Ways to Reduce Viewbombing Attempts

[Lythiaren]

Those who do it already follow those steps. Including people who viewbomb their own eggs thinking it will help them grow faster.

Edited February 18, 2012 by Lythiaren

[Syphoneira]

I'd like to bring up a few points, if I may.

 

I have 'aid accepted' on, not because I need it under normal circumstances, but in case my puter crashes or something goes wrong, in the hope that if for some reason I can't get on for some extended period, someone will notice and save my growing dragons.

 

Many people think of this as insurance, just in case something goes wrong and just in case someone notices your dragons are within a day or two of death and cares enough to do something to make them hatch/grow up.

 

I would hate to have this made difficult/impossible.

 

 

 

We already know that a determined view bomber will kill eggs/hatchies by placing them on high-traffic sites which needn't be fansites at all, and may even be set up specifically for the purpose of killing people's creatures - because it has been done.

 

Altering the way the fansites work won't stop this any more than it'll stop auto-refreshers used for ebil purposes.

 

It sucks, but the only way of dealing with a scroll-stalker having that type of emotional issue is to only unfog growing dragons when they can be frequently checked and re-hidden as necessary.

 

Messing with the fansites or the way we have to add dragons to them may do far more harm than good, especially if people then assume 'problem solved' until it's too late.

[demonicvampiregirl]

I thought sickness and softshell were invented so that we do have to pay attention to out scrolls, and not just catch and then go on vacation... To make it not a lazy game.

 

But it's true - a determined viewbomber will carry on no matter what ! Even find a way to code around code... I guess there's no way. (And yes, demi - I did mean you !) It would be nice to be able to show only our adults, though.

I don't normally mine sickness and softshell but on barely 7 hour old Valentines eggs? I have no idea what prompted this person to even do such a thing. Mine were CB and I had just stepped away from DC for about 2 hours at most I think came back and they was sick.

 

It took about 2 days just to find what sites they was in so either they did have the codes or had my scroll. It's seemed to have stopped now. I'm thinking the views they got now are from curious lookers and they aren't that high either.

[Fuzzbucket]

I'd like to bring up a few points, if I may.

 

I have 'aid accepted' on, not because I need it under normal circumstances, but in case my puter crashes or something goes wrong, in the hope that if for some reason I can't get on for some extended period, someone will notice and save my growing dragons.

 

Many people think of this as insurance, just in case something goes wrong and just in case someone notices your dragons are within a day or two of death and cares enough to do something to make them hatch/grow up.

 

I would hate to have this made difficult/impossible.

 

 

 

We already know that a determined view bomber will kill eggs/hatchies by placing them on high-traffic sites which needn't be fansites at all, and may even be set up specifically for the purpose of killing people's creatures - because it has been done.

 

Altering the way the fansites work won't stop this any more than it'll stop auto-refreshers used for ebil purposes.

 

It sucks, but the only way of dealing with a scroll-stalker having that type of emotional issue is to only unfog growing dragons when they can be frequently checked and re-hidden as necessary.

 

Messing with the fansites or the way we have to add dragons to them may do far more harm than good, especially if people then assume 'problem solved' until it's too late.

Sadly - I agree with this, on reflection. I was just so hacked off about demi.... it did look deliberate. And I am SURE when my four commons went in one night, that HAD to be. NO-ONE looks at commons out of curiosity !!!

 

But yes about the accepting aid. I do have a scroll sitter who watches anyway, and a few IRL friends who would do something if I was in trouble, as I do travel a lot and sometimes one or other internet goes down - but still...

[Aamaranthine]

I have thought about this a lot!

 

I had my dragons view bombed many times. And I agree with you on: if someone decides to get your dragons killed - he will try and do that no matter what.

I lost a few eggs even when I was sitting at the computer. Checked my eggies with 100 views and started with my work. 45 minutes later, they had 10.000 views and they were dying with no chance of saving them. One week later, when I unfogged another batch of eggs for 15 minutes, they gained 6.000 views. (I was able to save them though, lucky.)

