Dev Tracker

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but there has been a recent issue of people joining every private pinglist by changing the number is the URL bar.

@Keileon I believe the issue with "punish the person responsible" is that it's not entirely possible to know who is responsible. From my understanding, one way of pinglist abuse is to add someone to pinglists similar to the way someone can add an email to a mailing list. With the way google doc pinglists are managed, anyone can anonymously add someone to a pinglist, then the people who are genuinely using those lists are unwittingly pinging someone who did not add themself to the list. Depending on the list they were added to, they could be receiving dozens of notifications they did not sign up for.

Hello again, I hope everyone had a lovely weekend! This is going to be a long read.

First, to set the frame for today's response on this topic, which also applies to last week's reply as well. We understand many of you may know this, and if that's you, that's great! We want to make sure everyone reading—not just those posting to this thread or other threads—is aware that our replies on this subject are not intended to be confirmation, rejection, or invalidation of any given or specific player suggestion. Our goal with these responses (surrounding what we knew going in would be a complicated and nuanced development cycle) is to share with you the concerns, laws and regulations, needs, and considerations we always have to keep in mind as we continue to develop this system. And honestly, not just this system, but all features and functions of the game and website, Flight Rising. Development isn't just about content and fun; it's also about identifying problems or needs, asking questions, following potential paths to their worst case scenario, accounting for intentional bad actors, ultimately addressing the problem or need, as well as making sure legal is happy.

We've also seen discussions suggesting the people who were targeted by malicious third-parties via offsite data-sets/spreadsheets are to blame for the current and upcoming changes. And if you are not doing this, this section doesn't apply to you. To be clear: The victims of targeted harassment are not to blame, and if they are now being harassed for reporting previous harassment that needs to stop. What shifted our priorities was the realization—and sometimes, confirmation—that not all spreadsheet owners were going to implement the security settings under their control in order to protect their spreadsheets. That's their right, they should not be harassed for it as this is a game, not a job for our players, and it's simply a reality we have to account for.

This brings us to suggested systems or arguments in favor of not capping mass raw pings which are ultimately dependent upon all players involved maintaining amiable relationships and trust with each other. In other words, these are requests asking us to develop features or not make changes that only work if the honor system is, well, honored. We are aware that many of the larger coalitions of players have taken the necessary steps and are dedicated to maintaining these spreadsheets—we don’t want to discount or even appear to dismiss what is clearly a labor of love, creativity, and skill! It’s legitimately impressive, and you have every right to be proud of yourselves for the detailed systems you created. As developers and as the mis-use of spreadsheets has lead directly to onsite harassment, we have to account for multiple types of spreadsheets, different levels of player dedication to maintaining them, different playstyles, and different player choices.

For offsite spreadsheets in general, we also have to keep in mind that these spreadsheets in many cases have reached the point where they are in fact massive third-party hosted databases of player information. Databases that we are fully unable to protect because they are not ours. We can't stop players from moving offsite for transaction negotiations. We can only ask you to exercise discretion and skepticism if you make this choice, as Flight Rising Support will not be able to help you. This has always been our policy and that has not stopped reports demanding that we take action or moderate situations based off discussions and/or comments on third-party platforms. If we can't validate and verify the data reported to us, our hands are tied. Actioning accounts based on reports utilizing third-party screenshots is a metaphorical can of worms that we cannot open.

Pinglist ownership remains complicated. Equal co-owners without a designated owner also presents liability for you, the player. We need to account for people using pinglist names to make a point, lash out, or just break the rules for the lulz. Having a primary owner simplifies all potential player conflicts. The pinglist owner is the ultimate decider of who can be added or removed as a co-manager, what the pinglist is named, etc. While we're confident that the Dominance and other established groups would not have this issue, we still have to consider every player—including those who might have less noble intentions.

We also have to be in compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and other similar legislation and regulations surrounding data privacy. Pinglists have to have a designated owner because the person who creates it is creating personal content that falls under these laws and regulations. While these requests are rare, when a valid request comes in, we must comply, which means we must account for this specific scenario in all areas of site and game development.

We must be mindful that outside of Dominance and skins and accents, we do not provide site/staff sanction for any one particular style of player-driven gameplay. If someone prefers a specific type of dragon to collect, that's fully valid and we encourage you on your acquisition journey! But what are the implications and how would it backfire if we give official site-supported nods to player-driven gameplay styles? Especially if the playstyle involves monitoring for dragons hatched by players who did not consent to participate in the group? Is what amounts to monitoring other players' hatches something we can officially condone by crafting a system to specifically support that playstyle? These are just some of the questions we have to ask, discuss, and eventually answer when it comes to player-driven playstyles.

And regarding the player-driven groups, a question we're already discussing internally:

How many of these groups utilizing mass raw pings would ultimately be better served by actual site supported features and filters that anyone can use, regardless of playstyle preference? Because some of these groups utilizing mass raw pings and offsite datasets may in fact be filling in the gap for a need we’ve yet to adequately meet. And that should be explored further: By us, as we collect data and feedback, and by you as you discuss this with each other and share your feedback.

On the technical side, mass raw pings will eventually be sunset for pretty much the same reason we prohibit extreme amounts of texts in biography and broadcast fields: It simply isn't scalable. In needing to address the offsite-to-onsite harassment issue, it's required a closer look at how pings are handled. It's easier to address an overflow or flooding issue when everything is in a formal container as opposed to not. In this case, the official pinglist system is the container, designed to be a mass ping container. If something goes sideways, an engineer just needs to address the container, not the entire thread.

