RTB Dedicated Hosting Service - Service Closing

[Ephialtes]

Err, console access sounds like it can be pretty disastrous in the hands of someone who gave you a reason to take it away from them in the first place, even if it's just until they feel like reloading the page. Is there any way to deal with cases like that when they do happen?

It's the same case as changing the FTP password - it's not going to disconnect everyone from the FTP server and there's plenty of ruination to be done with that kind of access. Honestly it's an edge case that would require so much work to "resolve" it's just not going to deliver any appreciable value for the days of time I'd have to pour into it. I would suggest two things:

1. Make sure you only give console access to people you trust entirely.
2. Shut down your server after revoking console access to control damage.

[Ad Bot]

[Ephialtes]

I thought I'd mention a few relatively small changes to the site.

• Avatars are being re-processed to facilitate a new feature we're working on. Your avatar will regenerate next time you open Blockland.
• You can now change your account password and email via the Account Settings page on the site.

That's really all there is besides some additional stability and monitoring changes. In the next couple of weeks I'm going to be looking at refactoring a lot of the code and file structure on our nodes for increased resilience and fault tolerance. Those changes shouldn't really affect anyone but if there's any user impact I'll be sure to post here beforehand.

We're currently focused quite hard on the new mobile site which is coming together really well. There should be some good stuff to show you guys soon.

[Ephialtes]

So we have a cool new feature we're developing at the moment and it'd be great to get some feedback from you guys.

The feature is a method of allowing the players on your server to "page" an Administrator. Essentially what it will do is send a message via RTB Connect to all of the people on your server's auto admin list requesting that they join the server to help the player out. Here's a few pictures to help you understand:



The feature can be enabled or disabled, and to prevent abuse there are various timeouts and requirements you can set that govern the use of the command. There will also be slash commands for admins to use to ban certain people from using the feature at all.

When a request is sent, all admins of that server will get the following notification:



Opening the overlay will give further detail and allow the admin to either ignore or follow up on the request:



Like I said - it's a work in progress and I'd like to get general feedback on how useful people think this is and how they'd intend for it to be used. Also any other suggestions you've got would be great too. Thanks!

[Port]

Awesome idea! Glad to see that the innovation is still going. ;)

[WALDO]

This looks absolutely amazing! Great work guys! The problems are, how many users are actually going to know that this exists and not abuse it even with the above timeouts? What if someone uses this command and it was a terrible request but then a few minutes later, someone needs to use it because the server is in major trouble but he can't because the timeout isn't over yet.

[Ephialtes]

I could add an option to change the timeout to be user-specific or apply to the entire server. It may make more sense for the timeout to be user-specific by default thinking about it. As for users knowing to use this - I'd expect the server owner to advertise it in their own way but I can also add an option to display it to users under the welcome message when they join.

[-Jetz-]

I could add an option to change the timeout to be user-specific or apply to the entire server. It may make more sense for the timeout to be user-specific by default thinking about it. As for users knowing to use this - I'd expect the server owner to advertise it in their own way but I can also add an option to display it to users under the welcome message when they join.

Ugh, hate how there's no good way to communicate commands like this to users. While putting it under the welcome message will inform them, if the server has other add-ons made in the same mindset, suddenly you're contributing to a huge mess of extra text when the user joins, and if the user frequents the server, they've been trained to tune that mess out so they won't notice the new one.  On top of that, once the user is aware of the server's new feature, the message is pointless to them.

Perhaps the system could be written into RTB instead of the hosting service. While I sorta see an incentive to put it in the hosting service - that it's the one you're providing in exchange for other peoples' money - it seems like it would fit into RTB even better. By providing it to the majority of Blockland servers, you'd mostly solve the communication issue since people would assume they have the page ability unless told otherwise, rather than vice versa.

[Ephialtes]

While it'd be nice to offer this as part of the RTB add-on there's a fairly elaborate framework built around RTB-hosted servers that facilitates this feature which would otherwise be impossible. I think I'm going to leave the raising awareness aspect of this to the server owners to handle however they see best for their server to be honest. Whether that's some kind of repeat announcement or whatever is probably best left up to them.

[Pecon]

If it's really just an interaction between the server and RTB, it sounds like it shouldn't be an RTB-hosting locked feature. You would only be monopolizing that feature by using that fact that you control RTB. If you left the feature unlocked in RTB and allowed someone else to make a separate add-on which could utilize it for normal servers, this won't be a concern.

[Ephialtes]

While it'd be nice to offer this as part of the RTB add-on there's a fairly elaborate framework built around RTB-hosted servers that facilitates this feature which would otherwise be impossible.

I'm not sure what part of that was unclear to be honest. I'm going to rephrase anyway.

The RTB add-on does not have the backend capability or framework in place to support this kind of change, whereas it's relatively simple to integrate into the framework we use for RTB-hosted servers. I also think spending vast amounts of time trying to work this into the main RTB add-on simply as a means of raising awareness of the existence of a command is probably not the best use of my time.

[Pecon]

I'm not sure what part of that was unclear to be honest. I'm going to rephrase anyway.

The RTB add-on does not have the backend capability or framework in place to support this kind of change, whereas it's relatively simple to integrate into the framework we use for RTB-hosted servers. I also think spending vast amounts of time trying to work this into the main RTB add-on simply as a means of raising awareness of the existence of a command is probably not the best use of my time.

All I ask is you don't make the RTB main server deny requests from non-RTB hosting servers, as you might do if your intention was to lock down the feature by all means. I'm not asking you to do the backend work. If you make the feature, someone else can figure out how to make it work for other servers.

[Ephialtes]

All I ask is you don't make the RTB main server deny requests from non-RTB hosting servers, as you might do if your intention was to lock down the feature by all means. I'm not asking you to do the backend work. If you make the feature, someone else can figure out how to make it work for other servers.

I'm not sure where your understanding of the RTB backend comes from but this isn't how it works. I'm not expending extra effort to make this unavailable to users of the main RTB - it simply is just not possible in the first place and won't be without a lot of effort on my part. I'm struggling to think of different ways I can say this now.

This conspiracy of yours that I'm trying to alienate my own users to make them pay for a non-profit service I provide is fairly absurd.

[Blake1]

Really neat idea! Keep up the good work!

[Pecon]

I was merely stating my concerns.

If you want my opinion on how the system should work so that it can be used openly, you may PM me. I won't clutter your thread with it nor will I force you to hear me out.

Good luck with the feature, the idea is much adored.

[BlockoBlocko]

That admin request feature looks really neat actually.