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Private Server ad requirements

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Suggestion for better requirements on private servers (mostly aimed toward MapleStory servers!)

Some of these are suggestions directly to the server owners and not necessarily suggested required regulations.

Server requirements:
  1. Proven up-time of at least 168 hours (7 days). Not every last second, but a reasonable consistent percent.
  2. NOT hosted from a residential (home) Internet connection. Residential connections are in no way equivalent to a reasonable server, and the owner can easily be found through legal action.
  3. Proper identification of the hosting platform. "24/7 dedicated server" is not reliable. A VPS is not a dedicated machine, the resources are shared. Along with this, the "100 mbps" connection many boast is shared between several other nodes, or from a complete misunderstanding of Internet connectivity. For example, my computer has a 1 Gbps port. That does not mean my Internet will be that fast.
  4. Proof of proper user information handling. Passwords should absolutely not be stored in the database as plain-text, and should always be salted. Emails should also never be sold or given to third parties for any reason.
  5. Servers should not require users to vote, do surveys, click ads, or use any sort of advertising gimmick in order to download, sign-up, or (aside from voting) gain in-game items. For example: link bucks, CPAlead.
  6. The server's owner must be identified if taking donations to avoid donation scams and mishaps. All the money must go only to the server unless otherwise directly specified. For example, SojuStory (down): http://forum.ragezone.com/f429/ad-sojustory-dedicated-24-7-4gb-ram-606955/ The users are directly informed that the donation money will be used for more than the server.
  7. Servers should avoid using annoying scripts, such as: pop-ups or in-browser pop-ups (eg. DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!!!), auto-play music, changing of the mouse icon, using screen effects such as falling snow, changing the size of the browser.
  8. Servers should supply spoken languages of their staff so foreign users know who (if anyone) on the staff they will be able to communicate with.
  9. Servers should avoid using or chatboxes. These are very disorderly, laggy, and often crash. I suggest a better alternative: [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat"]IRC[/ame].
  10. Servers should supply their server's IP address and port and allowed client modifications. (MapleStory specific) Downloading a ~9 MB client for each server is illogical when one can run their client to any server like so: Maple.exe 111.32.73.40 8484. This may also apply to other servers.
  11. A server owner may not spontaneously create and close their servers. This is a common sign of donation fraud.
  12. Any server proven to be engaging in attacks against other servers (eg. [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddos"]DDoS[/ame], promoting their users to advertise, making blatant lies of false claims) shall be blocked from advertising in any way and reported as bad-business: listing of the server's name, owner, and affiliates to avoid.
  13. Servers should act professionally and promote competence among staff.
  14. Servers should also avoid shooting themselves in the foot.
  15. Bonus! Servers should comply with the original OdinMS GNU APGL license:
 
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bleh....
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Suggestion for better requirements on private servers (mostly aimed toward MapleStory servers!)

Some of these are suggestions directly to the server owners and not necessarily suggested required regulations.

Server requirements:
  1. Proven up-time of at least 168 hours (7 days). Not every last second, but a reasonable consistent percent.

    Disagree with this. Not every server starts off with enough money FOR a reliable host. Even more, quite a few reliable hosts have had issues recently that caused them to be down longer than normal. Should a server get shafted for that? FYI, 168 hours IS 24/7. That's literally impossible for a MapleStory server now-a-days.
  2. NOT hosted from a residential (home) Internet connection. Residential connections are in no way equivalent to a reasonable server, and the owner can easily be found through legal action.

    An owner can be found through legal action regardless of being self hosted, or through a company. Do you think Nexon sues the hoster? No. They contact the hoster and threaten them with legal action if they don't give Nexon the "owners" information. When it comes down to whos' butt is on the line, best believe the hoster will choose the "owners" before theirs.
  3. Proper identification of the hosting platform. "24/7 dedicated server" is not reliable. A VPS is not a dedicated machine, the resources are shared. Along with this, the "100 mbps" connection many boast is shared between several other nodes, or from a complete misunderstanding of Internet connectivity. For example, my computer has a 1 Gbps port. That does not mean my Internet will be that fast.

    Isn't this just being anal? Do you really need to know the dedis' specs and/or if it's a VPS? If you don't like the server, don't play it. It doesn't take a lot of work to delete a localhost. I see no reason why this should matter.
  4. Proof of proper user information handling. Passwords should absolutely not be stored in the database as plain-text, and should always be salted. Emails should also never be sold or given to third parties for any reason.

    There is no way to enforce this. Literally no way at all. Servers aren't going to give RZ Mods access to their host machine just so it can be "checked on". 100% of repacks/sources released here, already have it so passwords are encrypted in SHA-1. If the person running the server knows what they are doing, sure, they could change it, but anything they got off of RZ is safe. I personally know of 0 servers that sell their emails to 3rd parties.
  5. Servers should not require users to vote, do surveys, click ads, or use any sort of advertising gimmick in order to download, sign-up, or (aside from voting) gain in-game items. For example: link bucks, CPAlead.

    The servers that do that are the servers where barely anyone plays. Notice how none of them are remotely close to being as popular as the ones that don't require that?
  6. The server's owner must be identified if taking donations to avoid donation scams and mishaps. All the money must go only to the server unless otherwise directly specified. For example, SojuStory (down): http://forum.ragezone.com/f429/ad-sojustory-dedicated-24-7-4gb-ram-606955/ The users are directly informed that the donation money will be used for more than the server.

