Should OtLand Open New OtServerlist site?

[xinn]

Actually as a mathematical term it isn't. So by definition: no

So define minimum information needed for visitor a,b,c,d and z needed for them to take certain action . And obviously prove that (you can use math if you want to).

That is just a wrong statement and again ignorant.

You find it ignorant, but what I find ignorant is trying to devaluate informations given by person who speaks from experience perspective.
Your opinions are based on your believes. My opinions (regarding otservlist) are based on experience and all the conversations which I had with people using my service.

I agreed with you, you don't need to quote everything. Just leave the things out where it's unnecessary.

You are short-sighted. Adding a review system and just leaving it to people would result in a total wild-west where people would write false info about others making such reviews basically worthless.
Reviews in systems where money is involved MUST BE moderated otherwise they bring zero value. Or even negative value when a group of people tries to destroy someone's server by writing negative comments about it.

Then you seem to have no idea how IT works. First of all it has nothing to do with how otservlist works.

Say that to all that multi-million companies fighting with cheaters. Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
If that was so easy we wouldn't have all that intrusive anti-cheating software, we wouldn't have multi-million demonstrative legal cases against people creating cheating software for games et cetera.
It's all about the source verification so obviously it has a lot to do with otservlist since it relies on info given by servers. Of course we try to verify infos (to some degree), otherwise there wouldn't be a single banned server, right?
And each such banishment moves a bar higher to a point where I need to be way more intrusive to prove cheating. This is a constant war-race which takes most of my time (related to otservlist).

But those are just 2 things

Those 2 things doesn't even barely solve a problem of information verification. I'm sorry mate but you clearly fall into dunning-kruger effect.

And just because the minority says something, doesn't mean the majority wouldn't welcome a change.

Once again I value your opinion but I'm not going to change how otservlist works because a minority asks me to do that. I can however add features which benefits all the groups.
Henry Ford once said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Post automatically merged: Aug 15, 2020

that's right there is no way to convince this xin, unjustly banned me I had to close my server.
I don't know if I'm happy or sad to have the same people suffering the same problem that I had, a warning to you, it doesn't matter, if he thought you were like that then you are like that and he was already your server and you together.
for sure my server was a job and you took it from me, i hate you to this day.

Oh mr. Lima aka Titanico I'm SO GLAD that you have posted here.
Yepp, you fit well into one of the groups which I've been talking about. And here is the output of one of your servers (dragoglobal.servegame.com), where we can clearly see that the graph represents a constant growth which means that you counted xlogged characters.

Or maybe I should remind you how you thought that you can harm me by sending messages to KNF (polish money institution) regarding me?

Or maybe when you wrote "remember it was your choice" and started ddosing otservlist?

OR maybe you want to talk about your "drugovich-global.com" server where you counted xlogged characters (and even Mark messaged me about that and asked to check that?):

@Mr. Greyshade
That's the people which I've been talking about Here is the live example.

 

[Crazytoe]

I hope Otland creates a new otservlist that is secure, keep good quality and remove servers that spoofing players.

 

[Merrok]

You find it ignorant, but what I find ignorant is trying to devaluate informations given by person who speaks from experience perspective.
Your opinions are based on your believes. My opinions (regarding otservlist) are based on experience and all the conversations which I had with people using my service.

Well I did take that into account in the beginning. But you didn't provide any information coming from experience. Only statements that could come from anywhere. No data. No nothing. So I went a different way. Doubting you.
You are right. I am only basing this on assumptions myself, but from a users perspective and from what I have seen other people write about. I mostly started asking you for data and where you get this information from. Saying from experience but not really providing anything isn't enough for me. So that became my point of "attack". Get it?

Adding a review system and just leaving it to people would result in a total wild-west where people would write false info about others making such reviews basically worthless.

I said from the beginning a review system was a bad idea. And then again I told you I agreed with you. You really need to learn to read more carefully.
Just leave it now ok? I AGREE WITH YOU! I AGREED WITH YOU FROM THE BEGINNING! NOW LEAVE IT!

Say that to all that multi-million companies fighting with cheaters. Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
If that was so easy we wouldn't have all that intrusive anti-cheating software, we wouldn't have multi-million demonstrative legal cases against people creating cheating software for games et cetera.
It's all about the source verification so obviously it has a lot to do with otservlist since it relies on info given by servers. Of course we try to verify infos (to some degree), otherwise there wouldn't be a single banned server, right?
And each such banishment moves a bar higher to a point where I need to be way more intrusive to prove cheating. This is a constant war-race which takes most of my time (related to otservlist).

