BUG in processing enemyfiles?

[chicken]

since 3 days enemies can join my tourneys although i am restricting their entry. i shortened my enemyfile to 485 but they still enter. interresting enough the subbing quota jumps up from 2/tourney to about 10/tourney. 5.0.3. bug?

[Mr. Dodgy]

I've found that I have have similar problems with even relatively small exclude/enemy lists. Sadly, having more than a couple-of-hundred excluded players seems to fail.

 

I have had to develop a system which allows me to generate an exclude list of just 50-100 or so repeat offenders and this seems to work quite well.

[chicken]

but that makes it rather impossible to attempt running a nearly quitterfree tourney.....

and i was so close!

 

UDAY!!!!!!!????? Gerardo!!!!!????????? :D :D :D

[jw_nl]

Jan 13th BBO suffered from a cyberwave. I was running a tourney with 25% simultaneous reds. Other TD's had the same problem.

 

In 16 tournaments before that day I had no enemies in my tourneys.

 

In the 8 following that big crash I had an AVG of 2 enemies.

 

In my last 5 tourneys I had an AVG of 4 enemies per tournament.

 

My tournamentlimit is 64 players. My blacklist : 880 enemies.

 

It's annoying to have to remove those enemies. Frustrating is to see the replacement of one blacklisted player by another blacklisted player.

 

Is there a relation to the big crash of 2007-01-13 ?

 

When will this situation stop ?

 

jw

[chicken]

additionally i sometimes notice an empty space on position one of my enemyfile when accessing it through the profilemenue. opening it with notepad everything seems to be ok.

[uday]

Here is the story.

 

When you block people on your enemy list, we figure out the list of PCs they have ever used and block each of those PCS.

 

However, there is a limit to the number of PCs that server is willing to block in this fashion.

 

When the enemy list is large, the number of pcs exceeds this list and some pcs are not blocked.

 

I used to take the most recently used pcs and use them first, but I no longer do this ( and this change is what triggered the change in behaviour ).

 

Not clear what the long term answer is but I'm thinking about it.

 

Meanwhile, the only way to guarantee that you dont see people you dont like is to use an include list, as always.

[chicken]

the sad thing is, that the enemylist i use is the result of running tourneys 4 about 2 and a half years. kind of sad, that this work seems to be wasted. what amount of nicks is processable? does it help to add a second list from a file on my pc?

[jtfanclub]

Here is the story.

 

When you block people on your enemy list, we figure out the list of PCs they have ever used and block each of those PCS.

Can you not use both methods...both block the PCs and block the userids? The number of PCs blocked should have a reasonable limit, but you should be able to block an unlimited number of userids. Sure, they can just make a new ID, but it's better than nothing.

[uday]

In my mind, the problem with blocking on username is that the perp will simply make a new username and slide back in. This way, we at least know who the enemies are.

 

Abuse and abuse prevention is a complicated issue (at least, to me). It is not clear at all that our current philosophy is viable in the long run. Not clear what to do about any of this in the short run.

[jtfanclub]

In my mind, the problem with blocking on username is that the perp will simply make a new username and slide back in. This way, we at least know who the enemies are.

 

Abuse and abuse prevention is a complicated issue (at least, to me). It is not clear at all that our current philosophy is viable in the long run. Not clear what to do about any of this in the short run.

There's two level of perps.

 

If I get upset in a tourney, or get disconnected after a bad hand and the director thinks I left in a huff, I'll get banned. But I'm not going to create a new ID just to play in a tourney that doesn't want me.

 

There is also, of course, the serial abusers who get banned from most tournaments. They would build a new ID.

 

It's true that my suggestion would not even slow down the serial abusers, but I think they're fewer in number than people who would not create a new ID just because some director didn't like them.

 

As far as a long term solution, I'm not sure what a good one is. Making it so that a computer that aleady has two IDs on it not allowed to make a 3rd without talking to an admin via email would slow them down enormously.

[chicken]

agreed,

 

95% of the people in my enemyfile i dont want to have in my tourneys for minor offenses and i didnt report them to abuse. however blocking them means that my tourneys run smoothly because i have near to zero disconnections. the last 3 or 4 tourneys were really annoying because those who have been blacklisteted were those who caused many disconnections again. running only 1 or 2 tourneys a week i am sure none of them would change their nick just to take part. if so i wouldnt care because in this case they are supposed to behave i guess.

as longer a nick is used the more intense are the bounds of the user to his nick. therefore i would prefer to have a working enemyfile blocking only the id not the PC (IP) of the offenders. a different procedure should be applied to those who are reported to abuse for serious misconduct.

