Tor, I think you need a few more beers.
Go drink more beers.
Go drink more beers.
Just look on this picture of my table atm... I am barely sober from last night's action.. don't think my body will allow more alcohol in it... 
I can't remember what I said in the last thread, so I could be repeating myself..
There are aspects of the CTRA that were flawed from the beginning. The absence of a properly formed end-objective was its most fundamental flaw and this became more and more obvious as time passed, as friends achieved more and more disparate licenses. We introduced player monthly stats towards the end, using a GP Points system and if we'd had time to further the development, this would have countered many of the inherent problems of the licensing systems and career paths.
The CTRA was never intended (or I never intended it to be) a one-stop LFS shop. It was intended to be A place, not THE ONLY place to race on LFS. Unfortunately (for racing), most of the other capable InSim developers focused on Cruise applications rather than racing. Nothing we did with the CTRA was beyond the capabilities of others, but it's not really CTRA's fault that nobody took up the chalice at the time.
You've identified a core problem with ALL admined servers, and one that the CTRA struggled to address. Our admin team, at the start, was perfect. All admins were brilliantly impartial, meticulous with their attention to detail, and brilliant marshals. But outside of LFS there is life and you can't hit pause on that while you're processing reports. We needed admin turnover, and that was impossible to achieve.
Attracting new admins to handle the reports requires you to find people that you trust implicitly to be impartial in judging on-track incidents. That is far harder than people might realise. When you find someone who is genuinely impartial, part of the reason for their impartiality is that they're NOT that engrossed in LFS. Getting an admin to VOLUNTARILY go through the (often) mundane process of examining replays, assessing intent and apportioning blame when, in truth, they don't actually CARE that much about LFS is.. well, it's impossible. Unless you're paying them, of course. And to pay them, you have to have a system that's funded. Bottom line, LFSers don't like paying for things and though there were quite a few offers of cash and even a couple of offers to PAY CTRA staff, there were concerns within UKCT that the cost to CTRA's integrity would have been too much.
...Could you not advertise somehow in your system for income?...Would I be right in saying that having a third-party app own the clients dds folder for track-side adverts is against the T&C's of LFS?
Well that's the thing, there's been a request for the whole "downloadable DDS" for advertisements for servers, and that'd allow some advertisements for income, but this never panned out due to a lack of developer support (Scawen), and that it can't be implemented (as DDS's are loaded on track load) and enforced by us that this app is running (How are we transmitting data from the client to the server with 100% certainty that it's correct, to avoid someone being kicked in error).
Just to clarify from my point of view, it's entirely up to Scavier whether in-game advertising (IGA) is something they're willing to allow servers control over. LFS is their baby and I support their philosophy 100%. I always have. For me, though, if CTRA was ever to turn a profit (LOL!) to pay its admin, it would have been through corporate IGA. While I did talk to Scawen about it, it was clear that this wasn't a viable revenue path. I never wanted to charge anything for participation and the LFS community has repeatedly made it abundantly clear that it would never have embraced that mechanism either.
Although the CTRA's website and drivers' portal accumulated really, really impressive page impression stats, I never wanted to "pollute" it with ad slots. That's why the only banners on the raceauthority.com site were to LFS team websites. Ultimately, it became clear that the gap between what we wanted to deliver and what we could reasonably achieve became too broad to clear. Such is life
Although the CTRA's website and drivers' portal accumulated really, really impressive page impression stats, I never wanted to "pollute" it with ad slots. That's why the only banners on the raceauthority.com site were to LFS team websites. Ultimately, it became clear that the gap between what we wanted to deliver and what we could reasonably achieve became too broad to clear. Such is life
Follow my link! We have endurance races with around equal grid :-8 More people more fun! :-)
There you nailed it, and said it the right way.
Even for a spectators view on this, we/I could see that there were some huge amount of work behind it. If it had been your fulltime job it would be capable, but you all has a life outside LFS, and therfor it just isn't possible to stay around hours for hours each day to check site, reports, ban people, fix stuff and everything else needed of you.
Shame yes, but not unpexpected - it was a blast as long as it lasted
It's OK TVE, we can start a spinoff called ARTC.... 
We have the technology, we can rebuild it!
We have the technology, we can rebuild it!
What is ARTC? Or what would it be shortened for? ;D
What about UART?
Unconscious anonymous retarded trash?
That would be my server at least
What about UART?
Unconscious anonymous retarded trash?