That statement was mostly about you saying it was impossible and there was no way. That's just wrong.
Comparing it with huge industries with completely other problems because of their size is mmmh. Don't know if it is a good comparison. It really is doubtful but you can see some lines there yes. So people will try to break it, of course. But you need to think of that beforehand. There is no 100%, as you say would agree for sure. But there is also no reason not to try and test no ways. It might work out.

Those 2 things doesn't even barely solve a problem of information verification. I'm sorry mate but you clearly fall into dunning-kruger effect.

Ok I said myself that there are problems with the information verification. You need to read more carefully.
I know what the dunning-kruger effect is my friend. Don't worry about it. It doesn't apply here though. And I never said I was smart or knew more about that specific topic than you. Only that you didn't do it. Besides the graph you posted isn't even a good representation of the effect but a meme of it but ok lol.

Once again I value your opinion but I'm not going to change how otservlist works because a minority asks me to do that. I can however add features which benefits all the groups.

See? That's a good answer. Why not say that from the beginning?

Actually well meant:
Something you need to learn is being more political in your answers.
The reason I said you cannot win in a discussion is because no matter what you say, it won't shine a bad light on the user, or maybe it will, but that has no effect, it can however shine a bad light on you.
Best case: You are where you were before
Worst case: You are at a worse standpoint
You cannot win. That's my point. Not winning against me, but in general.
Answering political like kinda what you did in your last sentence helps. Answer without answering
So just leave it there. Good night <3

 

[xinn]

Saying from experience but not really providing anything isn't enough for me.

Okay, than there is no way for me to convince you. Obviously it would be silly from me to show single emails since you would call them anecdotal, right?

Comparing it with huge industries with completely other problems

No. The problem is the same - believing in data provided by user (in cheating software, that would be for example that a crosschair was moved by a mouse and not by a auto-mechanism). In otservlist case, believing that data provided by servers aren't tampered somehow.
You can't do that WITHOUT the very intrusive mechanisms, yet, like I said earlier, those mechanisms still can be fooled that's why I called it a constant war-race.

Something you need to learn is being more political in your answers.

I say the things as they are. You can love it or you can hate it. It is up to you.
I'm not here to make people love me. I've never tried since I know that I'm at lost position. The reasoning comes that I simply don't have time to debunk all the fake info. Still even if I try to, there will be people (like those who were perma banned) which will try to push their agenda.

it can however shine a bad light on you. (...)

Depends of conversation standards in communities. Here are otland we have a lot of people which will basically believe what someone says because it matches their agenda, not because source provided. If you check some of my historical posts you will see that I always defended myself with sources, graphs etc. Still, some people didn't believe it. It's really not my problem, it's their problem. Those people aren't able to change their opinion on something. It's very close to fanatism. Despite what I say they will be already biased toward me so why would I care about their opinion? Why would I try to make them love me?

Good night <3

Good night!

 

[Damon]

I will tell you what is corrupted about otservlist. Basically there are a lot of kids here who wants to make an easy money. And I'm the gate keeper who stands behind their spoofing servers and money they want to get. They think that servers like utorion or any other top servers on the list are there because the owners are paying me a lot of money to be able to spoof (fake a number of players online). They can't understand that these servers are there because of the hard work of their owners. They can't understand that for some people those servers are full time jobs and they don't just download a TFS, read a tutorial how to compile it on debian and run it with a hope to get hundreds of players. They actually put a lot of work and heart into them. But you will rarely spot those people here - they are busy with their servers and their own communities.

There is also a group of people who already tried to fake a number of players on their servers (so the servers attracts more people - something called a snowball effect) and got banned or perma-banned.
Those people will try to manipulate others into thinking that I'm corrupted, that I ask server owners to pay me for unbanning them et cetera. In the past I've asked many, many times to send ANY proof of such alleged activity - obviously none was posted. I've been offered thousands of euros in the past to allow certain spoof mechanisms and I found it very offensive - that was also one of the reasons why some people/servers were banned. I come from a country where corruption used to be something normal and I always hated it. For those people a new popular server list means a fresh-start, that's why they will push for it.

