[Q/R] RMB Suppression Agents, Forum Search Broken?

[Lower Columbian WA Mission]

I've been working my way through an RMB, suppressing and unsuppressing posts, but the following error message keeps popping up:

"Regional post suppression agents are currently exhausted in [REDACTED]. Please try again shortly."

This message has forced me to wait longer and longer between post suppressions - from seconds initially to minutes now. Needless to say, this is rather irritating from my PoV. I've tried to search the forums for information on this seemingly new feature, but my searches always time out without returning any results. Manually looking through the last several pages of Gameplay and Technical has also yielded nothing so far.

TL;DR: What's the deal with these "post suppression agents", and are the forum admins aware of any issues with the search page?

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=389441 <- Search has been on the fritz for months, no admin reply yet.

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=390798 <- suppression rate was throttled sorta out of no where a while back, to limit the destructive ability of raiders. Good to see defenders are enjoying it about as much as we are. I hit it twice as much trying to stop spammers in TBH itself than in any given raid.

[[violet]]

Search: I've seen some queries that take about 10s when they should take 1s, and tracked this down to a problem in the forum software that will hopefully be fixed in the next version. I haven't been able to reproduce some of the behavior described, like searches that never return results, although maybe this is because as described it only happens randomly.

Suppression: I'd be interested in hearing some usage cases for lots of RMB suppressions in a hurry. The throttle is predicated on the idea that non-invaders don't need to do that.

[Altmoras]

Suppression: I'd be interested in hearing some usage cases for lots of RMB suppressions in a hurry. The throttle is predicated on the idea that non-invaders don't need to do that.

From my personal anecdotal experience the suppression throttle is an occasional problem for ROs who have to deal with prolific rmb spammers that moderation won't take action against. There is also the occasional issue in unfucking the rmb as a defender, but the trade-off of not having 100s or 1000s of posts to unsuppress is more than worth it imo. I don't think the throttle itself is a problem, but the allowance it gives could sure do to be a little bigger.

Or perhaps ROs who have served for a significant amount of time should have a larger allowance. I've served as a communications RO in Lazarus for 195 days, it can probably be safely assumed that I'm not raiding the region.

[Lockdownn]

Suppression: I'd be interested in hearing some usage cases for lots of RMB suppressions in a hurry. The throttle is predicated on the idea that non-invaders don't need to do that.

From my personal anecdotal experience the suppression throttle is an occasional problem for ROs who have to deal with prolific rmb spammers that moderation won't take action against. There is also the occasional issue in unfucking the rmb as a defender, but the trade-off of not having 100s or 1000s of posts to unsuppress is more than worth it imo. I don't think the throttle itself is a problem, but the allowance it gives could sure do to be a little bigger.

Or perhaps ROs who have served for a significant amount of time should have a larger allowance. I've served as a communications RO in Lazarus for 195 days, it can probably be safely assumed that I'm not raiding the region.

Either that or getting back a region that raiders have defiled.

[Flanderlion]

Suppression: I'd be interested in hearing some usage cases for lots of RMB suppressions in a hurry. The throttle is predicated on the idea that non-invaders don't need to do that.

Or perhaps ROs who have served for a significant amount of time should have a larger allowance. I've served as a communications RO in Lazarus for 195 days, it can probably be safely assumed that I'm not raiding the region.

Does the throttle applies to both suppression and unsuppression now? I haven't had too much experience unsuppressing posts after the change, but I remember at the time that unsuppression was yet to be throttled. If it isn't throttled, it should be.

RO's who have been appointed for longer (resetting when they are removed/powers are changed etc.) should get a larger amount of posts to suppress/unsuppress before hitting the limit, as Altmoras said. How about (Current limit + Square root of days served)? This would be so the longer a region has a RO, the more power the RO has over it. A tag raid/detag might be able to suppress/unsuppress a few posts, but a long term occupation/defense/native can do a good amount, and someone who has been a RO for years can suppress the entire RMB if the whim occurs, so it only significantly interferes with a one update RO, then is annoyance for a while until a long term normal R/D free region is almost unaffected (although some of them seem to change RO's quite frequently).

