Analysis
What a whitelist actually selects for
Whitelists are justified as a filter against bad actors. They are not very good at that, and extremely good at something else.
SweetMask · · 4 min
Numbers, patches and patterns, read closely.
Whitelists are justified as a filter against bad actors. They are not very good at that, and extremely good at something else.
SweetMask · · 4 min
The community is there, the machine has headroom, and the case looks obvious. It usually is not, for reasons that have nothing to do with hosting.
SweetMask · · 4 min
For fifteen years the basic unit of organised multiplayer was the clan. It did not lose an argument — the things that made it necessary were removed one at a time.
SweetMask · · 3 min
Reports, logs and time spent online all miss the same things, and they miss them in the same direction.
SweetMask · · 3 min
Every long-running server's rules contain a clause so specific it can only have been written the morning after something happened.
SweetMask · · 4 min
Two people can be regulars on the same server for a year and never meet. A community is made of overlap, not of membership.
SweetMask · · 4 min
A ban removes an account, not a person. On any game where accounts are free, that distinction is the whole problem.
SweetMask · · 3 min
A server does not usually close. It stops being paid for, and everything attached to it carries on for a while without it.
SweetMask · · 3 min
Block logging did not just make griefing recoverable. It made a kind of server viable that mostly was not.
SweetMask · · 3 min
A server with one admin does not have a moderation team. It has a person who cannot play, and the distinction takes about six months to become obvious.
SweetMask · · 3 min
A launch spike, a long decline, then a floor of the same few people. The stopping is rarely about money or about anyone being unhappy.
SweetMask · · 3 min
Same game, same rotation, same name. The people who loved it turn up for a week, and then it is empty.
SweetMask · · 3 min