Fixing Account Creation?

AlanD · **Posted:** Wed Feb 01, 2017 12:37 am

I think that Cyan's policy with MOULa is along the lines of keep it open as long as it does not become an expensive time-sink. Dealing with malcontents takes time and effort and is not worth the grief To Cyan at this stage. Any solution should need little continuing effort from Cyan, which is why any kind of payment/registration fee is deprecated - too much administration, and lots more legal hoops to jump through. Even tying account holders to some kind of personal information (phone numbers, paypal accounts etc) gives them the headache of storing those details securely and checking every new account request.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think enhanced 'ignore' is the closest I've seen to one so far. Proactive troll identification/lockout is almost The Holy Grail of all internet communities, and I've not seen anyone get close to it yet.

Tai'lahr · **Posted:** Wed Feb 01, 2017 2:32 pm

All trolls and griefers want is attention and they see every roadblock as a challenge to overcome. That's just feeding them.

I firmly believe that if we took all the resources used to fight illegal drugs and poured it into medical care, rehabilitation, therapy and education, the market would simply dry up and go away (and sales of liquor and some prescription drugs would probably drop as well).

If you use this as a metaphor and can redirect your efforts to convincing all players to simply ignore griefers - and I don't mean just using an ignore function, but leaving the area and taking their activities to a private area (and that it's even worth logging out if necessary), you remove the audience for the griefers and they'll get bored and go away.

HarveyMidnight · **Joined:** Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:59 pm **Posts:** 432

Yeah, I mean.. fact is, Uru isn't a game where you can be killed for items in your inventory.

I understand the issue of a griefer saying reactionary things.. the last complaint I made, was about a griefer playing overloud-distorted music thru voice-chat.. something that, admittedly, I didn't even hear once I put him on ignore.

Someone please educate me... I'm sure there are "issues" with hackers and Uru being open-source-- but apart from that--- what exactly can any griefer 'do' that wouldn't be silenced on an individual basis, by the use of the "ignore" feature?

AdamJohnso · **Posted:** Thu Feb 02, 2017 1:54 am

I can think of a few things... :twisted:

Marten · **Posted:** Thu Feb 02, 2017 5:15 am

Stone. wrote:

With Google Voice, you get a free phone number for calls, text messages,…
https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115061

Telegram doesn't allow users to sign up using Google Voice numbers, so it seems there's a way to determine if someone is on a free phone number. Not sure how they do it.

Karkadann wrote:

Click ignore and it not only makes the troll disappear it makes you disappear to the troll. If the troll is a problem for everyone, everyone puts the troll on ignore and everywhere the troll go's is empty.

I feel it's unwise to give a griefer any clue that they've been ignored. The longer they're deluded into thinking they're having an effect (when they're not), then the longer peace you have before the griefer creates a new account and becomes a nuisance again.

It's really not hard to log into MOULa twice at the same time, with characters on two separate accounts, and that's exactly what a determined griefer will do with a bidirectional ignore system. They'll bring both avatars to the same area, grief with one, and monitor with the other. When the griefer-avvie sees an empty world and the monitoring-avvie sees a population, they know it's time to create a new griefing account.

Karkadann · **Posted:** Thu Feb 02, 2017 7:37 am

Marten wrote:

I feel it's unwise to give a griefer any clue that they've been ignored. The longer they're deluded into thinking they're having an effect (when they're not), then the longer peace you have before the griefer creates a new account and becomes a nuisance again.

It's really not hard to log into MOULa twice at the same time, with characters on two separate accounts, and that's exactly what a determined griefer will do with a bidirectional ignore system. They'll bring both avatars to the same area, grief with one, and monitor with the other. When the griefer-avvie sees an empty world and the monitoring-avvie sees a population, they know it's time to create a new griefing account.

Why the h-ll would somebody go threw all that trouble just to be a schmuck

KathAveara · **Posted:** Thu Feb 02, 2017 10:03 am

Same reason they do it in the first place.

AlanD · **Posted:** Fri Feb 03, 2017 12:39 am

Eh. Trolls and griefers are looking for attention and find that being obnoxious gets them the attention they crave. It's not normal. But Cyan want the cavern to be family-friendly, which gives the griefer an edge to exploit - being foul-mouthed or just crude.

Karkadann · **Posted:** Fri Feb 03, 2017 7:48 am

wanting attention is not all that unusual but when all you know how to do is get negative attention, hmmm.

has any body ever heard the expression "killing them with kindness" if its just attention they crave, that's one thing however if its negative attention they crave killing them with kindness might actually send there mind into the mental equivalent of blue screen, being unable to figure out why no one is treating me like they usually do. It might be like a hard drive looking for a file that isn't there.

Again feeding there cravings just makes them come back for more, they crave black give them white
they crave hot give them cold, if you sour the milk they should eventually stop suckling.

Edit to add
yes I have taken into consideration that the trolls might be reading this post, as I have threw out this thread, and others

HarveyMidnight · **Joined:** Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:59 pm **Posts:** 432

What about the inclusion of a 'group ignore', in place of a kick?

From prior posts. .the biggest issue with a kick is that it's too easy for a griefer to exploit it and kick out innocent users. And the biggest issue with ignore is it's too personal-- the one person who uses it, no longer hears from the griefer, but new users will still see the griefer and be victimized.

So what about a 'group ignore', that works like this: If a griefer ends up on the ignore list of X number of explorers--- that griefer is literally "put on ignore" game-wide, so nobody-- new explorers, what-have-you--- can see his text nor hear his voice chat.

BUT... With some qualifiers:

*Anyone who has the griefer on buddy list will still see his text, etc...
*And the griefer will NOT be notified when he ends up on the "group ignore" list. And if his buddies don't realize it's happened, either.. well, that griefer might go WEEKS before he realizes he's been group-ignored.

Seems like this allows the democratic process of putting griefers on a sort of ban... while sidestepping the issues of individual ignore and the kick: New users won't even hear from the griefer, because his rudeness would already be blocked--- also, if a griefer abuses the group-ignore and puts someone innocent on the list, that innocent person can still chat with all his buddies.

ONE more idea I had, was a "Cleft Duty" requirement. Require all new avatars to complete the Cleft within 15 days of being created, or their entire account will be deleted. These griefers who make dozens of avatars-- do they really have the patience to complete the Cleft dozens of times, to keep all their accounts active?

J'ffrey · **Joined:** Fri Sep 15, 2006 1:40 am **Posts:** 559

Are griefers really a big problem in the cavern? I can't say that I have had any run ins with one. Maybe I am not in that much or at the right times.

Doobes2 · **Posted:** Sat Feb 04, 2017 4:46 pm

J'ffrey wrote:

Are griefers really a big problem in the cavern? I can't say that I have had any run ins with one. Maybe I am not in that much or at the right times.

It's one of those things that's not very prevalent, but when it DOES happen, it can be quite aggravating, especially for those who are personally attacked by these mouth-breathers.

Plus, as was mentioned before, kids could be playing this game, and we'd rather they not be exposed to the...er..."less sociable" elements of the internet on this game if it can be helped.

In any case, something needs to happen, and again, it needs to come from Cyan, whether it be an explanation of what they need added or fixed to reactivate account creation or, at the very least, an estimated time of when they plan to turn it back on.

Karkadann · **Posted:** Sat Feb 04, 2017 7:27 pm

All these idea's are great and will work on some level; however the code for enhanced /ignore function all ready exist. Perhaps we can work on getting this one installed and beta tested on one of the open source shards first, get all the remaining bugs worked out (if any) while while somebody start writing the code for the other idea's as a back up.

In the mean time I think the best thing to do to avoid the trolls is to create a new Bevin (which includes a D'ni for the Bevin members) keep it private and send all your buddies an invitation. An avoidance strategy may work as a temporary fix.

as they say "there's more then one way to skin a cat troll"
some times the best way to deal with a troll is to learn to think like them, find out what makes them tick

"If you know your troll and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred chats"
Sun Tzu visits Uru :shock:

Karkadann · **Posted:** Fri Feb 10, 2017 5:07 pm

VI,23

Rudolfson · **Posted:** Tue Feb 14, 2017 7:05 pm

I tried desperately to find an answer to the status of account creation. What has griefing to do with that?

Fixing Account Creation?

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