Direct Messages - wes

Direct Messages

wes

can i use you as my point of contact for pointer questions related to this change i'm working on lol

22:58

it'll be better than any bad assumptions i am going to make, i promise

23:04

i dont follow the gta:sa achievement im looking at

23:04

like based on what i'm seeing for that achievement, how would i know not to colorize it

23:10

geez

23:10

i didnt know about that either

i have an embarrassingly stupid question

23:30

how on earth do i open the achievement dev toolkit in pcsx2

23:32

wow i wouldve never figured that out

23:32

ty

23:33

hmm

23:33

i do get a notification asking to install the toolset, then when clicking Yes it immediately throws an error tired

tired

23:33

Image attachment

23:35

got it

23:35

figured out how from the duckstation docs of all places

23:36

that makes sense

23:37

sweet, i got the toolkit opened

23:38

ok dumb question 2

23:38

i assume these are either pointer values or range values

Image attachment

23:38

i have once come across a doc describing this color coding

23:38

however i can't find it in the dev docs

23:38

i have no idea where it is

23:39

thats where ive seen it too

23:40

yep just noticed that haha

23:40

im used to doing arcade games so always have everything set to 8 bit

23:42

wow those two colors are nearly identical

23:43

if the toolkit can identify a range, the web ui should be able to as well

23:43

ahh ok that is helpful

I am feeling a bit paralyzed in that thread. I feel like we need some way of decisively knowing what it is we're trying to build. My assumption was "have subsets inherit the player list of their parent". I have built that, but there are loud voices that disagree with that implementation.

19:17

I am actually wondering if the best way to approach this is an admin decree on the path forward. Community consensus may be impossible

19:18

Like I don't want hate mail because I open the PR - I want to be able to point to something to show this is an implementation of a requested/required change

19:18

Otherwise people might think the implementation is my idea or opinion, but I'm just some guy

Understood. I think a news post would make sense. Here's currently how the algorithm would change:

Subset player counts have changed to the sum of unique players for both the parent and subset. In other words, if Game X has 10 players and [Subset] Game X has 2 players (who also played the parent set), the subset now has 10 players.

That's the only thing that would change. The white points algorithm itself is never touched, it just is calculating from that new player count number.

19:34

i strongly agree

19:34

i have noticed there is a trend on the site where the perfect is the enemy of good

19:34

i think as long as we are solving more problems than we are creating, we are moving in the right direction

19:35

then i will proceed with this. do you think it would be good for the news post to go out before the site release, like pre-emptively? and who would make such a post?

19:38

ok sounds good

19:38

i am also nervous the PR itself will get raided

19:39

i can put my foot down in the PR and say "This is a code review intended to discuss technical details of an implementation. This is not to debate philosophy of the implementation." but that's really all i can do

19:46

thank you! i definitely dont want to get sucked into the interpersonal politics

19:46

Sticker

19:47

sounds like a plan

19:47

one day i will finally be able to game again

19:47

my goal is to be able to open the site and pick a game and not find something that i want to fix

haha yeah he was just telling me about that ...

20:16

i told him my complaint was he didn't go far enough

20:17

20:18

they will think that i locked it tired

tired

20:18

i agree with the decision

20:19

no way could i follow the hundreds of posts in there

20:20

thank you!

20:20

my plan is to get this PR opened tonight unless something goes way off the rails during my testing

20:20

hopefully it can be reviewed soon. we are building up one heck of a backlog ...

20:21

perfect

14:26

any initial reactions ?

sweet -- i am hoping to get a PR in for this today

16:32

that is true

16:32

it seems like that should just be built into the site

16:33

one thing i am interested in building is admin tools onto the site for a lot of the manual SQL operations i see, such as achievement transfer etc

16:34

ahhhh -- i was thinking admins would want to edit a post and reassign the author of the post itself

16:34

there's an input field... but it's currently disabled

16:35

yeah i've noticed in the workshop server it seems there are some common themes among the SQL requests

16:35

running these manually is okay but it's only a matter of time until something screws up

16:36

right

16:36

if it did work, the OP could be reassigned

16:36

yeah seems only applicable to games / events threads i think

16:37

i would like to keep the OP designation unless you have a strong opposition. i think we should later build the functionality for reassigning the OP by enabling that User field when an admin goes to edit a post

16:38

yep!

16:38

i think the changes would not be that hard to be honest

16:40

Do you ever find yourself using the forum on mobile?

16:41

lol

16:41

the whole thing that spawned these forum changes i'm working on was i opened the AotW thread on my phone (edited)

16:41

and was horrified by what i saw

16:42

current:

16:43

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16:43

new:

16:43

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16:44

16:45

Sticker

16:45

that is much more difficult but a very good idea

16:46

i'll add this to my list of things to investigate

16:46

would it be automatically re-assigned as soon as someone becomes the majority dev in Core?