The third group are people who simply don't understand what fair competition is and they don't understand rules or simply don't want to follow them. Those people will post threads that they were banned without any valid reason. They will also ask me to give them the most detailed ban reason they can get despite they know what they did wrong. Of course if the reason is simply, such as counting xlogged characters as active ones - no problem. However, when they log in fake characters, they ask publicly HOW I caught them. And obviously I can't answer such questions since that gives an edge to this group of server owners. If they knew how I caught them, they would change their spoofing mechanisms to be undetectable in a future. That's also why server owners who uses very sophisticated spoofing mechanisms are perma banned. They are a cancer to this community. They devaluate a legit work of other server owners and I can't allow this.

The last group of people are those who wants some kind of changes. Some changes can be good (like a layout, more statistics) some not (like a default sorting method). For example there are some people who try to push for a change to default sorting mechanism. They accuse otservlist of not helping a new servers and they want a change of a default sorting method to a "vote mechanism" however they completely don't understand a trade-offs. They don't understand that this would be a popularity contest, even easier to manipulate. They also don't understand that what THEY want can be totally different than what otservlist's visitors want. They also don't know the history of the tibia lists - otservlist competed with such lists in the past and well... those lists are gone, otservlist isn't. It's similar behaviour to one which I see very often here on otland. There are some server owners asking other server owners how their servers should look like. Instead of asking potential players, they ask a group of people which most likely will never even join their server about how it should look like. Total nonsense.

At the end I want you to remember something. It takes 10x more time to debunk fake informations than to create ones. That's one of the reasons I gave up defending myself here on otland - it takes too much time. Those who uses logic doesn't need such explanations.

I have to agree though that servers like Gunzodus are definitely not up there just because they are shilling someone. They are doing regular, quality updates and are keeping up with Real Tibia patches quite nicely. The servers are stable and just work. Can't complain at all. One of the most pleasant real ots I have played in a while.

 

[Loney]

yeah

 

[Night Wolf]

I'll skip those quote to quote nonsense but @xinn, I think you're putting yourself in a pedestal when you assume that people suggesting things on how you should handle your business doesn't know what they are talking about...

There is another huge topic here on otland where the main point was changing a sorting mechanism to something new (vote system was mentioned).

I never seen anyone in this forum suggest this besides me, it doesn't mean you would need to replace the current system, just allow newer sorting methods and fields to be given for custom servers. You never tried to even discuss this topic, instead you kept in defensive and explicitely told that those who didn't adapt should seek other ways to advertise their server.

It's been several years since last relevant content being added and there are still many things missing in otservlist. As I already stated, my goal was never to spoof data and ruin your model, but rather to show you that you're sitting in a castle of sand.

There are better ways to do this, you know it and we know it. Those topics that been popping from now and then are simply a synthom of people getting tired of you not hearing your playerbase (as you ironically suggested);

Post automatically merged: Aug 16, 2020

Say that to all that multi-million companies fighting with cheaters. Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
If that was so easy we wouldn't have all that intrusive anti-cheating software, we wouldn't have multi-million demonstrative legal cases against people creating cheating software for games et cetera.

As a machine learning researcher I can totally say that companies want easy and cheap solutions, and that's why they are usually bounded to shitty solutions.
Valve por instance just doesn't care about CS enough to raise a challenge against anti bots in Kaggle, same for Riot.
They trust solutions from old engeerings when the vast majority of technology that could fight that are new.

It's like Sun Tzu quote from Art of War:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

The problem is that those companies usually just know themselves and sometimes not even that. The question is @xinn, do you think you know your company? Do you know all the level of data you could use to check if players are real or not? Do you understand the pros and cons of your ways of working and the model you chose to use? I will bet that you certainly never though much about it or asked an expert.

Working in one of greatest companies of the world, I've learned that Multi-[B]illion companies doesn't mean they know everything they are doing, it also doesn't mean they have the greatest professionals or use the latest and better technologies available, in fact it's quite the opposite. Due their size it's hard to keep updating themselves all the time so they are mostly using things from ~20 years ago, sometimes even farther if the CEOs don't care.

The companies that are great and work great are those who understand they don't have all the answers, and open those answers to the great minds of the public.
Netflix offered 1 million prize in Kaggle competition to anyone who could improve their suggestion algorithim. Google and FB use Kaggle ALL THE TIME!