[Consular]

I mean, we have no rules on who and how often Delegates can eject/ban. So why have limits on how often they can suppress? Seems like you're not allowed to push the chair over, but you can burn down the whole house?

Also rather goes against the whole "My region's WA Delegate is an evil dictator who abuses her power! Make her stop! Delegates are elected: If you don't like yours, it's up to you to get that nation unelected! Delegates are free to use and abuse their power as they see fit." thing in the FAQ.

I don't think very many invaders routinely mass suppress posts anyway.

If you wanted to prevent abuse here, why not just require a small amount of influence cost?

[Cresenthia]

I mean, we have no rules on who and how often Delegates can eject/ban. So why have limits on how often they can suppress? Seems like you're not allowed to push the chair over, but you can burn down the whole house?

Also rather goes against the whole "My region's WA Delegate is an evil dictator who abuses her power! Make her stop! Delegates are elected: If you don't like yours, it's up to you to get that nation unelected! Delegates are free to use and abuse their power as they see fit." thing in the FAQ.

I don't think very many invaders routinely mass suppress posts anyway.

If you wanted to prevent abuse here, why not just require a small amount of influence cost?

I thought there was a rule about ejections/banning.

[USS Monitor]

Or perhaps ROs who have served for a significant amount of time should have a larger allowance. I've served as a communications RO in Lazarus for 195 days, it can probably be safely assumed that I'm not raiding the region.

Does the throttle applies to both suppression and unsuppression now? I haven't had too much experience unsuppressing posts after the change, but I remember at the time that unsuppression was yet to be throttled. If it isn't throttled, it should be.

AFAIK, the throttle still only applies to suppressions, and we were planning to keep it that way. Why do you think unsuppression should also be throttled?

Making the throttle equally inconvenient to both raiders and defenders was already discussed and decided not to be sufficient reason. RMBs are meant to be used for conversation, not giant walls of suppressed posts.

[Conservative Values]

I mean, we have no rules on who and how often Delegates can eject/ban. So why have limits on how often they can suppress? Seems like you're not allowed to push the chair over, but you can burn down the whole house?

Also rather goes against the whole "My region's WA Delegate is an evil dictator who abuses her power! Make her stop! Delegates are elected: If you don't like yours, it's up to you to get that nation unelected! Delegates are free to use and abuse their power as they see fit." thing in the FAQ.

I don't think very many invaders routinely mass suppress posts anyway.

If you wanted to prevent abuse here, why not just require a small amount of influence cost?

1. Raiders did routinely use tools to mass suppress regions. They had a script/tool that either did it automatically or made it so a user could just button mash where unsuppressing requires time to move the mouse, click, move mouse again, click again, repeat. So even when you followed the "my delegate is an evil dictator" and unelected them - it still takes hours of work to put things back.
2. There is an ejection limit because people were using tools to do that too fast too. When "banhammer" was still active on NS++ you could eject multiple per second via button mash. The limit is (I believe) about one per second. There is also a ban limit, too, only 200 can be banned at one time.

I like the limit, or an "unsuppress all" button one.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

My view is thus:

In recent memory, I've only ordered the mass surpression of a single RMB (pre-limit). The addition of a surpression rate limit has not affected how many native rmb lists I suppress in a raid, Becuase TBH generally does not suppress the entire rmb history, only certain new posts made. We still do that. If I still wanted an antitrust history suppressed, I'd still order it, just over the course of the raid instead of one night with a lot of clicking.

Where I do hit the suppression cap is with RMB spammers in TBH itself. That happens generally at least twice a month, and if you're on at the same time as one is on, their post rate limit quickly becomes faster than your suppression rate limit. Mods can take a while to react, and unfortunately don't always nod-surpress or remove posts after dealing with the spammer.

I'd say therefore that the suppression rate has as such minorly if at all affected me as a raider, and almost entirely effected me as an RO of a large and perhaps unpopular region. I can't imagine that, even when mass history surpresion was common among some orgs, the limit would be hit more by them than by regions legitimately trying to defend their RMB's from spammers.