16:46

haha

16:50

i wonder if this can be logically distilled to this (let me know if there are pitfalls):

16:51

When a user opens a game thread, the database looks up who the OP is. If any user has developed the majority of achievements in Core on a set, they are sent back as being the OP, even if they didn't start the thread.

yeah i think you're right

yep!

do you think it would make sense to have an achievement transfer tool in the admin panel?

22:22

yeah, like "Original Achievement ID" and "Destination Achievement ID", and all the metadata is either copied or transferred

22:22

i'm seeing that root forum in the workshop server and wondering how much could actually be automated in the admin panel

22:24

ah, i assumed with manual unlock being there the powers/scope were pretty broad

22:24

ok, i will search for something else to blow up pray

pray

22:27

ahh ... that bit escaped me

22:27

yeah with a transfer tool that would be very easy

22:29

cool! let me know, i already roundabout wrote a lot of code as a proof of concept to be sure it worked. i suspect there would be different kinds of transfers, for example a copy (both achievements earned) or a true transfer (the original unlock doesn't remain, the unlock transfers over to the new ID)

22:30

could just be a radio button in the tool itself

22:32

the one i think of is the FF9 jump rope

22:32

maybe that was a copy? i could be misremembering though

22:32

yeah

22:33

right

22:33

both forms of transfer could be built. it would not be hard to support both kinds

22:33

just a matter of what is most helpful!

✅ that's a good call-out. is that normally logged today?

adding any kind of logging on site is fairly easy

We ship to prod tomorrow

15:15

The subset changes were merged and will be going into effect

15:15

not sure if there should be some community messaging about this

16:10

let me know if there's any questions i can answer

16:11

The prod deploy should be happening within 2-3 hours

Original message was deleted or could not be loaded.

I am looking into this now. For an initial implementation, what if we have a button to do this that is available inside the game page's devbox? It can appear under the following conditions:

The user is not a Jr Dev AND

The dev has a claim to the game and there are no Core achievements OR
The dev has a revision claim to the game

(edited)

15:36

Yeah, running into this now myself ssweat

ssweat

15:36

Would rather build the feature than do the manual transfer process

15:37

How are you doing? Is there anything else I can help you with or look into while I'm on a roll?

15:39

If something springs to mind don't hesitate to let me know. My list has largely thinned out and I'm looking to start stacking it up again.

15:41

Hello Euclide, Thank you for taking the time to review and provide feedback on this pull request. However, due to your past violations of the user code of conduct and your subsequent sanctions placed against you, I am unable to consider your comments in the current scope of this project and will therefore be marking this feedback as resolved. I appreciate and encourage constructive feedback, but it needs to come from those who adhere to the values and guidelines of the RA community.

12:05

This is what I had typed up. I don't know who the decision-maker is on the web team or what it will take to get Euclide's access to the org revoked.

12:06

I will shoot him a DM

Interesting! It does indeed appear that numbers are trending down. I would imagine with subset+core nearing that will also jolt them down further when it ultimately goes live.

18:29

Of course, if the admin team decides they would like to tweak the algorithm any further I am happy to implement any requested changes

18:30

Yeah, that one jumped out at me

18:31

Anything else on the site bugging you in particular? I'll have a lot of free time to work on stuff this weekend

18:31

I did open this PR which may interest you https://github.com/RetroAchievements/RAWeb/pull/1618

feat(game): allow devs to reassign game topic OPs on their claims b...

This PR gives achievement developers the ability to reassign the game's forum topic original poster to themselves if they have an active claim on a given game. Why? Currently when something lik...

18:34

oh, that would make sense indeed. unfortunately i do believe it is blocked by the ongoing backend maintenance :/

I am hearing through the grapevine that the forum topic reassignment PR may have stirred up some controversy. I'm sorry about that. That was definitely not my intention. My changes are all motivated by a wish to make the site better for everyone; I don't want to step on anyone's toes. If now isn't the right time for that change, I don't mind closing the PR.

I am happy to implement whatever ya'll would like, if I need to do any rework here it is no problem at all

13:45

Ahh, would this be on the admin panel page?

13:47

that would make sense, and probably would not be too difficult to build

13:48

if that is indeed the consensus, i can get started on it over the weekend

13:49

yea ive messed around with the code on that page a bit, should not be too hard

13:50

not a problem at all

13:50

after it goes live i will need you to use it for a game i have claimed

13:51

that's what finally got me driven to build this out

13:53

sure thing !

Yo! I wanted to bounce something off you. I couldn't help but notice you're one of the few people who has mastered Retro Game Challenge on Nintendo DS. I'm currently working on a comprehensive set for the sequel. The sequel is huge, and there's a ton of cryptic and hidden content. While building the set, I really began to feel an RAGuide would be essential. But because this is a retro game about playing retro games, I figured it'd be fun to model my RAGuide after those old Nintendo Player's Guides from the 90s. Another idea I thought might be cool is if I included "Game Master" tips from people who have mastered the first game into the guide. These would just be little blurbs I could draft about each game, and then one of the folks who had mastered the 1st game could "claim" the tip and it'd appear quoted to them in the guide, just as a sort of homage to everyone who mastered the first game. Maybe it sounds silly, idk, but I was wondering if this is something you might be interested in participating in? The effort level would be extremely low-- I'd provide a quote, you'd tweak it if you like, and then it'd go in the guide and be attributed to you.