    In case you didn't know, again, there is no way to enforce this. If a person says it goes only to the server, how are we (other people) supposed to know for a fact 100% of the money goes to the server. If an owner gets 1,500 in donations a month, at most he'll need to spend 500 for the host. If he gets shut down/sued, where does the rest of that money go? Refunded? Name 5 owners that have/will done/do that. In my opinion, so long as the person pays the bills and keeps the server maintained, anything extra should be theirs. After all, they are the ones taking the risk by running a server.
  7. Servers should avoid using annoying scripts, such as: pop-ups or in-browser pop-ups (eg. DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!!!), auto-play music, changing of the mouse icon, using screen effects such as falling snow, changing the size of the browser.

    Why are you basically trying to tell people what they can/can't do. It is their server, their web domain, their rules. If you don't like it, you don't have to go to it.
  8. Servers should supply spoken languages of their staff so foreign users know who (if anyone) on the staff they will be able to communicate with.

    This I can agree with. It would be helpful, but shouldn't be required.
  9. Servers should avoid using or chatboxes. These are very disorderly, laggy, and often crash. I suggest a better alternative: .

    Again, their server, their web domain.
  10. Servers should supply their server's IP address and port and allowed client modifications. (MapleStory specific) Downloading a ~9 MB client for each server is illogical when one can run their client to any server like so: Maple.exe 111.32.73.40 8484. This may also apply to other servers.

    This is a negative. In fact, if this ever went into effect, I can place money on it 90% of the current servers being advertised wouldn't do it. Why you might ask? Because that's asking to get DDOS'd out the butt. You are exposing yourself so they have less work to do. Also, in case you didn't know... Nexon frequents this forum often.
  11. A server owner may not spontaneously create and close their servers. This is a common sign of donation fraud.

    Agreed, but no real way to enforce this. What could the Mods do? Require people to have their server up and operational for a month before posting an Ad? That wouldn't help because they could still close their server without notice at any moment.
  12. Any server proven to be engaging in attacks against other servers (eg. , promoting their users to advertise, making blatant lies of false claims) shall be blocked from advertising in any way and reported as bad-business: listing of the server's name, owner, and affiliates to avoid.

    You'd be surprised how many people can't figure out who is DDOS'n them. I agree though there should be some place people could post warnings like this, but obviously proof would be needed, such as screenshots.
  13. Servers should act professionally and promote competence among staff.

    Again, their server. The majority of players are minors, and the majority of owners are minors. You can't expect them to be "professional", especially when their entire server theme might be based otherwise.
  14. Servers should also avoid shooting themselves in the foot.

    Explain more?

My responses are in bold. I know I'm not a staff member, so I can't approve/deny anything, but I think you should be more open minded when it comes to certain things. It seems as if you want the Ad to be how you alone would approve of.
 
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My responses are in bold. I know I'm not a staff member, so I can't approve/deny anything, but I think you should be more open minded when it comes to certain things. It seems as if you want the Ad to be how you alone would approve of.
I don't mind at all, I'd like anyone's input. As for 'shooting yourself in the foot', it was mostly a joke, but some servers do often set themselves up for failure.

As for the things that cannot be proved RZ-side, it's mostly a suggestion to the owners. A kindly message, "please don't screw your users over."

  1. When I said 168 hour up-time, I didn't mean exactly that and nothing less. If the server goes down for reasons beyond their control, that's fine. If the server needs a restart now and then, there's nothing wrong with that, though it's usually caused by mismanaged memory. But if the server goes down because the owner honestly cannot figure things out and how to manage the server, that's no good. That's a shoot yourself in the foot situation.
  2. I'm aware owners can be found through legal action whether they host on a server or their home connection, however there are ways to get by this. Local laws and regulations, third parties, false information (when not required to be true) will make it greatly more difficult to find the owner or shut down the server. There are hosts out there dedicated to freedom of speech and information. Heck, there was even an entire country that did this:
  3. It is picky. When I see "24/7 dedicated lag-free 100 mbps" slapped on servers run from a home computer with a terrible connection and poor up-time, it's troubling.
  4. I have also not known any servers to sell emails, but seeing as many of them are getting into those sorts of "free money online" things, I figure it's not too far off. As for passwords, even if hashed, rainbow tables are quite advanced and could crack many of the passwords. This really is more of a suggestion to the server owners for enhanced security.
  5. -
  6. -
  7. -
  8. Of course not required, only suggested.
  9. -
  10. -
  11. The IP address of a server isn't private at all. If someone were going to attack the server or send notice for shut-down, they wouldn't rely on such information.
  12. The most the mods can do is check for associated accounts and open proxies.
  13. Indeed, there are always dolts like Raymond Chu who expose themselves as the attacker and show off.
 
(oO (||||) (||||) Oo)
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I have only one thing to say about #2:
Sometimes hosting at home can be way better because not all have 3mb/256kb speeds. Some have 25/25 or 50/50 or even 100/75. Which I believe is more than enough for maple story.
 
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Ragezone only allowed advertisements of private servers , and file sharing (In the MapleStory sections at least) - Their not really "entitled" to boss around servers and police rules regarding things outside of Ragezone.
 
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Ragezone only allowed advertisements of private servers , and file sharing (In the MapleStory sections at least) - Their not really "entitled" to boss around servers and police rules regarding things outside of Ragezone.
That's not what I mean.

If someone wants to advertise their server on RageZone, I suggest a few hard-set rules. Anything that cannot be reasonably checked, or would be forcing the server to do something, are mere suggestions. Such as auto-play music. It's annoying, but it's only a suggestion that they don't do it.
 
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