Edit: final note, as I also have stated regarding ejection rate limits and site provided update times, I don't think that the "it prevents illegal behavior" argument is a great one. Argue that these things prevent ro'a from having and unfair advantage, open up R/D to more folks, and limit destructive behavior respectively all you want, but I'd much rather you punish the Bob's who used ejection scripts and the Cora's who used suppression ones than limit the abilities of folks who've always followed the rules under the assumption that if you don't make it impossible to, they'll break them.

[[violet]]

I've dialed back the strictness of the suppression throttle a little. Let me know how it goes.

Mods can take a while to react, and unfortunately don't always nod-surpress

[Flanderlion]

Does the throttle applies to both suppression and unsuppression now? I haven't had too much experience unsuppressing posts after the change, but I remember at the time that unsuppression was yet to be throttled. If it isn't throttled, it should be.

AFAIK, the throttle still only applies to suppressions, and we were planning to keep it that way. Why do you think unsuppression should also be throttled?

Making the throttle equally inconvenient to both raiders and defenders was already discussed and decided not to be sufficient reason. RMBs are meant to be used for conversation, not giant walls of suppressed posts.

Because part of when I suppressed RMBs as part of various raider orgs in the past, I unsuppressed posts suppressed long ago and resuppressed them, so when the detag happened, the detagger inadvertently unsuppressed the posts that were suppressed long ago for legitimate reasons.

Agreed on that RMBs are meant to be used for conversation rather than giant walls of suppressed posts. But "Delegates are free to use and abuse their power as they see fit.", if the long-term delegate deems it necessary to suppress the RMB (to hide their secret RP plans from another region - which unrelated, should suppressed posts be visible to nations not in the region?), or if the region gets spammed by an disgruntled ex-member, they shouldn't run into a limit designed purely to stop R/Ders from messing with things. The longer someone has control over suppression powers, the more power they should have over the RMB. Someone barely appointed doesn't deserve full powers to suppress pages - like the throttle prevents (or did, I haven't tested [V]'s change yet). Just checked, only a few posts while logged into a founder nation, far from a full page.

I kinda would have preferred the square root thingy, so a tag raid couldn't suppress a lot at all, maybe a post or two but nothing in the scheme of the RMB, but a long-term RO wouldn't reach the cap in ordinary play. Or if too difficult, something like the BC appointing thing, where a nation gets to suppress more posts the longer they're in power, but in a linear fashion. Issue with the linear fashion is that an longterm nation might get the ability to suppress too much, or a newer/reappointed RO might have the cap being too little. I'm not sure about it requiring influence to do, as it'd make spamming a RMB a viable tactic to deplete someones influence. "Delegates are free to use and abuse their power as they see fit." - also this suppression throttle applies to founders as well.

Regarding script rules, might want to explicitly add suppression to the list of "moving regions, sending a telegram to another nation, banning a nation from a region, creating a nation," etc. so it doesn't cause another issue in the future.

[Klopstock]

Suppression: I'd be interested in hearing some usage cases for lots of RMB suppressions in a hurry. The throttle is predicated on the idea that non-invaders don't need to do that.

It's a good idea. I've known founders to re-found their regions rather than mass unsuppress an RMB following invader griefing.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Suppression: I'd be interested in hearing some usage cases for lots of RMB suppressions in a hurry. The throttle is predicated on the idea that non-invaders don't need to do that.

It's a good idea. I've known founders to re-found their regions rather than mass unsuppress an RMB following invader griefing.

I mean, if that's your goal, I'd limit volume, not rate. As I noted earlier, If I want an RMB Sherman's March'd, I'll just order it to be done slowly over the course of the operation if there's a rate limit. Meanwhile, speed *is* needed by folks trying to prevent or hinder active spammers. However, no one defending their region from a spammer generally needs to suppress weeks/months/years of past RMB posts. The only thing I've seen come close to that was when a region I was once native in suppressed or self deleted various posts going back years before eventually refounding the region to clear the RMB, after realizing (abruptly) that over the years they'd let on a bit too much IRL info. Even then, that was probably a quarter of posts at most.

tl;dr, the behavior unique to raider's RMB suppression isn't speed (which is also needed to stop spammers), but volume (amount of the total RMB history suppressed).