22:01

Here's a working example of one page from the guide I'm making

22:01

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22:04

Oh no worries at all! No need to research or literally do anything. I'm thinking I'll just provide a quote, you can twist it around however you'd like, and then I can feature the quote in the guide as coming from "Game Master BahamutVoid"

22:05

Just a fun way to pay tribute to those few people who have mastered the first set

22:05

There's still fewer than 10

22:06

You were the first person I asked, I figured you wouldn't pass judgment if it was a stupid idea

I'll see if the other people with the masteries are also interested. I'd like to ideally have 10-15 community "Game Masters" contribute little blurbs

22:09

Sweet! It's a huge game so it wont be for a while, but when the time is right I'll start pestering you with a potential blurb for the guide

22:14

it's awesome man

this page is very work-in-progress, but i'm thinking something like this

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i know a lot of thought has been put into something like this over the years, but i'm interested in gathering feedback

15:44

i think something RA is missing is the ability for devs to optionally tag which achievement is the one for beating the game

15:44

i think a lot of rage over revisions and "this should be in a subset" is because there's a large portion of the RA userbase that treats it as a retro games backlog, and we're not doing a good job of catering to those people

15:45

i know tiers have been proposed in the past, but we already have tiers, we just don't call them that. we have Completions and Masteries. this would add a 3rd tier even below that, so we'd have: Beaten / Completed / Mastered

I can't help but notice this screenshot is from nearly 2 years ago. I found a GitHub discussion on tiers that is nearly 5 years old. So I must ask bluntly: what happened? Why has this not been implemented?

16:05

Understood. This is also a bit why I'm not fond of the "tiers" idea that I've seen floating around, where achievements are tagged as progression/challenge/etc. I believe the path of least resistance that satisfies everyone would be just being able to tag which achievement is for beating the game. Can you forsee any pitfalls with that approach?

16:06

Ideally, it would be as simple as another input field on the game page devbox which accepts an achievement ID.

16:08

Interesting, my initial thinking was the opposite would happen

16:09

eg: The achievement for beating Super Mario Bros. (NES) would be the one for clearing 8-4. Unlocking this achievement would mean you've "Beaten" the game (no opinion on how this would be displayed on-site, perhaps a new section in user profiles).

16:14

Gotcha

16:15

So really it sounds like there should be a way to tag achievements as either progression, bonus content, or challenges.

16:18

Taking a step back

16:18

If we were to begin building this out

16:18

Is the first step just being able to tag something as progression, bonus, or challenge?

16:19

Those are flags but I think tags are something different

16:19

No worries at all, it is quite confusing.

16:21

That is a good point

16:22

Maybe these aren't even tags. In fact, I think these aren't tags.

16:22

The terminology I'm going to go with now is "categories"

16:22

A tag implies there can be multiple of them

16:22

Missible is a tag

16:22

So we need the ability to put all achievements into one of three categories

16:22

Does that sound right ?

16:26

Yeah ... that makes sense

16:33

it seems like there was a lot of chatter and discussion about this, but it fizzled out

16:33

was it really just a concern of other things being on fire at the time? why hasn't it resurfaced?

16:40

You've provided a lot of useful context! I appreciate it. I do think the lowest common denominator to begin building something out is to first facilitate the ability to categorize achievements on-site, even if those categories aren't displayed to users in any way whatsoever.

16:43

Understood. It does sound quite tedious.

16:43

We need to really be sure then this is the direction to go

16:43

But it seems that folks are on board with this approach

16:45

16:51

Yeah, it's fine, but now I'm thinking the categorization approach where achievements can be tagged as progression, completion, or challenge is better.

16:52

Just want to verify that's where everyone else still stands, and then figure out what the bare minimum is to get the ball rolling on it

i think this is good, thanks for verifying!

That is good context to have!

Here's another thing that I've been mulling over

17:22

Probably much less controversial

17:22

There are a lot of places we use the labels "achievements" and "points" on the site. It seems like we need common iconography for, at the very least, points.

17:22

TrueAchievements does something like this

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17:23

There are some components on the site it's really cumbersome to write out the words "achievements" and "points"

17:23

Up until now we've ommitted those words entirely, but this confuses users

17:23

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17:24

without common iconography, stuff like this gets really painful

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i dont have any good ideas for this, maybe i will try to whip something up

excellent

Looking over the DB, it seems to pull this off in a scalable way requires only creating a single new column on the Achievements table: category_id. This would be a fairly trivial change from the perspective of the DB.

