New Reports page (beta)

[Afforess]

...snip...

An elegant speech.

This is a semantic argument that ignores the crux of Mallorea's point.

If the creation and utilization of these scripts with or without ADMIN sanction is to be seen as inevitable, and therefore inexorable, then let us not have the fruits of their creation be borne all on one tree.

For indeed, it would not be paranoia for any raider, invader, or romantic saboteur to consider these most recent technical developments by ADMIN as evidence of their predilection for those of the defender stripe. Let us not pretend there is any equity in this sanction of Afforess' newest gadget, the advantage is clearly to the defender side - the side which endorses lethargy and impudence, for they will defend any fort simply for being a fort, with no regard for its quality, state, or character.

I think you are rather hasty in painting me a defender, or one who sides with them. My words and actions would merit expulsion from even the meanest group of defenders:

Afforess: Justify? I don't consider them unjust actions. Capitalist Paradise doesn't recognize regional sovereignty of any region unless it has been explicitly established in a treaty. Seeing as how the only treaties we have had were with Dharma, no unjust actions have been taken. To state in simpler terms, The Capitalist Paradise only recognizes itself, and the vast unliberated masses outside of the region. There are no other 'regions'.

Empower the invader to disrupt Afforess' aggression. Scripts, my method in particular, can be used to clog the reports page as our ancestors cleared the happenings. This should be explicitly sanctioned by ADMIN, as I have already approached several with this idea who fear they will be punished by ADMIN.

There is no volume of happenings that you could create that could clog the reports. You are better off using scripts to fight with another means - like creating false trails to force defenders to spread themselves too thin.

And if this clog is not enough to spur a détente, to have Afforess and ADMIN alike reconsider, then why not, following the logic of your argument as to the inevitable and inexorable nature of these scripts, simply legalize everything? Let us see how the defenders like it then, perhaps?

I would like that.

If your logic is one of script makes right, then be consistent. If defenders can now track all of us with this kind of lazy impunity, why must the invader manually create puppets, move regions, grant endorsements, and ban liberators? Tracking invaders is such boring tripe for defenders and feederites alike, and so they are catered to? Is the invader side not to be satisfied?

That would be fun.

[Henri Matisse]

...snip...

An elegant speech.

Damn right.

As for the rest of your reply, I can only reply with this:

You see ADMIN, this is the kind of technophile you embrace.

Is this what you want, really? Because this is where your logic and Afforess will lead you, complete and utter GP automation.

And I refute your assertion on the clog, Afforess.

With my method and few enough numbers, we can make the tool rather useless. Again, I care not for your server. I care about the lazy defenders who will use the reports page.

I ask again all raiders to join me in this endeavor, and I will be in contact soon.

[Mallorea and Riva]

I encourage you all to remember that spam is bad, and it will be dealt with accordingly. And in this case, aggressively if necessary, to anyone engaging in deliberate actions to screw with the game, clog any of the processes, or otherwise create problems in order to try and get their way in an argument. Thanks.

Certainly not looking to justify that one's choice of tone or tactic, but this actually does raise a relevant question: will raiders be allowed to attempt to "clear" the reports page during update? (Assuming it is ever made such that it isn't an infinite scroll).

Could I get some clarification on this issue?

[Sedgistan]

I'll give a preliminary "we're not making illegal anything that is currently legal". It may be revisited later once the new reports page has bedded in.

[Lun Noir]

Pushing the limits of rules is the very nature of raiding/ invading...

No longer correct, and again, not the time or the place.

Certainly not looking to justify that one's choice of tone or tactic, but this actually does raise a relevant question: will raiders be allowed to attempt to "clear" the reports page during update? (Assuming it is ever made such that it isn't an infinite scroll).

Could I get some clarification on this issue?

Just have to re-assert the view that the nature of raiding / invading is pushing the limits of rules.
You've only proven this with your inquiry of clarification.

Other parties are not interested in defining the letter of the law because we're content to abide by the spirit of it. We have no reason to generate 'happenings spam' and find the notion somewhat ridiculous. Raiders, on the other hand, want to know just how much they can get away with while maintaining impunity.

Just saying, you've validated my initial view which you previously dismissed.

[Mallorea and Riva]

I'll give a preliminary "we're not making illegal anything that is currently legal". It may be revisited later once the new reports page has bedded in.

Thank you Sedge.

[Sedgistan]

Lun Noir, if you want to take jabs at raiders, please do so in the Gameplay forum.

[[violet]]

I'm not making more information public. Happenings have been public for ten years. What the scripts & bots are doing is making that information easier to access.