Kaggle Competitions

Kaggle is the world’s largest data science community with powerful tools and resources to help you achieve your data science goals.

www.kaggle.com

 

[Peonso]

Every single time I want to play OTs again I go to otservlist and it delievers me exactly what I want, on the fucking same design I'm familar with, since 2005. Fucking 15 years. Still people came here to complain. Just do better and take the market from Xinn, he does insane money with it. Ohhh, many tried, no success, hard to compete with an established brand that delievers what both legit hosters and the playerbase want, since ever.

 

[Ahilphino]

Working in one of greatest companies of the world, I've learned that Multi-[B]illion companies doesn't mean they know everything they are doing, it also doesn't mean they have the greatest professionals or use the latest and better technologies available, in fact it's quite the opposite. Due their size it's hard to keep updating themselves all the time so they are mostly using things from ~20 years ago, sometimes even farther if the CEOs don't care.

Totally agreed here man. I am also working for a multi billion company, infact I am working for the company with most revenue in the world (Walmart) You can google it. And I as a door keeper heve to constnatly deal with stupid managers and such.

 

[Source]

@Peonso
You're really deeply into homogenous sodomy, aren't you. Like really deep. Gobble gobble.

 

[Peonso]

@Peonso
You're really deeply into homogenous sodomy, aren't you. Like really deep. Gobble gobble.

I can't beat such good arguments and logic. Must be awesome the have such enlightened brain that can deliver that level of well tought speech.

 

[nugo]

I will tell you what is corrupted about otservlist. Basically there are a lot of kids here who wants to make an easy money. And I'm the gate keeper who stands behind their spoofing servers and money they want to get. They think that servers like utorion or any other top servers on the list are there because the owners are paying me a lot of money to be able to spoof (fake a number of players online). They can't understand that these servers are there because of the hard work of their owners. They can't understand that for some people those servers are full time jobs and they don't just download a TFS, read a tutorial how to compile it on debian and run it with a hope to get hundreds of players. They actually put a lot of work and heart into them. But you will rarely spot those people here - they are busy with their servers and their own communities.

There is also a group of people who already tried to fake a number of players on their servers (so the servers attracts more people - something called a snowball effect) and got banned or perma-banned.
Those people will try to manipulate others into thinking that I'm corrupted, that I ask server owners to pay me for unbanning them et cetera. In the past I've asked many, many times to send ANY proof of such alleged activity - obviously none was posted. I've been offered thousands of euros in the past to allow certain spoof mechanisms and I found it very offensive - that was also one of the reasons why some people/servers were banned. I come from a country where corruption used to be something normal and I always hated it. For those people a new popular server list means a fresh-start, that's why they will push for it.

The third group are people who simply don't understand what fair competition is and they don't understand rules or simply don't want to follow them. Those people will post threads that they were banned without any valid reason. They will also ask me to give them the most detailed ban reason they can get despite they know what they did wrong. Of course if the reason is simply, such as counting xlogged characters as active ones - no problem. However, when they log in fake characters, they ask publicly HOW I caught them. And obviously I can't answer such questions since that gives an edge to this group of server owners. If they knew how I caught them, they would change their spoofing mechanisms to be undetectable in a future. That's also why server owners who uses very sophisticated spoofing mechanisms are perma banned. They are a cancer to this community. They devaluate a legit work of other server owners and I can't allow this.

The last group of people are those who wants some kind of changes. Some changes can be good (like a layout, more statistics) some not (like a default sorting method). For example there are some people who try to push for a change to default sorting mechanism. They accuse otservlist of not helping a new servers and they want a change of a default sorting method to a "vote mechanism" however they completely don't understand a trade-offs. They don't understand that this would be a popularity contest, even easier to manipulate. They also don't understand that what THEY want can be totally different than what otservlist's visitors want. They also don't know the history of the tibia lists - otservlist competed with such lists in the past and well... those lists are gone, otservlist isn't. It's similar behaviour to one which I see very often here on otland. There are some server owners asking other server owners how their servers should look like. Instead of asking potential players, they ask a group of people which most likely will never even join their server about how it should look like. Total nonsense.

At the end I want you to remember something. It takes 10x more time to debunk fake informations than to create ones. That's one of the reasons I gave up defending myself here on otland - it takes too much time. Those who uses logic doesn't need such explanations.

