[Reviewing] Is AltDentifier Needed?

[Chad]

I got confirmation that every NEW member who joins the discord has to be verified by AltDenifier. While it does seem like it has been very beneficial in preventing the mass pinging bots and majority of scammers (I've gotten random messages in DMs with advertisers/scammers recently and in the past but not frequently), is it otherwise benefiting?

 

Obviously I can't push this statement with full force without actual proof but it really does seem like we do not get new members who join the discord like we used to before we used AltDentifier. If someone who has access to the data to make an actual comparison, whether its to counter my point or not, it would help shine light on the condition of the discord with and without this bot. Anyway, Its to no surprise that general chat has been filled with Good Guys (SHOUTOUT GANG except Dom, fuck you), a couple of previous & current staff members, and "randoms" here and there. We can all agree that the servers are dead and you can honestly say that the discord is almost at the same level at this current rate. I presume things are being lined up for when CS2 is released but I hope those ideas are amazing and backed 10000% because otherwise there will be no phoenix (too soon? ) rising out of the ashes. 

 

A couple questions too - When was AltDentifier added? Was the previous method(s) not enough / protection was limited? Did you guys run into issues with it? 

 

To see how easy it was to verify yourself, I tried making an alt and all I can say that it was a pain in the ass to do. Matter of fact, I wasn't even able to verify myself. I tried making a new email and steam account almost right before verifying so there is a good chance that the bot knew how new these verification accounts were (which I'm confused as to how it knew the email one). But if that's not what made the verification not work, I don't understand why it didn't work. Is it fair to assume that's how its recognizing whether its an alt? 

 

Oh, I also don't understand why we are so heavily on focused on cracking down on alts. If someone wants to alt, they are going to do it no matter what is in place. Its clearly happening right now. Adding protection to try and prevent it from happening is obviously okay but making it harder for new members to verify is not a worthy consequence.

 

TL;DR: Account verification seems too extreme and not worth the time to go through a lengthy process to identify yourself as not an alt/bot. 

[ArcticWolf]

/roll sides:d12

[BoM]

Servers aren't dead retard.

 

I otherwise agree with this statement, discord feels a little sluggish and there are not new people rolling in for sure.

 

Also yeah the verification to have access is tedious. 

[Poke]

On 5/22/2023 at 8:25 AM, BoM said:

Servers aren't dead retard.

 

I otherwise agree with this statement, discord feels a little sluggish and there are not new people rolling in for sure.

 

Also yeah the verification to have access is tedious. 

hi bom

Anyways if you want a genuine opinion, I made an alt, pokealt100 and got past the verification in literally 10 seconds. There's so many other ways to have this verification thing without having to have some shitty bot that mutes people if they don't respond in 15 minutes.

 

You can make it to where you have to need a verified email, or even a verified phone number.

Didn't really read what chad other than the premise of it is to remove the verification because we aint allat. 

 

shoutout by boy blue token inc

 

(make a pingable mod role)

[Hawks]

Looking at the logs it's quite useful and the accounts its mainly catching are brand new discord accounts that seem to have been created in the last 14 days. These users also do not provide good verification. Such as a steam account with all your games on it, hours logged on that account, etc.

 

 

10 hours ago, Poke said:

Anyways if you want a genuine opinion, I made an alt, pokealt100 and got past the verification in literally 10 seconds. There's so many other ways to have this verification thing without having to have some shitty bot that mutes people if they don't respond in 15 minutes.

I'd love to hear what you did to specifically to verify around the bot. 

 

We have had 120 users join this month so far and 27 of them have been alts or failed to verify with the bot. I think 93 of 120 is a good statistic to base everything off of.

 

For instance there was an account named [Redacted]#2128 that tried verifying 9 times but was using a brand new steam and discord account with zero games and zero playtime accounted for. Seems like the bot was doing its job there since I find it hard to believe that any gamer has zero time on steam/discord. So in my eyes the evidence doesn't warrant the removal of the bot. Not to mention the other troll accounts its been catching with the same reasoning.

 

Nonetheless we're looking into our options and are open to ideas suggested by our members. Removal is on the table, tweaking the parameters of the bot isn't out of the question either. Discussion with the AOs and Board members will decide what we think is best to move forward but if you have credible suggestions I'll bring them up for discussion.

[Hawks]

On 5/21/2023 at 10:03 PM, Chad said:

Oh, I also don't understand why we are so heavily on focused on cracking down on alts. If someone wants to alt, they are going to do it no matter what is in place. Its clearly happening right now. Adding protection to try and prevent it from happening is obviously okay but making it harder for new members to verify is not a worthy consequence.

Adding on. We aren't focused on the crackdown of alts I would say. We got other priorities that I would say are above this topic.

Would we like to see less alts? sure.

Are we gonna die on this hill? No. 

Will there be something done? Yes.

 

Just have to sit tight as we hash out all of the details.

[Bondairy]

This reeks of "I made an alt and couldn't get pass verification cause I'm a stupid ginger fucking idiot."

[Poke]

12 hours ago, Hawks said:

Looking at the logs it's quite useful and the accounts its mainly catching are brand new discord accounts that seem to have been created in the last 14 days. These users also do not provide good verification. Such as a steam account with all your games on it, hours logged on that account, etc.

