Adieu to lobby!

[soaling]

For two months I've joined the lobby in a daily manner but from now on I will never return. Certainly, no one will care but I’m writing this as a tribute to whom were very kind and welcoming and also to share my experience and thoughts.

 

I’m leaving over a single incident but I believe lack of proper rules and also inconstancy on applying them from mods side are issues that should be addressed in general. I used to criticize moderators for banning, kicking, muting or blacklisting users before letting them know that what they have violated. And as a principle I think if we could not communicate the rules in a proper way, we should let that person get away with it with a warning.

 

It is not a slippery slope, cherry picking written rules or make them as you go on top of your head and enforcing them arbitrarily might lead to a much more serious problem which is lack of accountability of the mods to players. I know this is an opensource community but I think revealing private information of users without their consent is one example that should not be taken lightly in any case.

 

I have never shared my geographical location with anyone at any time and consider extracting it based on the IP Address and mentioning it by @elexis in a chat that others were present was a violation of privacy and should not be tolerated.

 

This is not a rage quit (not that anyone cares!). I’m not angry with @elexis either, who does not know that apart from the fact that we all are indebted for the contributions on the source, elexis is extremely helpful on lobby. He is very polite and friendly to new players and never leaves questions answerless regardless of how nub was the question, this happened to me couple of times btw. He is also a good player and a perfect host for team games. This is his world after all

 

Anyways I will not enter the lobby after being there every single day for two months. I might have missed a day or two but you should count Christmas eve and new year’s eve doubly It was a great experience and an honour to play with great players. I’m grateful for all the help and support and I want to thank some of the players that I have played withand learned from.

 

@Hannibal_Barca played the role of master Shifu for me somehow during my first days. Putting into practice chapter VII and X of “the art of war” and having layered walls, with his unique style he is a genius for his own good

@nani is very nice beside of being a very good politician and strategist. I used to call him Chancellor Cao Cao

@BoBah_Kiev is both a perfect in war and trade. I think he let me win after losing against him for like more 20 times.

@PhyZic and the cav supremacy PhyZic is very good at fighting against multiple opponents simultaneously. very caring and patient with nubs like me

@ValihrAnt is one of the best players obviously, I’m grateful to him for bearing with my stupid nub questions about game play and answering them patiently.

@snelius was very quick and also a very polite person. Always a good experience playing with him

@Stockfish knows very good songs from old times and of course very well how to play. He is one of the best.

@thankforpie killed my entire army with just three siege towers ingenious!

i've placed Stockfish and thankforpie next to each other though i know they are not very fond of one another, hope they'll get along better in future

I have played with darkcity, D_D_T_, Cesar, randomid, Issh, shookees, Lefo, Lord_Comander, Ricsand, Ivaylo_Uzunov, Karmel and many other regular players and learned much so I’m thankful to them also.

I've played once with @borg in a team game, I was so scared that he left before I die from heart attack.

and even once with @DoctorOrgans, he was not famous for his nice attitudes but definitely it was very nice to play with him. I don't remember seeing him after that, what happened to him?

 

@fpre your fgod mod is perfect for mid-level and pro users though it might be a little confusing for new players. Thanks for that.

@Lefo, you have created scripts to design your base. I think letting players to design the order and location of buildings before the game begins is a very smart and creative way of playing.

 

Anyway, farewell and thanks for the fish

[borg-]

I hope to see you soon, tnx for hours of fun!!!

Edited January 15, 2019 by borg-

[Stan`]

11 hours ago, soaling said:

I know this is an opensource community but I think revealing private information of users without their consent is one example that should not be taken lightly in any case.

 This is indeed something that should not be taken lightly..

Unfortunately though when you join an online lobby your IP becomes public. The geographical location of it is a more tedious matter.

I understand you were disappointed by this, but I'm sure elexis didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable.

 

[thankforpie]

10 hours ago, soaling said:

@thankforpie killed my entire army with just three siege towers ingenious!

 

10 hours ago, soaling said:

I’m not angry with @elexis either ... He is also a good player

[Guest]

Since we are on the topic of privacy, can a mod delete my (-_-) account? And I guess all the other banned accounts too.

It’s literally a waste of diskspace now. I lost the hashes of the password which doesn’t seem to be the same as the one I remember typing.

[Boudica]

I've checked that we played on the same team just twice and we lost both of the games. Not sure if this is a good time to leave. 

I don't know what I should comment about the incident. I understand why you didn't like it. I don't agree with people misusing their technical knowledge of the game like that, especially when they think they are somewhat smart for doing so. Anyway, it might be good to realize that the internet is not really that anonymous as we might like. People can find information about you regardless of whether they share it or not. I'm sure that elexis wouldn't have shared this information unless it was something easily looked up by others.

Technically anyone you connect to sees an address. They can look up a geographical location for that address but that might not necessarily even match where you are located physically. Other than not being necessarily accurate, how specific is that piece of information? We could probably assume that you are a human from the planet Earth to begin with. But we can target you much more accurately just by noticing that you have an internet access and can speak good English. Revealing your country can reduce the possibilities to a few million people, but that's still many more that anyone of us can even meet during their life.

I think that starting this thread was a good idea to help target the issue of privacy. I'd probably reconsider giving up on the game completely if that is a reason for you to do so. Anyway, I'll leave that up to you. Thanks for the games we played together.

[Guest]

(I trust the people I play with to not come over and kill my dog)

[sarcoma]

There's a geolocation where the server asks the client for permission to get GPS coordinates and there's another based on public lists of ip ranges assigned to ISPs. The latter was used, the one Boudica talks about, and it's not hard for anyone to get that info since we share IPs when we connect anywhere. That said it's not right to share with others.

[Imarok]

If you don't want that people can get a rough estimate where you come from by looking up the Geolocation of your IP, you should only interact with the web and games via VPN. (I also hope you don't use any social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever. (Besides Mastodon and such))

But sure nobody should reveal information about anyone without consent. (Even if the information is some kind of accessible to all)

[Stockfish]

Bye, have fun in your life and enjoy

I hope you can regress here, farewell

[Diatryma]

On 1/15/2019 at 4:08 AM, thankforpie said:

I’m not angry with @elexis either ... He is also a good player