Enhancement request

[pmfp]

Originally posted by Auritania
Everyone would automatically be anonymous and unique.

I've said my opinion already. I would, however, like to point out that you're not anonymous if you're unique.

pmfp sends

[Auritania]

Originally posted by pmfp


I've said my opinion already. I would, however, like to point out that you're not anonymous if you're unique.

pmfp sends

So that means by being identifiable I am identified?

[runestar]

Well, the problem is, if you have 250 "Anonymous" people... you may end with just one "Anonymous" on 3rd party stat charts.

And you're still not identifiable because there is still no way to link the public handle to the account short of hacking into the DF servers, which is going to sound really good in court. "We hacked into someone else's servers so we could find out who was running non-authorized software on our machines..."

You're not being identified... you are simply a random anon handle... its like a poll... they don't say so and so at such and such resident reported this. Its reponsdee # xqyz3489 gave these responses.

All things considered, if someone wanted privacy, they shouldn't be running these projects anyways because there is a certain amount of information that is requested to be given in the first place.

Actually, the name should be the least of people who want to run D.C. clients anonymously on work machines. There are things such as loggers and network logs that could more quickly track you down.

Just some more random thoughts...

RS½

[Paratima]

Originally posted by Scoofy12
no, i think that woudl be "nonymous" or maybe "onymous"

Scoofy wins the wordsmithing prize!

The word derives from Latin "an" + "onymous" = "not named" or simply, "unnamed".

The opposite, of course, would be "named" or "known".

[pmfp]

Originally posted by Auritania


So that means by being identifiable I am identified?

No, obviously not. You need somebody to be searching for you first, but the statement still stands:
if you are unique, you can be found. Of course one can be found even if you're not special too, but the odds are better, and more based on factors outside of oneself. This is not limited to DF, rather not directly connected to it.

You guys have been pretty much correct, I've been overreacting a BIT. Force of habit.

pmfp sends

[runestar]

Since it says Enhancement Request and to lighten things up a bit...


What if it glowed in the dark?

RS½

[MAD-ness]

Great news!

I am no coder, but I have spent quite a few hours sitting around trying to figure out how to deal with user records without having a unique identifier and it is pretty rough. While the macnn guys seem to do well with it, I don't know how they did it or how accurate it is (though it is definitely better than I have seen elsewhere).

Anyways, another good enhancement to the project that should pay longterm dividends.

[Brian the Fist]

First just a minor correction. When you first sign up, your username is 'None' as opposed to Blank. So 3rd party stats guys: ignore anyone whose username is 'None'.

When I say ignore, I suggest that means totally ignore, like they don't exist (except for computing aggregate team totals, etc). The important thing as methioned above is they don't draw attention to themselves, so they should not appear on individual stats, except on the main web site where they will appear on their team page, and in the top 10 is they make it that far.

I will not list the top UID on the top 10 page or the graphical stats pages, only on the text pages that eventually get parsed by the stats keepers. And I think I will print a UID of ZERO for anyone with username 'None' to enforce this in fact (but they'll still have a real UID which will appear if they change usernames), I think this will allow users to keep their anonymity complete, by default.
So assume this is now an official decision, subject to any strong objections you may have that I may have not thought about...

[Auritania]

Originally posted by Brian the Fist
First just a minor correction. When you first sign up, your username is 'None' as opposed to Blank. So 3rd party stats guys: ignore anyone whose username is 'None'.

When I say ignore, I suggest that means totally ignore, like they don't exist (except for computing aggregate team totals, etc). The important thing as methioned above is they don't draw attention to themselves, so they should not appear on individual stats, except on the main web site where they will appear on their team page, and in the top 10 is they make it that far.

I will not list the top UID on the top 10 page or the graphical stats pages, only on the text pages that eventually get parsed by the stats keepers. And I think I will print a UID of ZERO for anyone with username 'None' to enforce this in fact (but they'll still have a real UID which will appear if they change usernames), I think this will allow users to keep their anonymity complete, by default.
So assume this is now an official decision, subject to any strong objections you may have that I may have not thought about...

Why am I feeling like we took 3 steps forward and 2 steps back? What it ultimately means is that anyone that wants to remain anonymous will be penalized for that by being excuded from any sort of advanced statistics. You don't need a unique ID field at all if the None accounts are to be excluded. If that is the official word then so be it.

Signing off............

[Brian the Fist]

That is really up to the stats keepers but the whole point of anonymity as we already discussed is you will not have your detailed stats tracked over time, and keep a low profile. Its not penalization; simply if you eant to be tracked you shouldnt be anonymous, which is intuitive to me anyways.

To the stats keepers - assume the format of the text file will remain the same except the UID column (a number, no commas) will be inserted between rank and username on the text team pages. The star for the team leader will still precede the username and thus come after the UID number. And it will be zero if the user is None.

[Dyyryath]

Thanks, Howard, that works for me.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by Brian the Fist
That is really up to the stats keepers but the whole point of anonymity as we already discussed is you will not have your detailed stats tracked over time, and keep a low profile. Its not penalization; simply if you eant to be tracked you shouldnt be anonymous, which is intuitive to me anyways.