That would be my server at least
**** that, lets call it ATRAC. Association of Track Racing Authority Committee.
с dint read all the topic but [GTR]MotorSport has 30+ racers every day
You dont 'need' DDS downloads to put a sponsor into the game on a per-server basis, you can deliver a sponsor via text with insim. Right from the beginning X-System had sponsor support, visible in the bottom left when you where in spectate mode, and it wouldnt take much to have added one for a few seconds whilst waiting for the results at the end of the race.
Whilst a text based advert isnt perfect, it would have been a start, and very viable to do.
However whilst advertising and co-branding is a partial solution, I dont think it would ever be viable to go far enough for a project like CTRA. Whilst CTRA could justify and prove tens of thousands of people would see an advert over the course of a year, and it's integrity at the time could provenance it as a good co-branding partner, the fact is far too many games are played each day and the marketplace for selling advertisements in games is over saturated with opportunities, short of actual customers, and there is no evidence to suggest it would increase sales for most types of goods.
Advertising in the CTRA model would have needed to be viewed more as a cream on the cake concept, the fact is the concept of the system itself wasn't born to be a financial and revenue generation project, it was born out of love, and love doesnt give you money it drains it away as anyone who's ever got near it will testify.
If you want to make money out of LFS you would need to present it to people outside of the LFS community and into the masses. There are a couple of ways to do this, either by a sim race centre - in which case LFS' lack of real cars & tracks works against it (ie: this isnt LFS' strength), a broadcast where the teams are sold to sponsors (aka Automolisimo Virtual who sucessfully do this in Mexico), or some other mass market presentation.
You'll never make money from within the LFS customer base itself, the customer base just isnt primed for it.
Whilst a text based advert isnt perfect, it would have been a start, and very viable to do.
However whilst advertising and co-branding is a partial solution, I dont think it would ever be viable to go far enough for a project like CTRA. Whilst CTRA could justify and prove tens of thousands of people would see an advert over the course of a year, and it's integrity at the time could provenance it as a good co-branding partner, the fact is far too many games are played each day and the marketplace for selling advertisements in games is over saturated with opportunities, short of actual customers, and there is no evidence to suggest it would increase sales for most types of goods.
Advertising in the CTRA model would have needed to be viewed more as a cream on the cake concept, the fact is the concept of the system itself wasn't born to be a financial and revenue generation project, it was born out of love, and love doesnt give you money it drains it away as anyone who's ever got near it will testify.
If you want to make money out of LFS you would need to present it to people outside of the LFS community and into the masses. There are a couple of ways to do this, either by a sim race centre - in which case LFS' lack of real cars & tracks works against it (ie: this isnt LFS' strength), a broadcast where the teams are sold to sponsors (aka Automolisimo Virtual who sucessfully do this in Mexico), or some other mass market presentation.
You'll never make money from within the LFS customer base itself, the customer base just isnt primed for it.
The space bottom left became configurable and dynamic, and we used it on the UF-BR server to acknowledge the UF Baby R by Concept Racing. For me, though, the billboards were the most "sellable". Anything else felt no more classy than a popup window - always an option, never very appealing.
QFT!
The only time we properly examined the possibility of raising income within the CTRA was when it became clear we needed to address the aforementioned problem with sourcing part-time, paid admins.
Ahh that's not the angle I was alluding too, I was thinking more of a co-branding approach, that would be very saleable.
I don't honestly feel that any public server or race series advertiser would benefit from billboards, with the very possibly exception of a broadcast series >IF< it was attracting a 5 figure audience, and even then it would be a hard sell (far easier to sell the teams).
One of the most common misconceptions about motorsport is that sponsorship is all about the name slapped on the car, but until you get to the top heights of motor racing with major TV coverage this isn't actually worth anything in it's own right.
In racing you make money with other opportunities, like providing a race car for a stand at a trade show (and putting the company name on it) - so in CTRA's case it would provide a sim racing rig. Doing corporate hospitality days (in CTRA's case perhaps at a race centre), doing a track day with a sponsor and teaching them some racecraft tricks, and treating them to a few lary laps. Or selling them a framed signed print for their office wall. It's these things that tend to result in the name ending up on the car, rather than the space on the car being worth anything.
It's for the same reason I don't see there being much value for the server operators trackside billboards.