It is flat-out impossible to "ban scripts."

You are making more information public. The general NS public does not know how to effectively access this information. If that wasn't true, then you wouldn't have needed to make this change, because everyone would have had it already.

You're confusing public with easily accessible. When a nation does something, it is immediately logged on a public web page that anyone can view: its nation page. That's been the case since forever. Until relatively recently, though, the data has not been easily accessible, in the sense that it's not practical for a human being to quickly check thousands of nation pages to see what's new.

Scripts make it easily accessible, because they can quickly check thousands of nation pages, and present a neat summary to the user. They've been doing this for some time; Afforess's NS++ is only the most visible at the moment.

The new Reports page makes it more easily accessible, too. But what it doesn't do is make more information public. It collates information that is already public.

This isn't semantics; this is a fundamental point. Because if you think raiders should have less information, and you say, "We should stop making X public," or "We should delay X by 20 seconds before being public," I'm open to that argument. That is an effective way to achieve the goal: stop making the data public in the first place. But if you tell me we should do it by putting X in public and just hoping no script sees it, I think that is a naive and outdated view.

You say it is impossible to ban scripts, yet you've already done that in cases. You've restricted some types of scripts, and outright banned others.

Here you're confusing me saying, "This is banned" with me actually stopping scripts. In the forums, of course, nobody ever says, "You know what, V, screw you, I'm running my script anyway." But in reality, they do. And if they take sufficient care, it's hard to stop.

The problem that you are exacerbating is that every single time you make a change like this, it results in a script being written. You do not want the scripters to have an advantage, but rather than remove the ability of users to utilize certain scripts you have instead just eventually made it a "feature". I know Afforess is touting that he will make a prediction script to forecast raider activity, will that then be made public? Is there an end to it? Because your current methodology for dealing with this problem has thus far been entirely broken.

I think you have this entirely wrong. First of all, to address your specific question, no, I obviously wouldn't "make public" an algorithm devised by Afforess to predict raider activity. That would be his proprietry invention. We would have nothing to "make public." What we have is raw nation data, which has always been available by scraping our site, and more recently been available via our API. We make the data available; other people can create extensions or algorithms on top of that, if they want.

But to your general contention, that we are encouraging scripts, let me explain via two hypothetical scenarios:

(A) Scripts are banned, there's no API, no Daily Dumps, and no Reports page. The incentive to run a secret script would therefore be extremely strong, because it would give you access to information nobody else had. You would have a major R/D advantage. So people would do it, and I would spend all my time trying to figure out who they were, probably while being criticized for not being able to stop the cheaters who were ruining R/D. In the meantime, none of the good third-party sites and tools would exist, and it would be harder for regular players to find information on their own nation and those of others in which they were interested. We might need new servers, too, since scripts scraping HTML generates much more load than API requests.

(B) Scripts are permitted if they follow the rules, there is a rate-limited API, and when we want to control what scripts can access, we do that by holding back the data in the first place. The difference between what a regular user can see & do on the site versus via a script or tool is therefore much smaller. Script authors have a reason to use their powers for good instead of evil, creating third-party sites as NS Dossier and NS Economy. They try to avoid breaking the rules, because the rewards aren't great enough to justify the risk. We stop fighting a doomed battle against the future and I get to code new features rather than analyze web traffic.

We are doing (B).

[Mallorea and Riva]

You are making more information public. The general NS public does not know how to effectively access this information. If that wasn't true, then you wouldn't have needed to make this change, because everyone would have had it already.

You're confusing public with easily accessible. When a nation does something, it is immediately logged on a public web page that anyone can view: its nation page. That's been the case since forever. Until relatively recently, though, the data has not been easily accessible, in the sense that it's not practical for a human being to quickly check thousands of nation pages to see what's new.

Scripts make it easily accessible, because they can quickly check thousands of nation pages, and present a neat summary to the user. They've been doing this for some time; Afforess's NS++ is only the most visible at the moment.

The new Reports page makes it more easily accessible, too. But what it doesn't do is make more information public. It collates information that is already public.

This isn't semantics; this is a fundamental point. Because if you think raiders should have less information, and you say, "We should stop making X public," or "We should delay X by 20 seconds before being public," I'm open to that argument. That is an effective way to achieve the goal: stop making the data public in the first place. But if you tell me we should do it by putting X in public and just hoping no script sees it, I think that is a naive and outdated view.