Hey,

I agree with pretty much everything you said. Everyone thinks they can do it better until they are actually doing it themselves and if you have a wining recipe its a good idea to stick to it, especially if you have outlasted your competitors. A few quick points though. Your server list is designed for OT's back 15 years ago and theirs nothing wrong with that for the most part but at the same time the OT community currently and going into the future is going to become more and more customized as more tools get developed/finished. It was simpler times back then and OT's were generally more simple as well. Were i think otserverlist does fall down is it hasn't quite adjusted for the modern era. Its really hard to show off your servers full features especially the more custom they get. I want to offer a feature that would be a game changer for your server list but still stick to your winning recipe. Dont mind my paint skills lol. Just a simple suggestion that could really do wonders for your site.

Essentially expand/collapse a window with your features. Then scrolling pane buttons down the bottom to cycle through windows. Allow embedded media like videos, graphics etc.

 

[Diarreamental]

So define minimum information needed for visitor a,b,c,d and z needed for them to take certain action . And obviously prove that (you can use math if you want to).


You find it ignorant, but what I find ignorant is trying to devaluate informations given by person who speaks from experience perspective.
Your opinions are based on your believes. My opinions (regarding otservlist) are based on experience and all the conversations which I had with people using my service.


You are short-sighted. Adding a review system and just leaving it to people would result in a total wild-west where people would write false info about others making such reviews basically worthless.
Reviews in systems where money is involved MUST BE moderated otherwise they bring zero value. Or even negative value when a group of people tries to destroy someone's server by writing negative comments about it.


Say that to all that multi-million companies fighting with cheaters. Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
If that was so easy we wouldn't have all that intrusive anti-cheating software, we wouldn't have multi-million demonstrative legal cases against people creating cheating software for games et cetera.
It's all about the source verification so obviously it has a lot to do with otservlist since it relies on info given by servers. Of course we try to verify infos (to some degree), otherwise there wouldn't be a single banned server, right?
And each such banishment moves a bar higher to a point where I need to be way more intrusive to prove cheating. This is a constant war-race which takes most of my time (related to otservlist).


Those 2 things doesn't even barely solve a problem of information verification. I'm sorry mate but you clearly fall into dunning-kruger effect.

Once again I value your opinion but I'm not going to change how otservlist works because a minority asks me to do that. I can however add features which benefits all the groups.
Henry Ford once said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Post automatically merged: Aug 15, 2020

Oh mr. Lima aka Titanico I'm SO GLAD that you have posted here.
Yepp, you fit well into one of the groups which I've been talking about. And here is the output of one of your servers (dragoglobal.servegame.com), where we can clearly see that the graph represents a constant growth which means that you counted xlogged characters.

Or maybe I should remind you how you thought that you can harm me by sending messages to KNF (polish money institution) regarding me?

Or maybe when you wrote "remember it was your choice" and started ddosing otservlist?

OR maybe you want to talk about your "drugovich-global.com" server where you counted xlogged characters (and even Mark messaged me about that and asked to check that?):

@Mr. Greyshade
That's the people which I've been talking about Here is the live example.

what about the server outcastserver.com just an example because with few minits of research i can easily find more servers like this

always with 180 players online. that server is spoofed and eveyone here knows it. Once I enterered to the server, all players were just maniquies and the gm was behind me all the time.... otservlist is corrupted we know it you know it.. ofc you have real cases as you state above. But you can't try to cover the sun with a finger i think it's an insult to everyone's intelligence in here .

 

[Whateverido]

@xinn Xinn is the guy who argue with everyone and did nothing in past 15 years in otservlist and still take the money from peoples XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

 

[popoverde]

tibia is srs buzzzzinezz

 

[Syntax]

There's two things you must overcome when developing a server list, server data and the habits of players.

1. Players can't use a site that doesn't have any or all of the servers, because there's not much selection as it is.
2. Server owners don't want to bother listing a server on a site that has little traffic.

First you must solve the server problem by either scraping other lists or scraping the internet as a whole.

Second you must spend a buttload of money advertising it and making deals with forums over the years.
OTServlist has had a dedicated subforum on pretty much every OT forum since OT's inception.

I've worked on OTList.net (https://otlist.net) for a little while, it employs internet scraping, etc.
There's not much point developing on it though, if I did it would be an API so people could make their own list and try to advertise/compete.
But these days Tibia projects are really low on my agenda.

You won't see a change because people's habits are tough to break, especially if they've been doing it for 10+ years.
You won't see a change because server owners are throwing money at the list (and they always will because it's a relative drop in the bucket)
You won't see a change because money drives the top list, a proper sorting mechanism by points would disrupt the money flow. It's not because review systems are hard to verify, it's because of $$$. Verifying a vote/review from a browser running JS is easier than verifying data coming from a server. You have captchas, fingerprinting, ip limiting, SMS verification, etc.