00:15

Yeah honestly adding the RAGuide urls was more complex

00:15

So if we get the go-ahead, I can open a PR to make that schema addition, then we can figure out what the appropriate UX for this is

Where did this ultimately land?

17:38

Is it confirmed ok to add the ability to categorize achievements

Sweet, I'll get started on that soon

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12:21

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12:21

it will not be a "Games Beaten" badge, i just wanted to paint the award to the screen.

12:22

the back-end is pretty much done & is functional. i need to tighten up the code a little bit but i'll be submitting a PR relatively soon

12:22

there are two "Types": Progression and Win Condition

12:22

for the game to be considered beaten:

ALL Progression achievements must be unlocked
ANY Win Condition achievements must be unlocked

Yeah, plan today is to clean up the code and prepare for a PR. The first PR will contain the database changes, back-end implementation, and developer tooling needed to start filling these out. After that, I will work on a design doc / Request For Comments for what players will see on achievement pages, game pages, and user profiles. I'll post the doc, get feedback, iterate, and then build that part of it.

13:56

this would be separate

13:56

i have code prepared for visible comments/embeds, etc, however it drags game pages down quite a lot.

13:57

yeah to determine the comment count, for every achievement you have to query the entire comments table which contains every comment ever made

13:58

i have an idea for a faster way to do it though, just have had other things taking up time first

with the current implementation, if only Progression is marked and there is no Win Condition, Beaten will not be awarded

14:17

Would the exception be if there's no Win Condition, unlock the Beaten award if all Progression achievements are unlocked?

14:17

Just want to make sure I understand

14:19

No worries at all! We can definitely make that exception. Can you help me better understand how it would be used?

i see, so to beat the game, you'd want the player to beat the game with every fighter?

I think this should work. Really it's on the dev team to decide what is classified as "beaten" on our platform. I think the most important thing is we have standard cases that catch most games/genres. In theory, if the definition of "beating" a fighting game was getting to the credits once, there'd simply be an achievement for viewing the credits and it'd be marked as the Win Condition.

14:44

For your circumstance:

We can mark beating the game with all characters as Progression and make the exception.
OR, a new achievement can be created for rolling the credits and it marked as Win Condition (in addition to all the fighters marked as progression)

(edited)

14:44

Which do you feel would be more understandable for users & devs?

We can always support both

14:56

Maybe that is the most flexible solution

14:56

Flexibility is probably desirable here I guess

14:58

Yeah. The human effort involved here will be far larger than the engineering effort

14:58

For compilation games, "beaten" is probably beating every game in the compilation

14:58

Yeah, in that case I'm not sure there is a Win Condition

14:59

Everything is progression. Yes, I'm convinced we should go with the flexible solution route

14:59

So, if there is no Win Condition, beaten will trigger when all Progression achievements are unlocked.

14:59

Otherwise, beaten will trigger if all Progression achievements are unlocked and at least ONE Win Condition is unlocked.

I would set the UX for it aside for later

15:27

How would such an option be useful?

15:27

Can you share an example?

If all wins are needed, whats the difference between that and having no win condition achievements

15:51

hmm

15:52

i think we can work around this ux problem

15:52

i propose we nix this idea for now and in these cases just use Progression only with no Win Condition

15:52

the game page will have some indication of what "Beating" the game means. that'll be visible to both players and devs

15:53

yeah i definitely see where you're coming from. i think its a solvable UX problem

15:58

Hmm

15:59

So the reason I pushed back on the idea was out of the interest of not extending the database more than necessary. However, I'm wondering if we actually do need a way in the game page's devbox for a developer to mark a game as "beatable". There are some wrinkles here ... preferably we could get by without it ...

15:59

Only if enabled would the types on achievements be respected

Arcade will definitely be case by case basis

16:26

I or other arcade experts can probably help a lot

16:27

Most golden age arcade games have a "ramp up" period where the game gets harder and harder until the point of maximum difficulty is reached

16:27

For example, after clearing L=05-6 on Donkey Kong, the game doesn't get any harder

16:27

On Pac-Man, the game gets harder until clearing the 17th screen

Yep -- that may be an arm wrestle where the set may require slight alterations

16:42

I think the progression system would be a forcing function for that

16:43

At the end of the day, it likely results in higher quality sets.

https://github.com/RetroAchievements/RAWeb/pull/1714 PR is live

feat: add back-end support for progression tier achievements and be...

This PR introduces database, back-end, and dev tooling support for beaten game tracking.

Note: This PR is not intended to consider any player-facing visible UX elements at this time. These wil...

14:46

i can finally rest tired

tired

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01:28

i think this should be straightforward enough for players to understand

01:29

obviously it'll show all the achievements, just slapping something onto the screen for the mockup

01:30

wonderful! let me share a few other things i have

01:30

Image attachment

01:30

our current achievement rows on game pages don't really have the space for iconography

01:31

so i had to redesign them

‍

01:31

those 3 icons:

131 comments
the achievement has a video embed
it's a progression achievement

01:37

01:37

searo helped a lot!