To the stats keepers - assume the format of the text file will remain the same except the UID column (a number, no commas) will be inserted between rank and username on the text team pages. The star for the team leader will still precede the username and thus come after the UID number. And it will be zero if the user is None.

Anonymity is already there. Your username has no link to your real name. That's the anonymity.

If a user doesn't want to be tracked, they can either not do the project, or not be on a team. Plain and simple.

The purpose of my team's stats is to track our team in exquisite detail. If anyone on our team doesn't like that, they know how to leave the team.

That's my stance. I'll talk it over with reader50 tonight (he actually makes the stats) to see what he says.

--Scott

[pointwood]

Hmm...you shouldn't join af team if you don't want to be tracked.

Basically, if something shouldn't be tracked, then it shouldn't be in the official stats. It's the best way to do it IMHO. The other way will not provide the user with that privacy anyway, since it only takes one person to create some stats that do track it and you certainly can't be sure that every person that creates some stats, will see your request about what to track.

However, if you don't enter any username, organisation and so on, then I can't see what's the problem - nobody will ever be able to know who you are.

If you want complete anonymity, then you probably shouldn't/wouldn't join at all.

[reader50]

My own opinion is that we are providing stats services (entertainment really) to anyone who wishes to join our team. As such, it's imperative that our team have better / more accurate stats than any other team, as a recruiting advantage. This is the reason I'm going to be losing days of sleep in the coming months to stay ahead of Statsman and Dyy.

Removing stats services for members of our team who do not wish to declare themselves is .... well, cruel. Stand up and be counted, or we will pretend you are not here.

Our stats actually parse from the html pages, I had not gotten around to switching to the text versions yet, even though that would slightly reduce server load. If the project is going to supply unreliable UIDs, then I'll have to stick with our internal ones. We already have very close to 100% match accuracy, with a few more error traps and a manual edit option, we should reach 100%.

I'd rather leave the funny book keeping to government budgeting.

Note, we do not identify who anonymous users are. We just provide a consistent name and number for them to check their production against others ... if they wish to. To actually print who they are or where they live, I would have to admit hacking into the project servers last month for that data. Naturally, I ... um, would not know anything about that.

[Ody]

I think I need to agree with the last few people. If you want to remain anonymous, then don't join a team, don't use a name that would identify yourself, or don't do the project. Some people don't want to put in a name, and just because of that now they can't get cool 3rd party stats...

[runestar]

Actually, there is a way to join a team and retain a certain anonymity... if the team doesn't have one, create a generic team account user that anyone can contribute too. This is especially good for those that want to participate in the project but aren't particularly concerned about the stats.

Best,

RuneStar½

P.S. I think the main concern

[reader50]

Upon further thought, Team MacNN withdraws all objections to the proposed UID methods.

[Auritania]

Originally posted by reader50
Upon further thought, Team MacNN withdraws all objections to the proposed UID methods.

Makes sense. Remove all the accounts that cause problems. There are only about 5 accounts on your team you have to start ignoring and not display or track. TSF will be reduced by 80 accounts and I haven't looked at the other teams. Thing is.... won't it make your stats less complete than they are now, being required to ignore all the accounts with None? There will be quite a bit of production you won't be able to track in detail. If you are happy with less that's ok too.

[Brian the Fist]

Ok, well if you are talking about your particular team's stats that you are tracking then by all means go ahead and do it in gory detail, Im more concerned about the 'None' users that are not on a team. Anyways, Ill leave it at zero uid for 'None' users for now and if this causes great problems let me know, it can easily be altered.

For those of you who do not know, do NOT parse individual HTML team pages. There is a 'secret' file (oops) called 'teampages.tar.gz' which is created with the stats every 10 minutes and contains all the text stats pages in it. So just grab this ONE file and it has everything you need in it and saves everybody some bandwidth.

[pointwood]

So, all users on team that haven't entered a username (the "None" users), will not have a unique id?

If that is true, what happens if I later remove my username?

[Auritania]

Originally posted by Brian the Fist
Ok, well if you are talking about your particular team's stats that you are tracking then by all means go ahead and do it in gory detail, Im more concerned about the 'None' users that are not on a team. Anyways, Ill leave it at zero uid for 'None' users for now and if this causes great problems let me know, it can easily be altered.

Then how about displaying the unique ID field for the None users that are on a team? That would seem to be a fair compromise. Those users did, in some way, request to be somehow identified when joining a team. The None users not on a team can have a hidden ID.

[pmfp]

Um, I don't know how some here are thinking, but this is my POV:
If you want anonymity (sp?) to the degree of not attracting attention for creating many structures (e.g.), then you would NOT join a team anyway.
If somebody wants to be on a team but still remain "somewhat anonymous", then they can just change their username to some random numbers and/or letters, or whatever they favor.

Howard, thumbs up.

pmfp sends

[Auritania]

Howard:

Thank you for the UID in the teams.