[jw_nl]

There are 818 players on my blacklist, all with date, reason for blacklisting and sometimes a short description of their case. Two months ago I started the addition of the nationality and selfrated skilllevel to the records because I thought the percentage experts and nationalities on my list might be higher than the BBO-average. During this period I checked if blacklisted players entered BBO. Also I checked Myhands in those cases I had not seen them entering BBO.

What I found was that 23% of my blacklisted players had not shown up during these 2 months.

What happened to these players?

Did they stop playing on BBO?

Do they use a new UserID?

 

I'm not sure but I think 23% is too high for only inactive players. Many players might use a new UserID now. Therefore I hope Uday will maintain the blockng of IP Addresses.

 

The categories for blacklisting used in my database are:

rude to td

repeatedly complaining about A-

spoiling scores

leaving table after bad result

rude to pd or opps

leaving tourney

not accepting tournament rules

not informing TD about psyche

talking / claiming dummy

TD's who blacklisted me for unknown reason

too slow for playing in tournaments

not alerting, bad explanation

repeatedly non english during bidding/playing

bad ratio played/subbed in/subbed out

other reason

 

'Rude to TD' is the category of players I like to exclude the most. Secondly the 'A- complainers', thirdly the "fun" guys who bid 7NTXX with nothing or like to get a redoubled -4000 score.

By choosing 'Exclude enemies of the host' the software will not know my preferences. I am using this method now.

I don't know how it will be if I change to 'Exclude players from a file'. Is this file processed like the 'Exclude enemies of the host' list ? Then there will be no advantage for me.

However, if it possible that the software will give priority to the players on top of my file it might be an improvement. Then I will upload a sorted blacklist.

Of course I prefer to exclude all enemies, but if that's not possible, my wish would be starting at the top of my list.

 

An include file is no option. I usually create 'Starts when full" indy-tournaments if the number of inactive players is 500+ and no other 'only no enemies restriction'-tourneys are scheduled. An include file of 10000+ playersnames might give some problems.

 

A table with some figures is on my site

Choose Blacklist (on top) and Categories (left)

[Mr. Dodgy]

Here is the story.

 

When you block people on your enemy list, we figure out the list of PCs they have ever used and block each of those PCS.

 

However, there is a limit to the number of PCs that server is willing to block in this fashion.

 

When the enemy list is large, the number of pcs exceeds this list and some pcs are not blocked.

 

I used to take the most recently used pcs and use them first, but I no longer do this ( and this change is what triggered the change in behaviour ).

 

Not clear what the long term answer is but I'm thinking about it.

 

Meanwhile, the only way to guarantee that you dont see people you dont like is to use an include list, as always.

Some people I have blacklisted must use a LOT of PCs. I recently found that a list of just 93 names failed.

 

I appreciate the effort, Uday, really I do. The idea of cross-referencing PC 'thumbprints' to prevent re-nicknaming is highly commendable, but if it means that exclude lists simply don't work, what's the point?

[uday]

send me that list via email and I'll find out why that short list failed.

 

I think that until we find something better, it is best to be able to know which users are the perps -- the last thing we want is for them to blend into the general population by switching names or whatever.

 

If I believed that these exclusions simply didnt work, I'd do something. i think they work for the most part, but if i'm convinced otherwise I'll make the fix higher prio.

[chicken]

probably one should think about 2 different levels of enemies = additional way to mark them.

level 1 = serious offense, reported to abuse (all IPs blocked)

 

level2: persons i dont want to play with/dont want to have them in my tourneys 4 other reasons = only nick is blocked.

[emelnl]

BTW, loading an unsorted list or a list with duplicate names will not work properly either. Myabe BBO can sort and filter during loading?

 

As a suggestion: after loading a list there isnt a Save button. Using more lists you easily can make an error, and save to the wrong file.

[uday]

We're now processing the enemy list the way we always did, so I expect the enemy lists will work better than they did last week.

 

There is still a need for a long term answer; this enemy list thing doesn't feel right.

[jw_nl]

Thank you very much. In today's two tournaments after maintenance no boring enemies.

[chicken]

dito