If anyone is looking to get a project sponsored then you need to work with your advertisers to provide them services - but very rarely will these services relate directly to the actual thing they are sponsoring. Like I say, the space on a race car isn't worth anything until the very top of motor sport, yet lots of drivers out there carry sponsorship - but away from the race track they're doing other promotional work to earn that sponsorship. You earn your money in the time between races, not whilst actually racing.
As a host for racing you need to look to do the same.
Has anyone thought about building a system for processing reports similar in concept to mass moderation used on Slashdot? Every driver would need to have "fuel points" to be able to race and they would earn them by reviewing racing incidents. Every incident would be assessed by several people selected randomly and the result decided by majority. Assessments different from majority would be considered wrong and not give "fuel points" or even cause penalty. People reviewing incidents would be forced to learn the rules of clean racing from the very beginning. There could be a level of meta-moderation performed by admins (but with little intensity of work required) to resolve controversial cases and to make sure that the assessments are done in accordance with the regulations and not only based on common sense. Possibly a large throughput of report processing could be achieved this way and racers could even be encouraged to report even little incidents by using a simple command usable during a race (which could automatically prepare replay fragment of a certain time lengh before the moment this command was used). Maybe such solution would allow achieving very clean racing environment.
Some of your ideas are very good w126. There are numerous ways to open up moderation to the user base and the method you describe is about the best i've heard, although i'm unconvinced about automatic report generation mid-race, that would create an insurmountable pile of reports. There has to be legwork involved in raising a report, otherwise the system falls over.
In short, the more work is involved in raising a report the less reports the system gets - meaning only the most serious reports are filed. At times the CTRA added hurdles to the reporting process - such as forcing users to goto the web page before final submission - rather than doing the submission from within the game itself. These steps, although might seem odd and usual to the player, ensure that more of the reports finding their way to the admins are incidents worthy of being reporting, and not somebody filing a report in the heat of the moment.
Indeed, I can recall more than one instance of a driver filing off a report and finding themselves penalised for outrageous driving - they filed the report in the heat of the moment, without having looked at what happened objectively. Make it too easy and the system fails.
I do like your suggestion to mass moderation however, i've heard several similar suggestions before, but never any detailed suggestions like yours which I felt could be turned into a workable system (I would make a few subtle changes, but you're on the right lines).
One problem still stand out however, and that is sometimes there are common misconceptions. I remember when the CTRA's predecessor started it was considered fairly standard practice in LFS pickup racing to just drive straight back onto the circuit after an incident and nobody complained. This predated the advanced reporting systems and such like, we launched a "90 day ban" campaign on a first offence policy and the effect changed LFS pickup racing culture.
If you allow mass moderation, initiatives such as this would become imposible and we'd end up with a system that enforced rules according to the gamer mentality, and it would be hard to take initiatives to change or clean up trends in behaviour.
In short, the more work is involved in raising a report the less reports the system gets - meaning only the most serious reports are filed. At times the CTRA added hurdles to the reporting process - such as forcing users to goto the web page before final submission - rather than doing the submission from within the game itself. These steps, although might seem odd and usual to the player, ensure that more of the reports finding their way to the admins are incidents worthy of being reporting, and not somebody filing a report in the heat of the moment.
Indeed, I can recall more than one instance of a driver filing off a report and finding themselves penalised for outrageous driving - they filed the report in the heat of the moment, without having looked at what happened objectively. Make it too easy and the system fails.
I do like your suggestion to mass moderation however, i've heard several similar suggestions before, but never any detailed suggestions like yours which I felt could be turned into a workable system (I would make a few subtle changes, but you're on the right lines).
One problem still stand out however, and that is sometimes there are common misconceptions. I remember when the CTRA's predecessor started it was considered fairly standard practice in LFS pickup racing to just drive straight back onto the circuit after an incident and nobody complained. This predated the advanced reporting systems and such like, we launched a "90 day ban" campaign on a first offence policy and the effect changed LFS pickup racing culture.
If you allow mass moderation, initiatives such as this would become imposible and we'd end up with a system that enforced rules according to the gamer mentality, and it would be hard to take initiatives to change or clean up trends in behaviour.
Automatic report generation could be optional. Of course, such system would have to be experimentally verified and its parameters fine-tuned. I will not try to guess how large percentage of time spent reviewing reports (as opposed to racing) would be acceptable to users, and it's all interrelated.
I thought meta-moderation would prevent that. Meta-moderator (trusted admin) could basically change the result of incident assessment and all the people that assessed the same incident differently would have their "fuel points" taken away (possibly leading to "fuel points" deficit if they managed to use them for racing already). In this way a single action by the admin would enforce moderation behaviour of several users. If admins have less time, they may meta-moderate smaller sample of all the incidents but make the penalty (negative "fuel points") for wrong assessment bigger to still keep users on their toes while mass-moderating.
