to play with cheaters, plus people who cheat will have a bad reputation which unlike a year long ban never ends. Plus it makes it so much easier for us.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 12:09 pm
by AlexMax
I am still a fan of replacing the master banlist with sv_externalbanfile in the long-term, so server hosts or others can share their own lists of cheaters instead of having to be reliant on the master list admins to update things.

Having a Zandronum-maintained list is still a good idea and be pointed to by default. It just shouldn't be the only option.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 5:48 pm
by Wartorn
Yeah I'm pretty much on board with that.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 8:56 am
by infurnus
Going to paste a conversation from #Staff with a player here if you guys don't mind:

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[01:16:39] * Steve (~Steve@d173-180-149-225.bchsia.telus.net) has joined #Staff
[01:18:41] <Steve> Hi, My IP has been range banned, My IP is dynamic and a specific IP unban really won't help me for more than half a day, I've been trying to get help from you guys for weeks now, This is really starting to get annoying
[01:20:38] <Steve> Since I'm going to get autokicked for idling after three hours of no response, I would really like it if one of you got around to unbanning the 173.180... range, Banning an entire ISP that makes up half of Canada is just stupid.
[01:37:53] <infurnus> hi Steve
[01:37:58] <Steve> Hi
[01:40:11] <infurnus> sorry that you got caught in such a wide ban range
[01:40:36] <infurnus> I'm not a master server admin so I can't undo that, but I'll let the staff know
[01:40:42] <Steve> Thank you very much
[01:40:50] <infurnus> we've been thinking of changing the way the master server is handled lately
[01:41:02] <infurnus> we're transitioning it to another server so it might be time to make some changes for the better
[01:41:14] <infurnus> not sure when that will happen though, maybe soon
[01:41:20] <Steve> I'm sure that would be welcomed by many people
[01:41:36] <infurnus> we were thinking about making master server banlists optional, but maybe enabled by default
[01:42:31] <infurnus> the way it currently works, for example, if someone that is banned hosts a server on their PC, that server won't be able to read the master ban list due to being banned, and due to not using the master ban list, won't show up on the server list
[01:42:56] <infurnus> hopefully a better method will be employed in the future
[01:44:47] <infurnus> I'm not sure if someone doing that is notified and made aware of when that happens, so people could be hosting servers and we wouldn't know because they are caught in a range ban
[01:52:03] * Steve (~Steve@d173-180-149-225.bchsia.telus.net) Quit ("Doomseeker End Of Line")
[01:52:12] <infurnus> :(
The new policy would help fix this, right?

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 5:49 pm
by Torr Samaho

Code: Select all

[01:42:31] <infurnus> the way it currently works, for example, if someone that is banned hosts a server on their PC, that server won't be able to read the master ban list due to being banned, and due to not using the master ban list, won't show up on the server list
I think you misunderstood how the bans are working on the master: The master is not accepting anything from a banned IP, that's why a server with a banned IP is not listed. It has nothing to do with the fact that this server doesn't get the banlist.

Do we really want banned people to host? For this we would need to create two banlists, banned players and banned hosts, but I don't think that this makes much sense. People are only master banned for serious offenses. In other words, you don't trust them to behave decently as player, but you would trust the same person to behave decently as host?

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 6:01 pm
by infurnus
Torr Samaho wrote: I think you misunderstood how the bans are working on the master: The master is not accepting anything from a banned IP, that's why a server with a banned IP is not listed. It has nothing to do with the fact that this server doesn't get the banlist.
That's basically what I meant, I just explained it in an arbitrarily long way to get my point across. I might have mentioned the banlist retrieval because that might be how other banlists worked from my memory, I'm not sure. But yes, that's basically what I was trying to go for.
Torr Samaho wrote: Do we really want banned people to host? For this we would need to create two banlists, banned players and banned hosts, but I don't think that this makes much sense. People are only master banned for serious offenses.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
I'm not asking for banned players to be able to host. I'm pointing out that it's a problem when people are caught in a ban range, my example was if someone tries to host we have no clue they are even hosting servers because the master refuses access.
Torr Samaho wrote: In other words, you don't trust them to behave decently as player, but you would trust the same person to behave decently as host?
No. That is not my point at all.

Even if I did want "cheaters" hosting servers, I would be okay with Tenchu hosting servers for example.
I'm not really a big fan of No True Scotsman arguments about cheaters with regards to them all being objectively bad and thus anything to do with even the perceived lenience towards cheaters also being seen as bad by association.

I'm not asking for a problem solution or proposing a solution, I was asking if things like that would die down after we end up doing whatever we're doing with the master server policy reforms. I'm still clueless as to what would happen to people like Steve in the future

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 6:27 pm
by Torr Samaho
infurnus wrote: I'm not asking for a problem solution or proposing a solution, I was asking if things like that would die down after we end up doing whatever we're doing with the master server policy reforms. I'm still clueless as to what would happen to people like Steve in the future
Ah, I see now. Well, as long as range bans are used, innocent people will get caught in range bans.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 8:40 pm
by TIHan
I think the range bans need to be cut. It looks bad on us when we are trying to get more players interested only to find out their IP was banned.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 9:28 pm
by Dark-Assassin
Then are you prepared to have about 4663865 single bans on 1 person?

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:07 pm
by Metal
-=Dark-Assassin=- wrote: Then are you prepared to have about 4663865 single bans on 1 person?
This.

Give us an alternative to banning by IP, and this won't be a problem. Until then we have to make do with what we have.

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:30 pm
by TIHan
Metal wrote:Give us an alternative to banning by IP, and this won't be a problem. Until then we have to make do with what we have.
What other alternative is there? The only way to circumvent the issue is to do only 1 IP ban per player. We are taking a risk by allowing a range, especially if we are trying to attract new players. If there are troubling players, it needs to be up to the server admins to take care of those issues.

If in the future we get thousands of players, how well will the current system work?

RE: Master Policy Reforms

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2012 11:19 pm
by Metal
TIHan wrote:
Metal wrote:Give us an alternative to banning by IP, and this won't be a problem. Until then we have to make do with what we have.
What other alternative is there? The only way to circumvent the issue is to do only 1 IP ban per player. We are taking a risk by allowing a range, especially if we are trying to attract new players. If there are troubling players, it needs to be up to the server admins to take care of those issues.

If in the future we get thousands of players, how well will the current system work?
Terribly. It's not working to hot now. We ban 1 person by IP, let's say full ip, within an hour they can change it and come back. And the cycle continues. We ban dynamic IP's, we ban a lot of people but it gets rid of the person who was troublesome to begin with, but we can whitelist IP's. It's lose-lose either way. I'd suggest an account system. imo, that might make things easier.