I thought about the API login, but as you already said, guys, there are like one million+1 ways how to kill he dragons. And I am pretty sure the person who killed mine didn't use any fansites...

Edited February 19, 2012 by Aamaranthine

[argenta]

I don't really have much to add other than that I do wish there were some reasonable way to stop the viewbombing. I stopped playing regularly for a couple years, then came back around Christmas and found out that trading is SO much easier now, so I finally made a forum account. I caught my first Thuwed in the AP and wanted to see if I could trade it for maybe a few of the breeds I was missing. And...someone killed it.

 

Now, in this case I MIGHT be willing to think it was just the breeder not understanding that Sunrise/Sunset eggs can only hatch at certain times and that it wasn't a malicious killing...but it was still highly distressing to leave work with my egg fine and log in later that evening at home (maybe 3 hours later) to find a dead hatchling on my scroll.

 

But like I said...I have nothing really useful to add to the discussion. I just wish there were some way to code things to prevent it from happening.

[olympe]

Just wanted to put the same link here that I posted in the other thread about fansites and view bombing.

Guardian BSA suggestion

Might be an alternative with less hassle to code for all people involved (TJ and fansite owners).

[Syphoneira]

Just wanted to put the same link here that I posted in the other thread about fansites and view bombing.

Guardian BSA suggestion

Might be an alternative with less hassle to code for all people involved (TJ and fansite owners).

 

 

Brilliant - I'd completely forgotten about that!

[Chanilove]

Well, this thread hasn't seen a post in about six months. Yay for necromancy!

 

As some of you may be aware, there's been a bit of conflict going on in the Fansites sub-board concerning viewbombing. I don't think it's become an increased problem, but it's still a problem. I don't think "it's not happening a lot" or "it's not happened to me" are proper excuses to not do anything, so here I am.

 

To bring everyone up to speed on what's been going down in the Fansites board:

Adding username/password bits to all the fansites was brought up, but that's been tossed out. Not only does it require a lot of work on the site administrator end, but hatcheries aren't the only way viewbombing can be done. It would help, but it wouldn't solve the issue. Also, I figure a lot of you wouldn't be agreeable with having to log in every time you needed to add your babies to clicksites.

 

Implementing an API login on every fansite was suggested, but again it was thrown out. All the clicksites would have to comply for this to be effective and, like with the last method, it wouldn't solve the problem. It'd be like chopping a weed down -- if the roots are still there, it might just grow back.

 

So, our conclusion was that the solution doesn't lie in fansites. That's why I've brought this here -- a change to the Cave is the only real solution. I'm going to quote pinkgothic, a helper at DDF, here:

The entire Dragon Cave site is laid out to make it as easy as possible to share your dragons on the internet, be that in signatures on forums, as little images for a section in your homepage, or through hatcheries. If you plug up one hole (hatcheries), there are still plenty others that you have no control over. If it's to be addressed, it needs to be addressed at the one place that it can reliably deal with all vectors: The site itself. Otherwise it's really just band-aids across a torn limb and the problem simply will not go away.

 

I've already mentioned it in this thread, but it serves repeating - there was once a suggestion about being able to whitelist sites based on the HTTP referer - you'd be able to decide e.g. 'I accept views if they come from http://greg-kennedy.com/dragcave/ (Egg Drop Soup) or http://hatchingdragons.com/ (Hatching Your Dragons)'. Since that'll block all incoming views if they don't come from a whitelisted URL, that puts you in control of where your eggs can or can't go, and doesn't rely on other people playing by the rules - which is why I think it's likely the most viable solution to the problem. The biggest downside is that some people configure their browsers not to send a referer; they'd be unable to view whitelist-requiring eggs even on fansites that were whitelisted. Another downside is that (if you opted to use this feature) you'd have to maintain the list whenever you stop using a certain fansite or start using a new one. But I imagine those things would be a small price to pay? Iunno. I'd really like to see this implemented, though.

 

I'd like to see it implemented as well. I wasn't able to find the specific thread pinkgothic mentioned, but this seems like the next best thing. Thoughts?