 

[Ezzz]

what about the server outcastserver.com just an example because with few minits of research i can easily find more servers like this

always with 180 players online. that server is spoofed and eveyone here knows it. Once I enterered to the server, all players were just maniquies and the gm was behind me all the time.... otservlist is corrupted we know it you know it.. ofc you have real cases as you state above. But you can't try to cover the sun with a finger i think it's an insult to everyone's intelligence in here .

That does not mean anything, https://otservlist.org/ots/1594733/charts

 

[xinn]

@Night Wolf

I think you're putting yourself in a pedestal when you assume that people suggesting things on how you should handle your business doesn't know what they are talking about...

I simply don't agree with some of the ideas. At the end of the day it's my website/business and I will take a hit if something goes wrong, right?

You never tried to even discuss this topic, instead you kept in defensive

And what am I doing here? Discussing. If you say that NOT AGREEING to someone's opinion and trying to show my point of view is "defensive" than meh. Ok.

It's been several years since last relevant content being added (...)

In last 2 years I've rewritten whole otservlist from scratch (removing the 15y code base), added detailed server statistics, reworked control panel for server owners, added campaign statistics/custom server list, reworked huge parts of detection tools (so now basically we have no false positives). Of course we can argue if that was enough or not. But saying that I haven't add any relevant content is just delusional and shows how biased you are towards me.

Those topics that been popping from now and then are simply a synthom of people getting tired of you not hearing your playerbase (as you ironically suggested)

I've seen such topics for the last 15 years. You will always find a group of people who is not satisfied. It doesn't however mean that I have to blindly listen to their ideas and introduce them to the list.

I can totally say that companies want easy and cheap solutions, and that's why they are usually bounded to shitty solutions
Valve por instance just doesn't care about CS enough to raise a challenge against anti bots (...)

Sorry but you have no idea what you are talking about. In 2015 Valve tried to improve their anti-cheating software and started adding more intrusive ways of checking if you cheat or not. One of the methods they have started using was for example checking your dns-cache to find if you have tried to connect to the domains associated with cheating software. After one researcher found that out a huge drama in media started stating that steam/valve doesn't value your privacy (and claming other non-senses). That was the time when Valve shifted from intrusive mechanism to raising a bar for cheaters (prime status, confidence factor et cetera). The funny thing is that those people who cried the most are the ones who installed custom inhouse league clients which are way more intrusive than what valve tried to add.
There are always trade-offs. If you want a great anti-cheating software, you have to agree to intrusive options and losing a huge portion of your privacy.

Do you understand the pros and cons of your ways of working and the model you chose to use? I will bet that you certainly never though much about it or asked an expert.

Of course I do. I challenge my ways of checking info each day and that's why I wrote that without intrusive programs run on dedi-servers noone can guarantee anything. But I don't want to go that way and force server owners to download and install some kind of anti-cheat software which would need access to database and should be run 24/7.
I don't state that otservlist is spoof-free. There are most likely servers which even fools me right now. And here I will drop the discussion about the spoofing-mechanisms I use and trade-offs I've decided to choose. Each piece of information I give to the public about that will hit me with double force.

I've learned that Multi-billion companies doesn't mean they know everything they are doing

Multi Billion companies are multi-billion companies because they knew how to run their businesses and they did that better than their competition.

Due their size it's hard to keep updating themselves all the time so they are mostly using things from ~20 years ago, sometimes even farther if the CEOs don't care.

I can partially agree with that. I can give tons of examples of old companies using new technologies but also like you stated old companies using old technologies. For example a banking system which is archaic in western Europe or USA (compared to what we have for example here in Poland). However, if they don't know how to do they staff the competitors shows up and takes a portion of their cake. That's why PayPal is so popular in USA (because bank system is archaic) or that's why Revolut is one of the greates financial-services ever created.

The companies that are great and work great are those who understand they don't have all the answers, and open those answers to the great minds of the public.

I'm not closed to suggestions. I just don't agree with some of them. Listening (and agreeing) to everything that people asks you to do is a perfect way to destroy your business.

@nugo:

Essentially expand/collapse a window with your features. Then scrolling pane buttons down the bottom to cycle through windows. Allow embedded media like videos, graphics etc.