01:37

these ive been more afraid of so ive been strategically fishing them out

01:38

i'm going to do the user profiles design tomorrow, then assuming everyone is agreeable, actually start building

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01:12

proof of concept for award leaderboards, i got the core functionality working on the back-end. just have to build the UI.

After giving this some thought, I am wondering if it is not a good idea to have mastery/completion leaderboards and to only have "beaten" leaderboards instead.

01:26

The reason why is very old masteries were generally much easier to earn than many modern-day masteries.

01:26

Whereas beaten awards are consistent throughout all time.

it works

wahoo

Image attachment

01:33

01:33

same this is awesome

01:33

the standards doc needs to be resolved though

01:34

seems like no one wants to be the assertive person and put their foot forward

01:34

in #web earlier, i proposed baselines for when we can ship this feature (we're going to start merging the code imminently). the proposed baselines are 90% of the top 200 sets typed, and 70% of all sets typed

01:34

i don't think we can get there without a guidelines doc.

01:36

i think that would definitely help. something to start the fire

01:37

my perception is no one wants to be decisive and it's leading to a lot of inaction. but someone is gonna have to make a decision at some point

01:39

most definitely. what might be helpful is to have examples of certain genres / themes

01:39

excellent!! that will be immensely helpful

Would you be comfortable for me sharing those baselines in the Progression Guidelines thread before your draft is posted, or should I wait until after?

Sounds like a plan!

No worries at all! These things happen

That is indeed one of them

23:33

I just checked Pac-Man (Arcade), and it's missing a 9th key achievement

23:33

Let me check another set

23:33

https://retroachievements.org/achievement/329775

Stage 21: 9th Key in ~Hack~ Pac-Man (speedup) (Arcade)

Clear board 21 (25 points), won by 19 players - ~Hack~ Pac-Man (speedup) for Arcade

Several of those PRs were merged today

01:26

This link may be more accurate for the visual changes: https://github.com/RetroAchievements/RAWeb/pulls?q=is%3Apr+sort%3Aupdated-desc+%5Bprogression%5D+author%3Awescopeland+feat%28

⭐

01:38

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01:39

been working all day on where the new user profile component will link to

01:39

you'll be able to get to this page and see it for all consoles, or just an individual console

01:39

sure

01:39

it is very subject to change!

01:41

Image attachment

01:43

design lifted heavily from psnprofiles

01:43

but given the RA flavor

01:43

sketch from earlier today

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01:43

on the right will be various milestones

We'll probably need to have some kind of panel set up for reviewing disputed achievement typings.

16:13

I'm not sure who that should befall

16:14

It could either be DevC or QAM possibly. DevC has a habit of moving ... slowly. I'm not sure if this is their ballpark.

16:14

Ah I missed that! Perfect

16:16

I tend not to wade into the DevC forum too much, I don't want to exert any influence at all. It's like the Supreme Court

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time diff between 1st unlock and when the award was granted

17:00

yeah! im amazed something like this doesn't already exist

17:02

yeah all the dates are based on unlock times

17:02

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17:03

honestly with this page i don't see much reason to use my main profile page anymore.

17:04

Scott's profile is wild

17:04

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17:05

softcore mastery

17:05

the dot only gets filled in if its hardcore mode

17:06

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17:06

yea

17:06

yep!

17:06

dot never gets taken away because it represents an award

17:08

after 2 lines, game titles will truncate like "Some Game..."

17:08

Image attachment

17:11

yea may be able to squeeze it in top right

https://stage.retroachievements.org/game/1

Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive)

There are 24 achievements worth 255 points. Sonic the Hedgehog for Mega Drive - explore and compete on this classic game at RetroAchievements.

21:26

yea

ssweat

https://github.com/RetroAchievements/RAWeb/discussions/1829

Beaten Section Ideas · RetroAchievements RAWeb · Discussion #1829

So hearing there is a beaten section in the works, I have some suggestions for the feature. Badge icons, such as the ones used for mastery, being available possibly in a different section to where ...

Most definitely

13:01

Please have at it!

13:02

Likewise!

I have no idea how to put together something in community-news that says we're aware of the issues, but stops there.

20:31

We're not actively doing anything about this right now and I can't leave people with the impression we are

20:32

That's a good idea

@Community-News

We want to acknowledge the ongoing server and site performance issues you've been encountering, particularly relating to unlocking achievements and viewing user profiles. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing.

We are fully aware of these issues. Please rest assured that addressing these problems is our top priority.

We greatly appreciate your patience, understanding, and continued support during this time. We will keep you updated as we make progress on this front.

This is all I could come up with. Probably need something in there about manual unlocks and keeping emulators open

21:05

@Community-News

We want to acknowledge the ongoing server and site performance issues you've been encountering, particularly relating to unlocking achievements and viewing user profiles. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing.