Edited August 11, 2012 by Chanilove

[Ashes The Second]

That's a great idea -- but I'm just worried it won't destroy all of the weeds cut down, and does TJ use HTTP or HTML?

[Pokemonfan13]

One issue with whitelisting sites, just because you normally use one fansite [AOND for me], doesn't mean you don't use others when you get something low-time that needs more views quicker or if you want a hatchling to gender quickly. I'd end up at least adding Silvi's Lair and Eggs Around the World, and those three together are more than enough to kill a new egg.

 

And if I start experimenting again I'd have to whitelist just about every fansite and I'm back to square one.

 

 

At least have the whitelist be a list with checkboxes that you can access, and if you uncheck a site you are temporarily blocking views from it, but it remains on the list so you an use it easily. That way if you have a bunch of fansites enabled from a recent experiment or low time egg or gendering emergency and you get a viewbombing attempt you can just uncheck all the sites instead of trying to find out which ones are the ones they're added to.

 

There would also have to be a way to permanently remove a site from the list. If you're not going to use it any more, or if it dies as a fansite, that way you can keep your whitelist trimmed to only the sites you're going to be using.

 

Would there be a way to let a fansite know views from it are being blocked so it can remove those dragons to make more room for dragons that are being helped?

 

 

The thing I hate about viewbombing is it has been a problem for years and absolutely nothing has been done to stop it. It is in my nature to be extremely frustrated when there is a problem and there's nothing I can do to fix it, so when I think there might be a way to spur the people who can fix it to fix it I try....

Edited August 11, 2012 by Pokemonfan13

[pinkgothic]

Quick technological aside:

 

That's a great idea -- but I'm just worried it won't destroy all of the weeds cut down, and does TJ use HTTP or HTML?

 

Both - and a server-side scripting language.

 

HTTP is a protocol computers use to communicate on the internet, where a client (your browser) sends a request to a server (the Dragon Cave site). HTML is the language most webpages are written in, i.e. that's the language of the document the server serves to the client. HTML looks like this:

 

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
 <head>
   <title>This is the page title, the thing that shows up as your browser tab text.</title>
 </head>
 <body>
   This is the content of the webpage; there's usually more than just some raw text here.
 </body>
</html>

 

(You can see the HTML of Dragon Cave if you look at the page source with your browser.)

 

That HTML is generated by a program running on TJ's server that speaks with a database that contains all our dragons, and does other neat stuff that a static HTML document wouldn't be able to do.

 

That program could also check the additional information your browser sends to the site each time it requests a document. The referer [sic] is one of those attributes.

 

Hope that helps!

[Chanilove]

One issue with whitelisting sites, just because you normally use one fansite [AOND for me], doesn't mean you don't use others when you get something low-time that needs more views quicker or if you want a hatchling to gender quickly.  I'd end up at least adding Silvi's Lair and Eggs Around the World, and those three together are more than enough to kill a new egg.

 

And if I start experimenting again I'd have to whitelist just about every fansite and I'm back to square one.

 

 

At least have the whitelist be a list with checkboxes that you can access, and if you uncheck a site you are temporarily blocking views from it, but it remains on the list so you an use it easily.  That way if you have a bunch of fansites enabled from a recent experiment or low time egg or gendering emergency and you get a viewbombing attempt you can just uncheck all the sites instead of trying to find out which ones are the ones they're added to.

 

There would also have to be a way to permanently remove a site from the list.  If you're not going to use it any more, or if it dies as a fansite, that way you can keep your whitelist trimmed to only the sites you're going to be using.

 

Would there be a way to let a fansite know views from it are being blocked so it can remove those dragons to make more room for dragons that are being helped?

 

 

The thing I hate about viewbombing is it has been a problem for years and absolutely nothing has been done to stop it.  It is in my nature to be extremely frustrated when there is a problem and there's nothing I can do to fix it, so when I think there might be a way to spur the people who can fix it to fix it I try....