Actually we are in the process of redesigning "about server" page where we want to give server owners some space to fill it up with their advertising materials. Just like you said, videos, screenshots. Unfortunately all that staff will have to be moderated. I don't really want to see penises popping off on the main website
Also most likely the main webpage will be redesigned and we will allow servers to choose for example 2 "killing features" which they have on their servers, which would be displayed on the main page in a form of a small badge. For example, you have a great anti-bot software and want to brag about it? You can choose such badge to be displayed at the main list near your server. That will give servers some room to advertise their uniqueness but also will not break the clean main page.

@Diarreamental:
So prove that they spoof and I will be happy to ban another spoofing server.
First of all, they don't always have 180 players online (which can be easily debunked by looking at the chart of this server: https://otservlist.org/ots/1508202/charts ).
Second of all Outcast is one of the oldest servers in the list. I believe Qtor worked on it literally for the last 15 years. I've checked that server many many times. It is unique on it's own way, because people are incentivized there to login mcs (for rune making I guess) so they have probably the highest MC ratio out of all servers on the list. Still, they don't break any of our rules.
Oh, and thanks for proving my point from my first post here.

@Syntax:

1. Players can't use a site that doesn't have any or all of the servers, because there's not much selection as it is.

Literally almost every server list which was created in a past at one point crawled otservlist and added all servers listed there to their server list.

2. Server owners don't want to bother listing a server on a site that has little traffic.

Obviously, they maximize their efforts. Why bother adding a server to a list which has no traffic?

OTServlist has had a dedicated subforum on pretty much every OT forum since OT's inception.

Most of the forums wanted to cooperate with me for 2 reasons. First (the main one) was that otservlist had XX to XXX more visitors daily than those forums, secondly, because of the first point - they didn't want me to create another community forum (with all the visitors otservlist has, it wouldnt be hard). It's a win-win situation.

It's not because review systems are hard to verify, it's because of $$$.

Laughable.

Verifying a vote/review from a browser running JS is easier than verifying data coming from a server. You have captchas, fingerprinting, ip limiting, SMS verification, etc.

Another person falling into dunning–kruger effect. First of all lists based on reviews or votes are bad by design. Why?
1) it's a popularity contest so by definition servers with more players will have more reviews/votes and will be again on top BUT -> point #2.
2) people can be incentivized to write good reviews about the servers they play or bad reviews about the other servers (and there is no way to check if a content of such reviews is bad or good).
For example imagine that server X which goal is to be the most popular server in Poland starts giving free gold to their players for writing bad reviews about all other servers in Poland. Those can be things which can be hard to verify like that they bought an item but never received it. Or like GameMasters creates hidden islands where they create exp monsters for their friends playing that server. Et cetera.
Such system would be basically VERY BAD and wouldn't give ANY positive value. An easy way to destroy your competitors. Or to flood the server list owner with requests to delete such "fake" reviews. The problem is that I don't know and can't verify if those would be fakes or not.

That's why if you see a review systems in environments where money is involved you can't trust them as long as a bar to write a review is high.
For example steam partially resolves that by allowing only people who bought a game and played few hours to write a review. Doctor-review websites in my country allows comments only by those who reserved a visit and paid for it using that review website. On the other hand those reviews also can't be trusted since doctors can request the review-system to remove particular reviews (bad ones) and if they don't do that, they choose a legal path and the burden of proof is then on a review-system website. Of cource since it's a relationship many (doctors) to one (website) review-systems can't just go on war with all that doctors in court and choose to delete the reviews.

About the technical details of verifying corecctness of the entry the things which you propose are way easier to fake and hide than tampering the number of players online. So I will go one-by-one:
1) captchas. Captchas can be solved for a rate of 2$ per 1000. Maybe you don't know but it's a high source of money for many Venezuleans. I've used their services many many times
2) fingerprints. Lol. Just install browser addon which breaks finger-printing.
3) ip limiting. Just another lol. Seriously? Changing the IP is probably the first thing that script kiddi learns.
4) sms verification - ever heard about virtual phone numbers? There are even a lot of free services providing you with a phone number. Not to mention that such verification requires money-investments on my side + if not limited globally, would end up in dos attacks (against a review system) in a best case or losing a lot of money in a worst case scenario (since obviously I would have to pay for each sms-verification).

But these days Tibia projects are really low on my agenda.

Good for you

 

[Syntax]

@xinn

Literally almost every server list which was created in a past at one point crawled otservlist and added all servers listed there to their server list.

