Approving mods

[monday]

There are file hosting services like mediafire that don't take responsibility for what is uploaded/downloaded from them so why would a gamehacking forum take responsibility for it? Is it a part of some mission to save people unaware of risks? Why don't let people judge for themselves who they trust? + Make them aware by for example placing a banner over threads saying "approved"/"not approved yet - download on your own responsibility"?

From a perspective of someone who shares only open source projects it's a pain in the ass, every small bug/flaw found in the code = waiting for approval again. Such mistakes happen a lot, especially that no one here works as a "mod creator" and has time to test+check everything 20 times before uploading like they would if they made some commercial project...

 

[4changesLeft]

+1 +1 +1

 

[0x_]

About which forum are you talking specifically and do you talk about post editing also or only new attachments?
Boards have custom permissions, uploads need to be checked as we allow people to upload files to our servers (for multiple reasons one of them being the fear of dead links) and with this comes imo a responsibility to ensure we do not host malware or anything alike.


Also as you have more than 20 posts you are automagically assigned to the "member" group which has less restrictions regarding updating attachments; this means new attachments don't need to be approved but topic edits do.

 

[monday]

I meant any downloadable content (edited or just uploaded) on the whole forum regardless of sections. Protecting your own server seems reasonable but combined with the rule about hot linking decreases functionality a lot...

Is there anything else other than the fear of dead links that keeps this rule alive? Shouldn't it be the mod author's business to manage the links? If it's also about the responsibility to ensure you don't host malware then the idea itself sounds noble but in practice it makes more harm than good... If you look at the mediafire terms and conditions there's a statement like this:

You are solely responsible for your Content and your interactions with other users of the Services.
When you allow other users access to your Content, you, not MediaFire, are responsible for what others do with it.
(...)
[size=x-small]Content is provided to you AS IS. You understand that when using the Services, you will be exposed to Content from a variety of sources, and that MediaFire is not responsible for the accuracy, usefulness, safety, or intellectual property rights of or relating to such Content. You further understand and acknowledge that you may be exposed to Content that is inaccurate, offensive, indecent, or objectionable, and you agree to waive, and hereby do waive, any legal or equitable rights or remedies you have or may have against MediaFire with respect thereto, and, to the extent permitted by applicable law, agree to indemnify and hold harmless MediaFire, its owners, operators, affiliates, licensors, and licensees to the fullest extent allowed by law regarding all matters related to any Content and your use of the Services. You acknowledge your use of Content is at your sole risk.[/size]

Isn't it better approach than restricting forum functionality to such extent?

 

[0x_]

Fun fact: Mod authors will go inactive after time, therefore links will be dead if uploaded to most of the public hosts available enforcing attachment rules for mods do solve this problem w/o problems and reduces the "download broken" posts.

We / I allow external links on special situations f.e. GitHub latest release download, even tho we want at least one attachment to be present (even if outdated).

I however agree at the fact that the "unapproving of posts on edits or new attachments" make things harder for mod authors.

I now disabled the need of moderation for post edits and attachment edits new threads need to be approved still. And this change only applies to "General -> Releases" as I am myself thought of another solution.
On new threads I approve I'll reply with a timestamp of the last check of the attached files, this will give people the possibility to compare my "latest O.K. timestamp" and the current version.
It's more work for me but if it makes people happy it's ok I guess.

I can't speak for the CLEO section as this stuff is kinda managed by @springfield and @Mr.Christmas and I'll leave it up to them.

 

[springfield]

A poll is the simplest decision.

Thing is cleo scripts are undetectable to most antivirus software, since they are just compiled gibberish. So people can easily abuse this and release any simple cleo hack/cheat that can also contain a keylogger, or downloads and runs a keylogger, virus, malware etc.

We should add an exclusion for known members that are trustworthy, and also remove approval for comments edits.

There are file hosting services like mediafire that don't take responsibility for what is uploaded/downloaded

Mediafire actually blocks downloads for a file they flagged as a virus.

 

[MrChristmas]

In my opinion, the main concern is about security which leads to the reputation of ugbase. If we would allow any user to come, release Cleo cheat and allow him to edit it at any point, we would basically allow them to upload hacks into their files and give them to any user which would download that files therefore we would basically support breaking users privacy. Like @Springfield said, viruses in cleo scipts cannot be detected by most of the antiviruses therefore the only protection which we can give is to manually check these files. where does the reputation comes in place? Well, if there's a user which we call "learn to read" user which basically ignores every warnings and rules will download such a file with viruses inside it would result in a lot of complains from him to us as he will be basically saying that we allow this type of things, he will spread the words that ugbase is full of viruses and we will lose our reputation and people will think that we are full of viruses.

 

[0x_]

TL;DR
Viruses / Malware / Spyware are bad and we need to form a team with special skills against it.
Nah, we just need to get the grasp CLEO virus situation could be kinda solved with some sort of additional mod which sandboxes CLEO which is kinda impossibru also because people won't download it

We also could implement some sort of automatic scan before download, but then again we need to specialize on patterns and you can pretty easily run arbitrary code on CLEO.

See solutions bring arguments :'d but I guess cleo's wont get updated that often

 

[monday]

There are multiple ways of making downloads safe to a very high extent without making mod makers lifes harder, e.g. 0x688's idea with timestamps approvals. Punishing all for the sins of few affects ugbase reputation maybe even greater than a free file exchange service would

 

[0x_]

My other idea was an "in ugbase implemented" mod portal which requires a ton of coding due to it's nature of complexity.
I pretty much had / have a big plan regarding future mod releases, but as always I would be alone coding this and it's probably not worth the time investment therefore I never did progress in that area.

Anyway, the current "plan" works for now until I overcome myself and dig into the MyBB plug-in structure so I can make custom plug-ins for us (I still don't like the templates & hooks D

External File Hosting for mods - as already explained dead links are a no go it results in people getting confused and disoriented like a cow in a big city they'll leave their feces everywhere with the words "DOWNLOAD BROKEN PLZ FIX" written in it. That's the main reason why external hosting isn't the best thing for mods but as I said exceptions are possible.


Also it's not only about our reputation but it's still a point- it's about the protection for the unsuspecting users. It's sadly a fact that most of the people on the interwebz are still inexperienced and often believe in the good - Problem here is bad guys who abuse these kind of people they'll still get infected and probably make profit out of them which I don't like and you maybe neither.

TL;DR Version:
External Hosting of files is bad because of broken links;
Bad guys always will try to infect other people and that's what I am trying to suppress.

 

[4changesLeft]

0x688 is right, as much as I dislike this "approve" system, it is for the best of everyone in this forum.
No one wants their PC to get RATed from a creepy pedophile weirdo.

Because I think there were some cases like this here before xD