Perhaps you could enable/disable the option for certain eggs/hatchlings? There could be a checkbox next to each egg/unfrozen hatchling. I'm not sure how data-heavy this would be for the site, though, as I'm not quite a programmer.

 

I agree that something should definitely be done about it. Like I said in my earlier post, just because it isn't happening a lot or hasn't happened to you does not mean that it shouldn't be stopped. An issue is an issue and this one is as old as Dragon Cave itself. We shouldn't be forced to "work around" a problem for this long; something should be done to resolve it.

 

That said I'd like to say that I'm grateful to TJ and staff for everything. The site is free, fun, and amazing. I don't want to come off as an ungrateful >.>

 

That's a great idea -- but I'm just worried it won't destroy all of the weeds cut down, and does TJ use HTTP or HTML?

HTTP is a protocol used on the World-Wide Web globally. It is not a programming language, HTML is. They're both used on Dragon Cave. I'm afraid I may have caused some confusion.

 

In layman's terms, you will be able to control which site(s) your dragons are displayed on. If you choose to use it, your dragons will not be displayed on any sites that are not in your whitelist. So yes, it would uproot the proverbial weeds. As far as I can see, there'd be no way around it.

Edited August 11, 2012 by Chanilove

[olympe]

Well, for people who're worried about their eggs/hatchies or only certain eggs/hatchies, fogging is still an option. (And I'd still support the guardian BSA because it's a simple solution to a long-standing problem - at least if it is used by the player.)

[Chanilove]

Well, for people who're worried about their eggs/hatchies or only certain eggs/hatchies, fogging is still an option. (And I'd still support the guardian BSA because it's a simple solution to a long-standing problem - at least if it is used by the player.)

PF13 is likely aware of the Guardian BSA, since I believe she had a hand in spriting them. I'm aware as well, but I prefer the Identify BSA for the Guardian, though I haven't been tracking the thread for it lately...

 

BACK ON TOPIC!

As I said in my post, we shouldn't be forced to work around it, which is what we're doing right now by hiding our scrolls, fogging our dragons, potentially using BSA's, etc. Also, you cannot (currently) fog dragons you are currently gifting/trading, which is a flaw in the current system.

 

The main point here is that we're currently working around a problem that should've been solved long ago. I have no idea about how BSA's are chosen or if it would be quicker to do things that way than another. I just want to see something happen.

Edited August 11, 2012 by Chanilove

[Pokemonfan13]

I think it's probably best to whitelist or whatever for the entire scroll, but being able to control each egg and hatchling definitely appeals to me, since I'd be able to have fansites available for growing eggs I want to keep, but at the same time be able to block all views for ones I'm keeping in teleport.

 

Ideally if the each egg has its own whitelist one is used you have a "default" whitelist that all eggs that enter your scroll get. You can set that whitelist to be empty if you like, or to have the fansite(s) or forum(s) or whatever that you normally add your eggs to so you don't have to fiddle with whitelists every time. You then access that list for an egg and have a full list of all the sites you have added to your possible whitelist and can uncheck the defaults if you want to prevent all views or check extras if you need extra sites for that egg or hatchling.

[Ashes The Second]

Quick technological aside:

 

 

 

Both - and a server-side scripting language.

 

HTTP is a protocol computers use to communicate on the internet, where a client (your browser) sends a request to a server (the Dragon Cave site). HTML is the language most webpages are written in, i.e. that's the language of the document the server serves to the client. HTML looks like this:

 

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
 <head>
   <title>This is the page title, the thing that shows up as your browser tab text.</title>
 </head>
 <body>
   This is the content of the webpage; there's usually more than just some raw text here.
 </body>
</html>

 

(You can see the HTML of Dragon Cave if you look at the page source with your browser.)

 

That HTML is generated by a program running on TJ's server that speaks with a database that contains all our dragons, and does other neat stuff that a static HTML document wouldn't be able to do.

 

That program could also check the additional information your browser sends to the site each time it requests a document. The referer [sic] is one of those attributes.

 

Hope that helps!

Thanks, pink. ^^;.

 

I hope TJ will just do something about this problem.