Obviously, they maximize their efforts. Why bother adding a server to a list which has no traffic?

Yes my point was you need to start with data. I was offering advice for future server list owners.
Either scrape the internet, your site, or a combination. Scraping is legal and fine, internet or your page.

Most of the forums wanted to cooperate with me for 2 reasons. First (the main one) was that otservlist had XX to XXX more visitors daily than those forums, secondly, because of the first point - they didn't want me to create another community forum (with all the visitors otservlist has, it wouldnt be hard). It's a win-win situation.

Yes, again, my point was for future server list owners if they want to dethrone your site, you need to network.

It's not because review systems are hard to verify, it's because of $$$.

Half of your homepage is bright yellow from paid sponsorship, that's fine, but I find it hard to believe changing the sort method and potentially losing revenue is "laughable".

Another person falling into dunning–kruger effect

Your reasons aren't absolute and most are dead wrong, nearly all game server lists use a point system.
Posting graphs about the dunning–kruger effect is something I'd see in /r/iamverysmart
Did ya just learn that one and you wanted to spam it everywhere?

1) it's a popularity contest so by definition servers with more players will have more reviews/votes

Yes, that's the point, stopping spoofed populations. Either you need real people or advanced bots to cheat, not a one-liner in your status protocol. I don't see how your current method isn't a popularity contest.

2) people can be incentivized to write good reviews about the servers they play or bad reviews about the other servers

You don't need a full review system, just upvoting that adds points. Yes people can be incentived to vote, but that's also the point, reciprocal traffic

Yes you'll still see higher pop servers higher in the list, but it's better than trusting & trying to verify their pop then ranking them on it.

About the technical details of verifying corecctness of the entry the things which you propose are way easier to fake and hide than tampering the number of players online.

The point is not to eliminate but to mitigate, keep that in mind. Also layer security.

1) captchas. Captchas can be solved for a rate of 2$ per 1000. Maybe you don't know but it's a high source of money

Yes, though it's another layer. That combined with IP limiting means you have to swap out IPs while botting the review system plus pay for captchas.

2) fingerprints. Lol. Just install browser addon which breaks finger-printing.

This is another added security layer, if you can't get a unique fingerprint, block the review.

3) ip limiting. Just another lol. Seriously? Changing the IP is probably the first thing that script kiddi learns.

As mentioned, this is used in conjuction with captchas to mitigate/slow down bots. I assume you sometimes manually intervene in your current system, same for this.

4) sms verification - ever heard about virtual phone numbers? There are even a lot of free services providing you with a phone number. Not to mention that such verification requires money-investments on my side + if not limited globally, would end up in dos attacks (against a review system) in a best case or losing a lot of money in a worst case scenario (since obviously I would have to pay for each sms-verification).

Yes I have, but there's a reason Twitter, Signal, and others use phone numbers for verification.
There are services that provide databases to block a lot of these virtual numbers.

Good for you

Yeah, the point here was my project listed in the first post of this thread is not active, unless developers want the tools I developed or data I scraped.

I'm glad you finally found the time to redesign your site after a decade, looking forward to it.

 

[Night Wolf]

@xinn while I fully appreciate that you took time to answer all my post, I can't simply agree with some arguments that you presented.
But it's fine, it's good and democratic to have different point of views and respect those differences and I shall do this as you pointed: It's your business, your decisions. My goal was to shed a light upon my suggestion because I certainly know what I'm talking about and I didn't even had to waste my time telling you this, I could just parse all servers and check how their data deviates to create a similar distributive normal function.
It's obvious to me, and should be to you as well that this ways of working are simply based on fakeable premises. Or do you just expect to rely only on manual checking all servers?

About Valve/Valorant anti-cheaters, they both are intrusive as hell, doesn't work and were made by teams that simply doesn't keep up with latest findings in science. FPS is one of the simplest type of games to detect cheating, all you need to do is collect a few information and catalog if they are botters or not. Reaction time between someone appearing your screen and taking a hit would be enough for detecting 98% of the cases. While vanguard works at ring 0 and guarantee that no other program will be invading it, it simply ignores that I can make a hardware to read pixels of my monitor and adjust my keyboard and mouse accordingly.
Those are just lazy solutions for easy selling things: "The FPS that has no cheaters!!" it may be in competitive where people wouldn't be able to pull a move like this, but in regular ranked matches, they stand no chance against simple python scripts and motivated people...