Automatic reports would just result in there being even more reports to read, maybe what you want is an automatic system that deals with the reports consistantly and fairly, essentially an automatic moderator, which can be overiden obviously. Although that would likely take far too much time and effort.
Automatic decision of the majority of offences is impossible, take swearing as an example. People from the British town of Scunthorpe are punished on forums the world over...
Even if a semi-reliable decision could be developed you would simply encourage drivers to learn how to exploit it and create new types of accident/offence.
Like when the British government, back many centuries ago, tried to ban swearing. The result was that people used new words with the same intent as the old swear words - you simply move the problem. Put another way, computers suck at being judges: I remember once putting my foot down to avoid a badly driven lorry, and I passed a GATSO camera. So in doing what, on any reasonable human assessment would view as the safest thing to do, the computer would do me for speeding aka dangerous driving (Luckily it had no film in).
Computers cannot be judges, they simply execute what we tell them to do. It takes human minds to make rational decisions.
Automatic detection of some types of incident may be possible, but i'd rather stick to humans reporting incidents as drivers who make good their errors, or who make a one off mistake in an otherwise faultless evening of racing, dont deserve the heavy hand of moderation.
Even if a semi-reliable decision could be developed you would simply encourage drivers to learn how to exploit it and create new types of accident/offence.
Like when the British government, back many centuries ago, tried to ban swearing. The result was that people used new words with the same intent as the old swear words - you simply move the problem. Put another way, computers suck at being judges: I remember once putting my foot down to avoid a badly driven lorry, and I passed a GATSO camera. So in doing what, on any reasonable human assessment would view as the safest thing to do, the computer would do me for speeding aka dangerous driving (Luckily it had no film in).
Computers cannot be judges, they simply execute what we tell them to do. It takes human minds to make rational decisions.
Automatic detection of some types of incident may be possible, but i'd rather stick to humans reporting incidents as drivers who make good their errors, or who make a one off mistake in an otherwise faultless evening of racing, dont deserve the heavy hand of moderation.
The best alternative to the CTRA's reporting system that I've seen was Gentlefoot's league's incident peer review system. Though it worked well on a league level, it would take some really smart algorithm development in order to ensure that peer reviews in a public server system were fair. There's nothing (and I do mean nothing) worse than LFS's "press 1 to.." system, if you're seeking to deploy a fair peer assessment mechanism. Anything that introduces that potential, in any measure, is never going to achieve its objective of fair moderation.
Automatic - as in InSim-based - incident moderation simply doesn't work. I find nothing more odious than iRacing's incident system, and anything that punishes both the wrecker and the wreckee is worse than no moderation at all. As far as I can tell, there's simply not enough information in the InSim packet data to give better than a poorly educated guess. It's not an option, unless you provide for a manually handled appeals procedure and if you're going to go for one of those, you might as well go for a manual reporting system. At least with manual moderation you maintain the concept of "due process", innocent until proven guilty etc. - fundamental to anything purporting to be judicial.
Automatic - as in InSim-based - incident moderation simply doesn't work. I find nothing more odious than iRacing's incident system, and anything that punishes both the wrecker and the wreckee is worse than no moderation at all. As far as I can tell, there's simply not enough information in the InSim packet data to give better than a poorly educated guess. It's not an option, unless you provide for a manually handled appeals procedure and if you're going to go for one of those, you might as well go for a manual reporting system. At least with manual moderation you maintain the concept of "due process", innocent until proven guilty etc. - fundamental to anything purporting to be judicial.
Oh, thanks for this chance to take the picture of my stats! Finally!
It could be great to race again in CTRA.
It could be great to race again in CTRA.
Those stats are incorrect. SamH has changed the stats to prevent people from copying them to incorporate them in their own ranking system.
This topic reminds me of my first girlfriend. She's gone but you don't wanna let go... :P
SO GET OVER IT PEOPLE!
CTRA HAS GONE! (She don't want you anymore)
SO GET OVER IT PEOPLE!
CTRA HAS GONE! (She don't want you anymore)
Oh sorry, peterules. I didn't realise the topic was forbidden. When did that happen, and exactly why? For reference material, read the rest of this thread.
Is CTRA back up? [ No :o) ]
(137 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG