Permissions

[Jeyge]

It will be a sad day for me once R5 comes out. They will finally get their wish and break my favorite permission plugins as well as the many others who still run 2.7.4 or 3.x. But lucky for them, they have the biggest spammer of them all advertising his plugin in almost every thread about permissions. Again, spamming his plugin not answering their questions. I don't mind trolls if they at least know they are trolls but it just isn't helpful telling everyone they should run your plugin.

(Person with a problem) I have some error complaining about a \t. How do I fix it.
(Biggest troll on the boards) Run my plugin.
(Person with a problem) Will that fix my problem?
(Biggest troll on the boards) No, but you will be just one more person running my plugin.

[Drakia]

Ugh, R5 is going to break so much shit, it sucks. There's too many barely-managed plugins that people use for them to completely change how the event system works >.>
Also, who is spamming which Permissions plugin? If it's PEX, smack him upside the head, as PEX is the worst piece of shit in existence.

[Jeyge]

When Microsoft needs to clean up their code, they add an Ex version of the API call or dll and change the old call to call the new call. It would have been a much cleaner way to modify the event system/every other API they decided to remove.

The banana guy is the one who spams his bPermissions although his posts are kind of hit or miss on how helpful he is. As of late, he has actually been more helpful than advertising. Overall though, he mostly just advertises his plugins which he then drops support for.

[Jeyge]

I should probably explain a little more about why I dislike all of codename_B's advertising. I know some of you like him and his plugins. Here is a perfect example of what he likes to do and I'll explain a little as to why it is wrong and should be dealt with:
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/permissionex.41340/
As you can tell from the post, the person is having problems with PEx. Now perhaps that person deserves help and perhaps they don't but it really isn't for us to make that call, only to decide to help. Throw out the first response and what do you have, yep, the banana sticking out of his pants posting his advertisement. Now why is that a problem? Well, if the person is having trouble with PEx, they will most likely have trouble with any permissions plugin and he isn't well known for actually helping people. If we were to say they actually switched to bPermissions and couldn't get that to work, what would be his new answer? Read the wiki. If they still didn't understand? Perhaps you shouldn't run a server. Did he even remotely help that person? No.

I've followed his posts for some time now and I've seen this cycle over and over again. He isn't there to help anyone but himself. Over time, it is really easy to profile frequent posters. You can just start to expect that if you see Celtic posting in a thread he is just doing it to take the other side and argue with you. If you see our own Mr. Man, he is just trolling. If you see the banana, he is just going to advertise. In the past, if you were to see FootInMouth, it was just to make himself look like an idiot.

[Inscrutable]

This word Troll, I'm not sure it has much meaning anymore.

M1st3rm4n was often quite helpful, until it became hard to say anything critical of Bukkit
without a crown of wannabes jumping on it to earn brownie points with the staff.

Drakia used to be really helpful too, until eclipsed by munters.
Afforess unashamedly wears the Troll moniker at times too.
But both of them have been invaluable in the development of Bukkit.

What I see is jaded folk who are sick of the rigid (and sometimes invisible) ideology
of the Bukkit development team. Censoring folk like this is the equivalent of cutting
off your nose to spite your face. Much of the rancor seems to come from self-important
types who see poking fun at the problems as malevolence, and censorship as an
appropriate management tool.

As for codenameB? He maintains a permissions plugin, so he will always be overwhelmed with
requests for help. It happens to them all. The plugin has a large complement of staff on BukkitDev
(ptui) so he's not the only port of call. Hopefully sucking him into the vortex of Spout will help
keep him from making offers he can't back up (bMinimap is a pretty good spout addon).

Pigeonholing folk like this isn't really very constructive, IMHO.
I'd rather give them the freedom to break out of the box than back them into corners.

OK, enough rambling from me. I forgot what I was talking about anyway

[Jeyge]

I support Mr. Man 100% in what he does but it did take a while to understand exactly what that was. My first exposure to him was in a thread where he was just taking the other side and it seemed as though he was doing it to annoy the OP. But over time, I came to realize that he was very helpful and liked to troll at the same time. My view is that there can be good trolls that just go for the smiley and then there can be bad trolls that are just there to annoy. Mr. Man is in the good category.