Very little is set in stone at this time, outside of compliance with GDPR/similar legislation and sunsetting the ability to send hundreds of raw pings all at once in a forum reply. Maybe the cap is 12, maybe we can adjust it within reason. Regardless of where we land, the raw ping cap itself will be one of the last things determined. In the meantime, please continue to discuss amongst yourselves, and we encourage you to think outside the spreadsheet. Could improved site features negate the need for the spreadsheet/mass raw ping? Where do you feel improvements can be made in the existing system? Thank you for reading, and thank you for being a part of Flight Rising!

Thus why I wanted to post an explanation and apology, because I’ve found that far too often, the symptoms & idiosyncrasies of neurodivergency get read by others as being acts of intentional ill will when they are only misunderstandings.

Thank you for putting this thread together. We're still in the early stages of this functionality being live. While we'll review all threads, replies, and tickets with feedback on the new pinglist function, I want you to know that yours has been bookmarked internally for additional team focus.

First and most importantly, we want everyone to know you can breathe a sigh of relief. The change to raw mass pings and the future cap mentioned in the update—as in raw pings posted in a reply, not pinging subscribed players in a site-supported pinglist—won't be in the immediate future. And it's not lost on me as I post this reply that the very way I opened my reply to you would be capped under our current future plans.

I would keep in mind that it's the end of October. We're heading into the holiday season, we have one more ancient breed to release, we have Frigidfin Expedition, and we have the Night of the Nocturne rapidly approaching. Plus our engineering timeline for the skin and accent system and, well, some much needed employee time off. In other words, you've (players) got time to work with the system as it is, give us your feedback, and we've got time to finesse and iterate.

During this time, our plan is to allow the new feature to soak, for players to adopt it, and collate your feedback over time, both initial impressions and experienced usage. From there, we will meet as a team, discuss your feedback, your communicated needs, and explore our options and possible solutions.

Now, onto the subject of some of the decisions made going into this launch...

As you might know, there have been increasing incidents and reports of offsite-to-onsite harassment via open-to-the-public pinglists. The tickets submitted alongside these incidents have also increased, whether it is an offer of help to investigate or a demand to solve the situation, it all takes time to review and respond and often requires multiple team members including engineers to investigate. The fact is, as long as the offsite spreadsheets are open and available to anonymous/public editing and the ability to send mass raw pings remains, the offsite-to-onsite harassment will continue. Even if we could identify the individual(s) responsible without a shadow of a doubt, ban them and their IP, it doesn't change the fact that the offsite and public spreadsheets are still vulnerable. This is part of why a pinglist is locked to the player who created it. Because even with pinglists being opt-in, even with them being onsite, we have to weigh the consequences of open-to-the-public pingable lists with the potential for exploit, especially from tech and internet savvy bad faith actors. Throwaway accounts with throwaway emails on a dynamic VPN could easily target and troll a pinglist that's open to the public to ping. This isn't to say with enough time and iteration a solution can't be found. It's to say that we have to keep this in mind and in consideration when developing this feature further.

As for approved co-owners, one of the issues we have to consider is how that works with blocking. What happens if a player has blocked the originator of the co-owned pinglist after subscribing? Should the co-owners be able to ping that individual with the list? What if the originator blocks a player, should the co-owners still be able to ping that player with the pinglist? What happens when co-owners have a falling out, where an approved co-owner did more to maintain the pinglist than the originator? Who owns the list? Do we need to task our employees with mediating player personal relationships over pinglists? What if the originator becomes inactive or does something that costs them the ability to access their account? Just the possible solutions floated within the team while reading through your feedback lead to additional scenarios and edge cases.

There are infrastructure concerns with raw mass pings of hundreds of players at a time that we have to consider as well. We understand how they're useful, how they're used, why they're used, but we never coded our proprietary forum software to support it. Even if we adjust the raw ping cap, being able to send hundreds of raw pings in a reply just isn't sustainable for the site.

All of the above doesn't even touch on how granular and specific the current player-run systems are, and just how different they are from one special interest or focus to another. There's a lot for us to consider. Basically, we're not rushing the development of this system nor are we rushing the sunsetting of raw mass pings. We've already released the foundation of the pinglist system and with a solid foundation, we can build up a comprehensive system from there.


Regarding your concerns, I can offer you one answer about one aspect of your Flights and Flight pinglists concern today:

If someone is no longer a member of your Flight, they no longer have access to your Flight forums and they can't see your pings, nor should they be alerted to them.

Something else I'm also able to let you know is that we have some pending, more straightforward updates to the pinglist system that we hope to implement next week.

I hope this helps to address some of your concerns about how we're moving forward, and provides you with some insight into what we're looking at, into, managing, etc. Thank you again for reaching out to us, both here and in tickets. Please, please continue to discuss this and provide your feedback on the pinglist system. Even if we aren't providing personalized responses to every suggestion, idea, or complaint during this period, we are absolutely reading, considering, and discussing your feedback. Have a great weekend

@/Aequorin no offense meant, my ND brain interpreted your comment extremely literally as “do not make a new comment after reading this post” and assumed that a comment I had started writing before you posted would be fine >_< apologies and I appreciate the clarification.

how many pinglists are we allowed to have now? i can't find it in the main post and i've read through like three times but i could be missing it (if i am i'm sorry)

Awesome! I'm still wondering if deleting will be allowed though. If your hatchery closes, or you no longer offer something that people wanted pings for... I imagine there would be a lot of reasons to delete a pinglist you don't use anymore.