Delay it by 30 seconds and people will simply go back to the script. So you will be forced to optimize the performance of the public page because you seek to eliminate the drive to utilize scripts, yes? And I did not ask to hide this information because I know that isn't going to happen. But I'll go for it. Please stop making the movements and endorsements public information.

You say it is impossible to ban scripts, yet you've already done that in cases. You've restricted some types of scripts, and outright banned others.

Here you're confusing me saying, "This is banned" with me actually stopping scripts. In the forums, of course, nobody ever says, "You know what, V, screw you, I'm running my script anyway." But in reality, they do. And if they take sufficient care, it's hard to stop.

I think that is an understandable assumption to make on my part, that when you say a script is banned that the script's utilization is minimized and that those who attempt to circumvent your rulings, by say, refusing to hide such an illegal script from public view, are heavily punished.

The problem that you are exacerbating is that every single time you make a change like this, it results in a script being written. You do not want the scripters to have an advantage, but rather than remove the ability of users to utilize certain scripts you have instead just eventually made it a "feature". I know Afforess is touting that he will make a prediction script to forecast raider activity, will that then be made public? Is there an end to it? Because your current methodology for dealing with this problem has thus far been entirely broken.

I think you have this entirely wrong. First of all, to address your specific question, no, I obviously wouldn't "make public" an algorithm devised by Afforess to predict raider activity. That would be his proprietry invention. We would have nothing to "make public." What we have is raw nation data, which has always been available by scraping our site, and more recently been available via our API. We make the data available; other people can create extensions or algorithms on top of that, if they want.

Then there is still a drive to create scripts, and then scripts to counter those scripts... Thereby separating those who can script, from those who cannot. I understand your point about public information, but I see no consistency with your position regarding making the game "fair".

But to your general contention, that we are encouraging scripts, let me explain via two hypothetical scenarios:

(B) Scripts are permitted if they follow the rules, there is a rate-limited API, and when we want to control what scripts can access, we do that by holding back the data in the first place. The difference between what a regular user can see & do on the site versus via a script or tool is therefore much smaller. Script authors have a reason to use their powers for good instead of evil, creating third-party sites as NS Dossier and NS Economy. They try to avoid breaking the rules, because the rewards aren't great enough to justify the risk. We stop fighting a doomed battle against the future and I get to code new features rather than analyze web traffic.

We are doing (B).

The problem is what I stated above. There will always be a drive to create scripts, and those who have them will always be better off than those who don't. That having been said, attempting to "balance" the game by making more widely available information which was previously restricted to a few players inherently unbalances the game on the R vs D axis. As has been the case with so many tech changes we have seen recently.

[[violet]]

Please stop making the movements and endorsements public information.

Either you're proposing to have no more logging of movements and endo on any Nation & Region pages, or you are misusing the word "public" after I just explained it, I don't know which.

Right now there is a 28-second delay on releasing Happenings data to the World API. So I'm not sure why you're saying we'd never do a 30-second delay. But I'm telling you, that is the kind of thing you should be arguing for, not abolishing all logging or a site-wide script ban.

[Mallorea and Riva]

Please stop making the movements and endorsements public information.

Right now there is a 28-second delay on releasing Happenings data to the World API.

But that does not include the current reports page, correct?

[Ballotonia]

Right now there is a 28-second delay on releasing Happenings data to the World API.

But that does not include the current reports page, correct?

Correct. The old reports page did not have a delay either. Note that putting it on a 28 second delay would mean that invader activity would become extremely difficult to detect, and would basically give invaders free reign in picking and taking out targets without having to worry about defenders. I'm convinced you'd want that, but you should wonder whether it's good for the overall game.

Ballotonia

[Mallorea and Riva]

But that does not include the current reports page, correct?

Correct. The old reports page did not have a delay either. Note that putting it on a 28 second delay would mean that invader activity would become extremely difficult to detect, and would basically give invaders free reign in picking and taking out targets without having to worry about defenders. I'm convinced you'd want that, but you should wonder whether it's good for the overall game.

Ballotonia

Yeah, because in all of these conversations regarding technical changes, it has been me who has been advocating total unbalance in the game and giving raiders free reign to do whatever we want. No.

This reports page could be delayed, and thus disarmed. Defenders would still have their super dossiers which you were so kind to create for them, along with extended WA happenings to spot our activity instantly.

[Mahaj]

Correct. The old reports page did not have a delay either. Note that putting it on a 28 second delay would mean that invader activity would become extremely difficult to detect, and would basically give invaders free reign in picking and taking out targets without having to worry about defenders. I'm convinced you'd want that, but you should wonder whether it's good for the overall game.