Celtic is in the bad category. He is one of those who hides his trolling with his very prolific prose. He even gains a lot of support just because of his writing style. Some times it is hard to see exactly what someone is saying because they can hide it in a very well written paragraph but at the same time, his type of troll is exactly the type that causes all of the problems they are seeing right now. If it were up to me, I would have nailed him with infraction after infraction for what he said in all of the permissions threads that were around back in June, July and August.

As for the banana, if he is so busy, why did he decide he needed to post in that thread? Others have seen what it is that he does and have even called him out on it but he just finds it a joke. I think it just adds to the problems.

I completely agree with you on Drakia. As I've said many times on these forums, he was very helpful and honestly took way more crap than I would ever have been able to take. But in the end, he was dismissed as one of those who were causing problems and banned.

As for what is causing all of the problems, I think you can take a look at the state of the world today. Is it really wall street, the president, the queen, the king, the dictator, the emperor, .... Or is it the little bird who filled your head with these ideas that it is bad to delete posts, it is bad to not allow differing opinions, it is bad to run plugin x, .... I honestly find some of the posters who have been allowed to post their crap month after month to be the cause of the problem. The staff just don't have the balls to start doing what they need to do to fix things. They would rather be friends with everyone instead of standing up to those who cause problems in their subtle way.

[Jeyge]

As an example of why I think that the users of Bukkit cause the problems and not the admins/mods, I will point us back to the tips post again. http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/so-no-tips.61214/ If we read thru that post that just rehashes that which has been hashed to death already, is it really the one or multiple deletions from the thread that riled everyone up or is it the OP who decided to rehash something that didn't need to be hashed again? Wouldn't it have been so much better if that thread hadn't existed or at least was stopped right at the beginning and pointed to the poll that already existed? Not to excuse the way the admins/mods handle posts like this but I would say things would have been better if the post just didn't exist.

[Jeyge]

And the hits just keep on coming. I really hate to support the admins/mods side of things but these posts just keep getting further and further out of hand. Now we have the "logical queries" defense being used on them.
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/unacceptable-communication.62101/#post-986333
I fail to see the logical queries which haven't already been responded to. If you skip over their unusual use of the delete key when it shouldn't be used, they completely stated exactly why they did what they did. Make up any excuse you want, it still doesn't change what that plugin was going to be used for.

Edit - in regards to why I think it was deleted, it goes back to what I said in the other post. If you don't taunt them with the whole piracy thing, they just ignore the posts.

[Drakia]

I've made a few posts in that topic that got removed (Pretty obvious they would ) But I'm against you on this one, I think the admins and mods are being quite stupid with this.

The plugin description clearly states it protects AGAINST cracked clients:

It provides a security against logging into an admin's/or any other player's account via cracked client

It is not supporting piracy (Though again, I'm against offline-mode, but there are already plugins that do the same thing as this one that was removed).

As I said in response to that topic:

Or you could for once admit you're wrong and change your stance on something, but I don't see that happening until a good portion of your userbase is gone. You blame me for the downfall of Bukkit, I blame you and your terrible management skills.

I'll put it this way, if you actually open-sourced your de-obfuscation tools so as to have competition, nobody would be here. It's not my fault, nor Don's fault, nor MisterMan's fault (Hi Misterman!), it's your fault, and your fault alone.

[Jeyge]

I think the thing I like about what they are doing is that they have finally taken a stand against something. If you mention piracy in any way, you will have your thread deleted or closed. I've wanted them to do that for quite a while now. You are right that it does say it protects against cracked clients but wouldn't it have been better if it just didn't mention that at all? And if you aren't running a cracked client, then how do you log in to an offline server in the first place? I know if I do that on my test server, I'll always log in as "player" and there can only be one of me.

As for your post that was deleted (they must have been fast because I had that thread open and I never saw your post), you are absolutely correct that you, Don and MrMan had nothing to do with what is happening now or even 6 months ago. Their lack of any knowledge of how to run a forum like that one is going to cause the downfall of Bukkit and they will end up losing all that money I'm sure they have been promised from Curse.