 

I'd love to hear what you did to specifically to verify around the bot. 

 

We have had 120 users join this month so far and 27 of them have been alts or failed to verify with the bot. I think 93 of 120 is a good statistic to base everything off of.

 

For instance there was an account named [Redacted]#2128 that tried verifying 9 times but was using a brand new steam and discord account with zero games and zero playtime accounted for. Seems like the bot was doing its job there since I find it hard to believe that any gamer has zero time on steam/discord. So in my eyes the evidence doesn't warrant the removal of the bot. Not to mention the other troll accounts its been catching with the same reasoning.

 

Nonetheless we're looking into our options and are open to ideas suggested by our members. Removal is on the table, tweaking the parameters of the bot isn't out of the question either. Discussion with the AOs and Board members will decide what we think is best to move forward but if you have credible suggestions I'll bring them up for discussion.

A: You aren't a server who is constantly having one thousand players join per month, with 17 people who are responsible with moderating the discord, I am sure that you guys can handle at least 1 alt per day. 

 

B: How many of those people who joined, how many of those people left in the span of 15 minutes. Sure the bot can do it's job, but so does my alternate requests, and more efficiently, and it has low amounts of false positives that so many other servers use due to it's ease.

 

C : I literally pressed verify with the bot, received an error and got my way through. This way you aren't reliant on a third party bot to constantly stay up.

 

Spoiler

Seems like the bot was doing its job there since I find it hard to believe that any gamer has zero time on steam/discord. So in my eyes the evidence doesn't warrant the removal of the bot. Not to mention the other troll accounts its been catching with the same reasoning.

 

You'd be surprised, even so, more people on the server regardless, and if they troll you just ban them, like anyone else. 

Jumping to conclusions is a silly way to go about this, you have no idea what their intent is. Chopping down the tree cause you have one bad apple is a shitty way to go about it.

 

Never said the bot was not doing it's job. I am sure it caught a couple alts that are made by banned players. 

 

We also have no idea how the bot should be tweaked cause we have no idea what options it has, but having it permanently mute players for 15 minutes without them giving permission to make a ticket is just plain stupid.

 

Again, make a pingable mod role. I am sure you guys know good enough that if it gets abused you can just simply mute/restrict the player from pinging that role.

 

[Chad]

11 hours ago, Hawks said:

 

We have had 120 users join this month so far and 27 of them have been alts or failed to verify with the bot. I think 93 of 120 is a good statistic to base everything off of.

Presuming I'm reading this right, 93 members joined AND verified their accounts? Yea, those would be good numbers if even a 1/4 of them were active. Those numbers aren't believable either imo. How has this month alone we got 93 members but not even 10 of them have introduced themselves, joined conversation / the forums, etc? Are you sure you didn't only count the # of people who JOINED the discord?

11 hours ago, Hawks said:

For instance there was an account named [Redacted]#2128 that tried verifying 9 times but was using a brand new steam and discord account with zero games and zero playtime accounted for. Seems like the bot was doing its job there since I find it hard to believe that any gamer has zero time on steam/discord. So in my eyes the evidence doesn't warrant the removal of the bot. Not to mention the other troll accounts its been catching with the same reasoning.

Wouldn't majority of the bots catch this person? Not saying this particular bot is bad by any means but like... this bot takes it to the extreme.

11 hours ago, Hawks said:

 

Nonetheless we're looking into our options and are open to ideas suggested by our members. Removal is on the table, tweaking the parameters of the bot isn't out of the question either. Discussion with the AOs and Board members will decide what we think is best to move forward but if you have credible suggestions I'll bring them up for discussion.

Only thing I can think of is either tweaking the parameters or switching to something else that isn't as strict for users that are obviously not alts/scammers. Like Poke mentioned, we don't know what can/can't be tweaked.

[Hawks]

12 hours ago, Chad said:

Presuming I'm reading this right, 93 members joined AND verified their accounts? Yea, those would be good numbers if even a 1/4 of them were active. Those numbers aren't believable either imo. How has this month alone we got 93 members but not even 10 of them have introduced themselves, joined conversation / the forums, etc? Are you sure you didn't only count the # of people who JOINED the discord?

On 5/24/2023 at 9:03 AM, Hawks said:

For instance there was an account named [Redacted]#2128 that tried verifying 9 times but was using a brand new steam and discord account with zero games and zero playtime accounted for. Seems like the bot was doing its job there since I find it hard to believe that any gamer has zero time on steam/discord. So in my eyes the evidence doesn't warrant the removal of the bot. Not to mention the other troll accounts its been catching with the same reasoning.

Expand  

Wouldn't majority of the bots catch this person? Not saying this particular bot is bad by any means but like... this bot takes it to the extreme.

You can take it at face value if you like or not but that's the stat. Player retention is a different conversation that we're well aware of.

 

After all is said I can only speak for myself. I'm leaning towards removal of the bot. upon digging up my own information I didn't have upon my first reply and getting a couple of volunteers to help me out, there's just too much inconsistency that I now know of about the bot that imposes an unnecessary barrier to entry even for a legend in the community.