We are fully aware of these issues. Please rest assured that addressing these problems is our top priority.

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21:09

Good call

21:10

ah, seems that's what's already written if i'm not mistaken. i'm in an airport 3 beers in, this is ChatGPT-assisted writing ssweat

ssweat

21:11

ok i'll go ahead and post it

21:14

Could I ask for your help? I think I need help drafting a DM to send to UnsolidSnake: https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1175434842758975629

no worries at all!

Do you think I should leave the cheat team?

13:38

I didn't think you were referring to me, but I can't help but feel that I should be doing a better job of steering that team towards good behaviors

13:38

I'm not sure if I have the capacity to, and if people are looking to me to be a good example I don't know that I have the capacity to be that example right now

13:39

I guess what I'm saying is, even if I'm not the one acting egregiously, I still am taking responsibility

13:43

I will reflect on this for a day or two, but I can't help but feel I'm not a good fit for the team.

13:45

Is there a way we could anonymously deliver this feedback to the team to help them improve?

13:49

Fridge and suspect both have done a lot to help RA grow - they are working constantly with JrDevs to instill in them best practices and have a great attention to detail in their work in that regard. I think given their attention to detail they have plenty of room for self-reflection and would value such a guide

13:54

Those lines seem very unclear to me tbh

13:54

I feel like I'm constantly getting in squabbles with StingX2 over what QAM's role and DevC's role are

13:56

In my head, I see DevC as almost like a moderation team for moderating devs, and QA as the team deciding on what the best practices and patterns are for development on the site

14:02

I feel very strongly it is my fault that you feel this way about the cheat team

14:02

I am sorry I could not have steered them towards better behavior

Original message was deleted or could not be loaded.

Let me pick your brain more on this. Here's a recent example: https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1181593445198987365

14:22

I have an opinion on this thread that probably goes against the grain, but I would be interested in your perspective

Yea I guess my opinion is I don't see why broader QAM or DevC should even be involved in this

14:34

CRs have a finite amount of time, and if they collectively decide they don't want to allocate time towards a particular Jr anymore, that should be enough to remove the person from the program

14:34

That's my opinion at least

Hello! I am checking in to make sure you are ok prayo

prayo

I understand you've been a bit under the weather (to put it kindly) and am wishing you a speedy recovery!

I am glad you are recuperating!

I would be happy to, unfortunately the Discord moderation/management tools terrify me

Sorry for not getting around to this - those Discord moderation controls make me very nervous

https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1242578114442301452/1252360814200094802 I feel like I often hear that Infernum is a cheater but no one has any rock solid proof. Privately and between us, would you mind helping me get up to speed?

21:52

For the most part up until now I had assumed it was Blazekickn whinging and didn't pay it any mind

Original message was deleted or could not be loaded.

How did this manage to get uncensored, just out of curiosity?

23:03

What a bizarre viewpoint. Jamiras was effectively the only person contributing code that was shipping to prod for an extremely long period of time.

23:04

I guess that brings me to my next question - why is Infernum still tracked. Does Infernum still have any of these suspicious unlocks?

23:08

Obviously I can't force you to do anything ... but I really think you should open a comprehensive thread for cheat team on this.

23:09

This seems really egregious to me, and it completely undermines the hardcore leaderboard to have someone this highly-ranked near the top.

23:09

This is basically donutweegee 2.0

23:10

Putting it another way: people have been untracked and required to full reset for much less.

23:11

Definitely your call, but the sum of everything you've shown me is damning, to put it kindly.

23:11

The people on cheat team are all reasonable people

23:12

Even if it goes nowhere, it is kind of worrisome that this is all spread out in very disparate places

23:12

It should all be centralized in a single Infernum thread, and it may be enough to close it out once and for all.

Image attachment

19:36

In not so few words and more eloquently, I told this person to pound sand

19:36

However, I think they're going to be sending a DM to RAdmin, so I want to telegraph to you that's something to look forward to

19:43

They're making a lot of assumptions that I don't understand - they seem to be thinking you made the choice to untrack unilaterally

19:43

One of the great benefits of having a cheat team is any potential mistake never comes down to one person. Not saying a mistake was made here, I don't know much about the case.

19:45

I think it's probably just because they saw you in the game's recent activity? Since it's preserved now even if you're not playing the game

19:45

I doubt a leak

19:46

ya beats me

19:46

i wouldnt worry about it

19:48

they singled you out specifically

19:48

yea. i'm not sure what they expected i would do about this lol

19:52

ya i dont think you have anything to worry about. it wouldnt surprise me if this was all coming from the person who was untracked. prolific cheaters are really good at deflecting from themselves and onto others.

19:54

i know that has happened in the past, but i'm not too worried about that either. donut got untracked and folks were mad for like 2 days and then life went on

19:56

though this does have me thinking if stronger privacy settings on the site for user activity are more desirable

19:56

what if i dont want the world to know what i've been playing?

Believe me, I understand your frustration, better than probably most.