[Pokemonfan13]

And yes, guardians are my babies. I came up with the original concept and did most of the work on them. =3 I also like Identify for the guardian BSA, but storm/gray dragons also work well for a "fogging" BSA. I posted one called "Active fogging" that, if used with a new egg, would prevent all sickness deaths. But it doesn't help with keeping views at 0 for an egg in teleport.

 

It would be a rather simple fix to be able to fog eggs in teleport without having blind trades/transfers. All you need is to have the egg image still visible in the trade screen, have the gender displayed for gendered hatchlings, and have the lineage page still visible for fogged eggs. Then all the important information is still available, but the egg itself can't gain any views.

[Chanilove]

And yes, guardians are my babies. I came up with the original concept and did most of the work on them. =3 I also like Identify for the guardian BSA, but storm/gray dragons also work well for a "fogging" BSA. I posted one called "Active fogging" that, if used with a new egg, would prevent all sickness deaths. But it doesn't help with keeping views at 0 for an egg in teleport.

 

It would be a rather simple fix to be able to fog eggs in teleport without having blind trades/transfers. All you need is to have the egg image still visible in the trade screen, have the gender displayed for gendered hatchlings, and have the lineage page still visible for fogged eggs. Then all the important information is still available, but the egg itself can't gain any views.

Actually, that would be quite simple. Lineage pages already use an image that is separate from the dragon's "real" one to prevent it from gaining views, so the fog image shouldn't effect it. I'm fairly certain this is the same for trades. I know it uses an image separate from the dragon's specific one, though I'm not certain if it's programmed to give views or not. I'm actually a tad curious now.

 

I believe I saw the suggestion for Daydreams as well, but I'm too lazy to go digging. :E

[Pokemonfan13]

Personally I think it should just be the fog action rather than being a BSA, but I really don't care how it is done as long as either it or the individual whitelist is done in some way. And the BSA should be in the BSA list that is in the pinned topics.

 

We can't just stop bombing level things. A rare egg that is up for trade can easily wait a long time before an acceptable offer is made if the owner is being picky, and ideally it should keep low views so it can be available for trading for as long as possible. Even if a scroll whitelist is done the egg could still be added by someone other than the scroll owner to the fansite the owner uses, and if the egg is already ER it is doomed to hatch before the owner wants it to.

Edited August 11, 2012 by Pokemonfan13

[Ashes The Second]

Personally I think it should just be the fog action rather than being a BSA, but I really don't care how it is done as long as either it or the individual whitelist is done in some way. And the BSA should be in the BSA list that is in the pinned topics.

 

We can't just stop bombing level things. A rare egg that is up for trade can easily wait a long time before an acceptable offer is made if the owner is being picky, and ideally it should keep low views so it can be available for trading for as long as possible. Even if a scroll whitelist is done the egg could still be added by someone other than the scroll owner to the fansite the owner uses, and if the egg is already ER it is doomed to hatch before the owner wants it to.

This. I'd love to have this idea in-cave if this were in it. |D;

[stogucheme]

Has anyone suggested an option in the account page, "Automatically fog any dragons that become sick: Yes or No?"

 

That might solve things.

[raistardragon]

Has anyone suggested an option in the account page, "Automatically fog any dragons that become sick: Yes or No?"

 

That might solve things.

Or get ride of the sick feature all together. I actually have sick dragons all the time, but they are usually tinsels.

[Shadowdrake]

The whole point of sickness is to make you keep an eye on your dragons. Automatically fogging them makes it so you might as well not have sickness in the first place. Of course now viewbombing makes sickness pretty much death if you're unlucky, so I don't know.

[stogucheme]

The whole point of sickness is to make you keep an eye on your dragons. Automatically fogging them makes it so you might as well not have sickness in the first place. Of course now viewbombing makes sickness pretty much death if you're unlucky, so I don't know.

But it's not that you're not paying attention. Sickness still tells you, 'hey, you overdid it.' So I think an auto-fog option is good.

ETA: And you could make it that they have to manually unfog their dragons.

Edited August 12, 2012 by stogucheme