[Drakia]

You are right that it does say it protects against cracked clients but wouldn't it have been better if it just didn't mention that at all? And if you aren't running a cracked client, then how do you log in to an offline server in the first place? I know if I do that on my test server, I'll always log in as "player" and there can only be one of me.

Not really, because depending on what it does it could be specifically designed to protect against cracked clients, and that was what he was advertising.
A cracked client will allow you to define your name, so instead of "Player" you could log in as "Drakia". In a normal offline server this would give you any permissions of Drakia, which is what plugins like this users, xAuth and other auth plugins are designed to protect against.

[Drakia]

Also, if they are so worried about offline-mode authentication, and piracy, and looking like they support piracy, then they should remove the online-mode feature entirely.

[Jeyge]

The Evil one just confirmed what I've said before that if they don't mention it, they won't delete it.

Look guys, we're just trying to cover our backs, not trying to impose on you. Just leave out any mention of anything that could possibly be associated with illegal activity and we're good. That's all we're saying...

Without that line, his plugin probably would have been allowed. But he may just be backtracking because of all the problems they are causing.

[Jeyge]

Also, if they are so worried about offline-mode authentication, and piracy, and looking like they support piracy, then they should remove the online-mode feature entirely.

I agree. It really doesn't belong there anymore but I'm pretty sure it is built in to the basic Minecraft server code so I'll bet they can't actually do that.

[Drakia]

Also, if they are so worried about offline-mode authentication, and piracy, and looking like they support piracy, then they should remove the online-mode feature entirely.

I agree. It really doesn't belong there anymore but I'm pretty sure it is built in to the basic Minecraft server code so I'll bet they can't actually do that.

It would be quite easy to remove the reading of that line, and always define it as true.
As for his backtracking, I think he's finally realizing the fallout from his bad management, every time the evil one speaks up more and more people leave that community.

[Jeyge]

Also, if they are so worried about offline-mode authentication, and piracy, and looking like they support piracy, then they should remove the online-mode feature entirely.

I agree. It really doesn't belong there anymore but I'm pretty sure it is built in to the basic Minecraft server code so I'll bet they can't actually do that.

It would be quite easy to remove the reading of that line, and always define it as true.
As for his backtracking, I think he's finally realizing the fallout from his bad management, every time the evil one speaks up more and more people leave that community.

I thought he was understanding it back in October but then he promoted SwearWord and others to mods. And now they go delete crazy and he has to relearn everything again. I have noticed that more of his mods have been online over the past week. But with Craftbukkit++ working as well as it is, it may just be too late. And then he can say bye to the free trips to Minecon and the like.

[hatstand]

It will be a sad day for me once R5 comes out. They will finally get their wish and break my favorite permission plugins as well as the many others who still run 2.7.4 or 3.x. But lucky for them, they have the biggest spammer of them all advertising his plugin in almost every thread about permissions. Again, spamming his plugin not answering their questions. I don't mind trolls if they at least know they are trolls but it just isn't helpful telling everyone they should run your plugin.

(Person with a problem) I have some error complaining about a \t. How do I fix it.
(Biggest troll on the boards) Run my plugin.
(Person with a problem) Will that fix my problem?
(Biggest troll on the boards) No, but you will be just one more person running my plugin.

Got bored, decompiled 2.7.4, updated to non-deprecated shit. No idea if it works, seems to though. Fuck if I'm touching 3.x, that thing is an abomination (See: "Read Timed Out").

Clicky.

Edit: I get the feeling this was a horrible idea, now that I think about it.

[Jeyge]

You didn't need to decompile the jar btw. TheYeti has at least been nice enough to allow the source to still be out there even though we no longer have anywhere we can discuss problems.
https://github.com/TheYeti/Permissions

Now on to stranger things, has anyone noticed the increase in amount of help posts from people still running Permissions 2.x and 3.x? I'm thinking there are going to be a lot of very unhappy people out there soon.