22:36

I think the best way to fix things is to find an impartial person who has managed a huge Discord server before and see what they might propose. Those people don't exactly grow on trees though.

22:36

Everyone weighing in on that discussion is poisoned by the status quo.

22:40

Unfortunately I feel grossly unqualified to weigh in on this in any capacity other than saying we have a major organization problem in the main server

22:44

If I were to naively try to fix things, I'd do it in baby steps... this is similar to what I do in RAWeb. Rather than a big bang, first I'd look at what can we get rid of that no one would miss. When glancing through the channel list, I immediately see things that should go. pcsx2-news -- why is it there. It's just bloat. The last staff poll we did was nearly half a year ago. Surely that channel can be archived and future staff polls can happen in community news. This is how I'd strategically approach the problem.

22:45

Same with RAwards. Tell Sting to figure it out or nix the whole thing, we still don't know what the set of the year for 2023 is FFS

22:46

If anyone pushes back, break it into even smaller steps

22:46

"Mod team: I'm going to try to at least eliminate some of the bloat in the main Discord server. To start, does anyone object to us getting rid of pcsx2-news?"

22:47

Do one of these like every 48 hours

22:47

It's a big ship, sometimes it just needs to be nudged towards the right direction.

22:48

I can

22:48

It's easy enough to move stuff to the archive group

wes

Same with RAwards. Tell Sting to figure it out or nix the whole thing, we still don't know what the set of the year for 2023 is FFS

Circling back on this, just outside of the Discord revamp, I think the events team needs to be told the RAwards channels will be archived exactly 14 days from now. They need to wrap it up.

22:54

yea.

22:54

i can probably come up with some way to craft the message so he doesn't implode

22:55

i totally get that

22:55

i think it first should be decided that we're going to start picking off the "dead weight" channels though

22:55

after a few of those are eliminated it'll be quite obvious something should be done about the space rawards currently occupies

done

what can we archive next

figured the best strategy was to ping all of events team

Image attachment

14:37

they said they're going to do something soonish(??)

this seems completely insane

20:42

am i off-kilter here?

20:45

im all for giving people 2nd chances but this seems a little different

20:45

right

20:45

hes been a constant dickhead since the time of the devban

20:45

it just seems so obvious this is going to go sideways

20:47

i think where im hung up is devc needs the power to step in next time, and that almost feels like a conflict of interest in a way

20:47

i think if they don't have that power though, some of their members who do great work are going to get understandably frustrated with us

20:49

nah he was devbanned for breaking the dev coc

20:49

the golden rule of respect other devs

20:49

yea he has been devbanned multiple times

20:49

when i led the admin vote, breaking the dev coc was the angle

20:51

at that point in time, i dont believe devc devbanned anyone. at least not that im aware of. thats a relatively recent change

20:57

yep, that is an accurate recollection! then i took that to the admin channel and said it was a dev coc violation for not respecting other devs / working through issues civilly. granted its a user coc violation too

20:58

21:00

yeah that probably would've been best

thanks man ... the amount of pings and DMs and stuff i get are starting to eat away at me

13:58

i feel like everyone wants me to respond to their thing at a moments notice

13:59

i disabled my user wall, disabled DMs on site, my inbox is still flooded on Discord, so i have to ignore all of that. and now im just outright pinged

14:02

yea - i have no idea how to set the boundary other than barking at people, which doesn't feel good. but i absolutely cannot have my DMs used as an issue tracker. not only do i lose all the issues, it really burns me out

14:04

that's a good point

‍

yo - i want to pick your brain about something

19:34

i've noticed Hexadigital is quite active in our tech support forum helping people out

19:34

these are traits that tend to indicate someone would be valuable on the mod team. do you think they'd make a good moderator?

no worries

Sure thing. Take a peek at https://retroachievements.org/game/10003

Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64)

There are 114 achievements worth 690 points. Super Mario 64 for Nintendo 64 - explore and compete on this classic game at RetroAchievements.

12:38

The original authors are always credited. But you'll notice for the code credits, SporyTike is listed as a maintainer.

12:38

This one is weird because Spory is an author too

12:39

Here's a better example https://retroachievements.org/game/14498

Cladun: This Is An RPG (PlayStation Portable)

There are 50 achievements worth 323 points. Cladun: This Is An RPG for PlayStation Portable - explore and compete on this classic game at RetroAchievements.

12:40

Nope, shouldn't change

12:40

Maintainers just get listed in the code credits, but the author credits should not be changed at all

12:40

No worries

1

Not to add yet another thing to the pile for you but I need a serious talk whenever you get the chance

How can I help?

How much trust do you currently think there is in the members of our management teams?

It depends on who you ask.

18:15

If I had to shoot from the hip and put all my chips on the table, I'd say 70% of the community generally trusts us, whereas 30% doesn't for various and sundry reasons, many of which are probably beyond our control.