Ballotonia

Yeah, because in all of these conversations regarding technical changes, it has been me who has been advocating total unbalance in the game and giving raiders free reign to do whatever we want. No.

This reports page could be delayed, and thus disarmed. Defenders would still have their super dossiers which you were so kind to create for them, along with extended WA happenings to spot our activity instantly.

This (reports2) is currently delayed.

Reports (original) ought not to be delayed, else spotting becomes impossible.

[Ballotonia]

This (reports2) is currently delayed.

Reports (original) ought not to be delayed, else spotting becomes impossible.

NEITHER are delayed. Seriously, I double-checked the code before replying.

Reports2 has an auto-refresh of several seconds, which also increases over time. New events also scroll in smoothly, so when there's a bulk of events coming in at once the latest one will move in even slower. Note that in the old report no new events were scrolling in at all, so don't complain that the autorefresh isn't useful for defenders. That's on purpose. If you want the latest happenings, you'll have to hit F5 just as with the regular reports (or click on the title, that ability is new... but it's just using your mouse instead of your keyboard).

The API delay is also on purpose.

Ballotonia

[Mallorea and Riva]

This (reports2) is currently delayed.

Reports (original) ought not to be delayed, else spotting becomes impossible.

NEITHER are delayed. Seriously, I double-checked the code before replying.

Reports2 has an auto-refresh of several seconds, which also increases over time. New events also scroll in smoothly, so when there's a bulk of events coming in at once the latest one will move in even slower. Note that in the old report no new events were scrolling in at all, so don't complain that the autorefresh isn't useful for defenders. That's on purpose. If you want the latest happenings, you'll have to hit F5 just as with the regular reports (or click on the title, that ability is new... but it's just using your mouse instead of your keyboard).

The API delay is also on purpose.

Ballotonia

Oh the horror... they must hit the button they were hitting anyways... to get more useful results...

[Letoilenoir]

Nice work IMHO

How the raiders & defenders choose to interpret the data is up to them,and of course highlights their short term view with its associated need for instant gratification

A marathon session not a quick spurt guys!

[East Jupiter]

Indeed, Mallorea needs to stop whining and start adapting.

[Sedgistan]

Indeed, Mallorea needs to stop whining and start adapting.

You're being called out on this bit of puppetwank, Henri Matisse. Not appropriate.

[Riemstagrad]

very nice feature!

And again this game looks a bit more shiny then before

please let us put the noisy arguments of gameplay in their true perspective: those of a very small (although very noisy) minority.

a cookie for the admins, you're really keeping this place interesting.

[[violet]]

Heads-up! The "REPORTS" link is likely to disappear from the sidebar. The new Reports page will be linked from several different places instead, including via your Dossier and the World page.

This change is because the traditional Reports page is nation-specific, being only relevant to logged-in nations, whereas the new one is relevant to everyone, logged in or not. So it will no longer make sense to only provide a link for logged-in nations.

Also, the new page is probably going to be called "Activity," and be located here:

http://www.nationstates.net/page=activity

For now the old Reports page will remain available via direct URL input here:

http://www.nationstates.net/page=reports

[Mahaj]

Any chance the new reports page could permanently be left available?

Perhaps a link to it in the top left corner of the "Activity" page?

[Solm]

After some very brief testing, I am experiencing lag times 5-15 seconds from when a nation moves in my dossier to when it appears on the activity page. That's incredibly unacceptable in defending against raids. While defending, I refreshed at a rate of 1-2 seconds on the old reports page, and that loaded immediately. To refresh the new Activity page it takes upwards of 10 seconds for the "Collating..." to finish and the list to appear, so therefore you need to rely on the real-time NS-updating list which has the aforementioned delay of 5-7 seconds. This renders the Activity page useless for R/D purposes. But very neat as a feature in general! Definitely very neat! In order to keep R/Ding, however, I hope the old reports page will be kept and we will just have to keep our old mashing F5 technique, unless the lag in the Activity page is fixed.

[[violet]]

To refresh the new Activity page it takes upwards of 10 seconds for the "Collating..." to finish and the list to appear

There's currently a little bug with that. You should be able to refresh the results section of the page by re-clicking whatever is already selected: "World" or "Dossier" or whatever. But currently that only works once, the first time you visit the page. I will be fixing that, since otherwise, as you say, F5ing the page is quite a bit slower. (The results only begin to be generated after the page is fully loaded, and F5 tells your browser to re-load everything: images, stylesheets, JavaScript, etc.)

[Timsvill]

I feel like I'm part of the NSA! Over all, seems pretty good to me!!!!!