Free website advertising @ Devinity!

Discussion in 'Garry's Mod: Flood' started by jeffreythe00, Aug 29, 2015.

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  1. jeffreythe00

    jeffreythe00 Dreamer

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    Hi everyone,

    I just wanted to post my thoughts on why you "should NOT" be allowed to have a URL either in your steam name or anywhere in flood.

    Recently I posted a ban request against a few players because they had an unknown website URL in their team name. It got denied by @Rick which is perfectly reasonable. The following comment is where I got a little lost "(I'm not just banning a player because he's in a group with an advertising name)".

    I'm honestly astonished that advertising "potentially malicious" website URL's wouldn't be considered a banable offense. It almost sounds like Devinity doesn't care if I go ingame and add a website to my team name. Hell, why wouldn't I? I won't get banned...

    "Hello and welcome to the Devinity flood where you will not get reprimanded for having a website link in your teamname!"

    I'd also like to point out that I have no other option than to open a "ban request". This is bad because it essentially invites people to do whatever they want when Staff are not online as long as it doesn't justify a ban.

    Perhaps @Bayrock and @Donkie could add a warning system to flood for administration to use as an alternative punishment method for minor offences.
     
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  2. Decap

    Decap Super Radman

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    I thought that advertising was against the rules because when SS was still a thing they had people come to our servers to promote their own, thus bringing our flood players to their servers.
     
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  3. jeffreythe00

    jeffreythe00 Dreamer

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    Advertising is a form of spam no matter how you look at it and the flood rules clearly state "Spamming of any kind is not allowed"

    Point and case here is if players are not going to be reprimanded for it in game. Then why have it? I realize maybe a ban in some cases might be harsh which is why I suggested an alternative.

    Anyway thats the idea behind the thread so we can work these kind of kinks out.
     
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  4. Rick

    Rick female nipple Gold VIP

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    The primary reason I didn't accept your request was because you didn't show me who created the group, I may just not be as strict as you hope I would be in this situation but I'm not banning somebody for wanting to join his friend in flood and his buddy having an ever so slightly naughty teamname.

    The main issue with censoring 'all links' is that you're essentially limiting what players can say, granted that if they change their teamname to pornhub.com they should be taken down a notch, but what if it's just some kid trying to get views on twitch.com/mrcreeperplayer191 whilst he streams flood, are players allowed to link to an image on imgur or something? Are they allowed to link to google? Yahoo? It's ridiculous just saying "You can't post links" and the current system that we have works find, if the person is clearly doing it to advertise or be malicious, it's an offence, but otherwise I'm not going to just start saying "HEY KID WHAT THE FUCK YOU HAVE A WWW AND A .COM STOP".
     
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  5. Bayrock

    Bayrock Founder & Developer Staff Member Founder

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    Nobody should be advertising links outside of Devinity in-game. If they want to share their images or Twitch account with us they can do that in the Off-Topic section of the forum. There's a time and place for everything. So, should I censor links in chat and team names?

    We had a similar idea about warnings in the past, and I was on board with it then. I'm on board with it now, and even moreso now that you've pointed out some holes in our routine. I'll see if I can devise a system like you've suggested soon.
     
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  6. Dawson

    Dawson Veteran Member Platinum VIP

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    Aggressive advertising usually achieves the exact opposite of what the beneficiary desires. If people want to look for more communities to join, they'd damn-well do it themselves on their own watch. Prostituting [sometimes questionable] links in-game can get distracting, annoying, and old very quickly.

    I'm all in for the establishment of regulations against them.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2015
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  7. jeffreythe00

    jeffreythe00 Dreamer

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    Rick, this is hardly about you not accepting my ban request. As a matter of fact I'm glad you didn't because this gave me the opportunity to address a few issues so we can all come to a final conclusion. I will probably never see those people again anyway. Nor did I feel they should have been banned either. They were however "spamming" and "spamming" is against the rules. Besides the Ban Requests sub-forum. I have nowhere to report players who have broken rules and if you're not going to give a single fuck about the rules when there isn't staff online then you should be reported. Simple.

    In regards to the groups I am pretty certain the listing for any team is always in an ABC order. (A:Team leader, B:teammate C:teammate) with the exception of anyone who is Bronze+ who always get placed at the top of the list. I could go more into detail but I think you get the point.

    I don't deny the fact that there are many legitimate people who may just want to share their favorite meme, their favorite video or something similar. In my opinion I think thats "mostly" fine but there are others who may post phishing links, java hijackers and worse. You can't possibly know unless you visit the site yourself and even then you may not know if you have been exploited. To get down to the bottom of it, Devinity needs to decide if they want to moniter links or not. In my opinion theres almost nothing you could possibly gain from posting links on flood. (What about sharing pictures? Why can't you do this on steam? What about my twitch? I think if you're desperate enough to spam gmod witch your twitch channel then you probably don't have much interesting/unique content otherwise you wouldn't need to post it on Devinity. and I could go on)

    I agree and there are MANY more options for sharing content other than our forum. I don't think you need to take it that far but that is one way of doing it. I personally think a warning system is far superior but then someone would have to check every questionable website. This is a very rare problem anyway but should be taken seriously because if someone else can do it then I can too.
     
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  8. Donkie

    Donkie Founder & Senior Developer Platinum VIP

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    I don't got the energy to read the wall of texts but my opinion is that advertising is spam and should be taken as it. This is a very case-to-case issue and the moderator at hand should decide the players fate.

    X Gmod Server Advertising? Not allowed
    Free strawberries in UK!!! ? Not allowed
    Donkie: twitch.com/donkieplays ? Allowed
     
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  9. Decap

    Decap Super Radman

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    It's in my opinion we need to put a little note next to the spam rule that states "Do not advertise websites or other game servers" or some variation of that. I don't care about twitch or even a youtube link because that might mean they are making videos or streams of Flood which in turn could bring us more players. The problem isn't really what is considered spam or not because we all have a general idea of what is spam and what isn't. I think the problem is that it isn't clear in the rules to everyone else. We don't need to go so far as to censor links in chat, we just need to add a small sentence to the rules that states advertising is considered spam. We don't even have this problem often as I can't remember the last time we had to ban someone for advertising. But just to make it easier on everyone in the future, we should make it clear in our rules.
     
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  10. jeffreythe00

    jeffreythe00 Dreamer

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    ^ I couldn't agree more with what Decap. I don't think twitch, youtube, imgur, or any of that shouldn't be allowed. I just do not want to see things like spam sites, gore/shock sites, porn and potentially malicious sites being posted.
     
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  11. Firedraft

    Firedraft Devine Member Silver VIP

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    What about sites like csgorumble.com csgojackpot.com etc.
     
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  12. jeffreythe00

    jeffreythe00 Dreamer

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    I don't have any personal vendetta against sites like those but they are gambling sites and I think @Bayrock would have to decide if they're OK or not. Allowing them opens the possibility that other people try scamming people out of their items and I'm not sure if Devinity can be held liable if it were to allow sites like that to be posted and endorsed. Again its something Bayrock would have to approve I think.
     
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