Sorry, I should clarify I mean trust in the members themselves. Not how they're seen by the community

Are you thinking of all teams specifically (admin, mods, QAM, DevC, RACheats) or a specific team

Mods and admins

I'd still use the 70% number, truthfully.

Thank you for being honest with me, truly

Of course. I don't think there's any data to support the number is lower than that. The data actually says it's probably a higher number than 70% - I'm being conservative.

18:17

I've run a few analytics in the DB while this whole debacle has been going on

18:17

I'm fairly certain with a strong community message and policy framework, we'll weather the storm and come out stronger.

I am prepared to share something with you with the understanding that we have collaborated over I think 3 years at this point and that I hope there has been enough good faith that it won't be shared elsewhere

Of course, you have my full confidence

Okay

18:19

I am being extra paranoid and have screenshotted this from my report

18:19

I need you to make this make sense (edited)

Where was that photo posted? In the main server or the workshop server?

18:21

It was posted in the workshop server.

18:21

Of course, my next immediate question is who do you think sprung this leak

18:21

Who is the deleted account?

I was not at the computer for most of the day when this posted. I have no idea who this is

This is fairly distressing

18:27

Those timestamped messages are across a period of over two weeks

18:27

What do you think we should do?

wes

Those timestamped messages are across a period of over two weeks

2 hours

But the 1st screenshot

18:28

That was 10-02

18:28

The 2nd was 09-14

You're thinkin g of US dating

Your child shares the same birthday as mine btw

It was 5 days ago

18:29

2nd october

Image attachment

18:29

Image attachment

I see the confusion I was meaning the 1st image

18:29

Hang on

What I'm saying is the leaked messages are not isolated. They're over a sustained time period

18:30

Here are all the people who had access to those messages:

Scott
wes
Hexadigital
LordAndrew
Nepiki
Searo
Suffa
AuburnRDM
Hotscrock
Jamiras
KickMeElmo
luchaos
MrOwnership
SnowPin
SporyTike
WilHiteWarrior
tele

I apologise, I'm not thinking things through right now 1st message: https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1423353545448493179/1423405270024982548 2nd message: https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1002689485005406249/1416713283729231973 (edited)

18:31

Understandably I have deleted the image as well as the previous newborn I posted in that channel

yes

18:33

You asked for my complete confidence, and I will give it to you. However, this is a serious problem. Privately, if you give me permission, I'd like to escalate this only to AuburnRDM and Scott.

To check we are on the same page: Someone posted the initial message, and after asking the exact same thing over the next 2 hours and getting no response, posted a picture from 2 weeks ago

yes, we are absolutely on the same page

18:33

you were threatened using leaked messages that happened over a 2.5 week time period, and the messages were sent to you over the course of 2 hours while you were away

wes

You asked for my complete confidence, and I will give it to you. However, this is a serious problem. Privately, if you give me permission, I'd like to escalate this only to AuburnRDM and Scott.

I am not okay with this currently. Quite frankly, I was hesitant to reach out to you at all. None of this makes sense and I have no idea why this is happening. I have been largely silent since the 1st day

understood. if you are not okay with this, i will not do it

18:36

this is an extremely serious issue and i would not blame you in the slighest for leaving the RA staff over this. clearly, we have a major breach of trust in what should be a private and safe space.

I am currently in the process of privating or otherwise closing every social media presence I have. At the moment I have not reached out to the authorities because I am very much out of my depth, right now this is being discussed within the family as this much bigger than just me The reason I have reached out to you specifically is being of your previous mention that you had to handle legal issues of being harassed during your time at RA. It does not seem reasonable given what I've known about you to act in a similar way

ah, that completely makes sense.

At the moment I have not decided what to do about RA

I need you to understand, Scott is about to make a public statement saying no one on the staff was threatened. Again: "no, wes, don't do that" is an acceptable answer, but I would like to require Scott to remove that line with no explanation given.

If I leave over this, I am accepting that I zero control over what is happening and I am otherwise abandoning 5 years of my only hobby. If I do not leave, I have to accept that some of my information is forever in the wild and is tied to who I am online

I would encourage you not to leave, but we have to find out how this happened

wes

I need you to understand, Scott is about to make a public statement saying no one on the staff was threatened. Again: "no, wes, don't do that" is an acceptable answer, but I would like to require Scott to remove that line with no explanation given.

My understanding was that Scott was being doxing and being sent death threats

Here's my point of view: someone is leaking private and privileged chats. It might have been tele, in which case the problem is already resolved. It also might not be. And it might continue happening.

18:42

We later investigated and found a community member was doxxed/threatened, but that's all we found.

It's clearly from an alt account or someone outside of our circle since they are pretending they don't know who I am

Yes but of course someone posted these things somewhere

18:43

The person who DMed you probably grabbed them, found you, and sent these insane things

I don't think Tele would do this but I have no reason to be adamant right now

I don't know what to think. He can't be ruled out.

18:45

fuck

18:45

i wonder who the 5 were that had reactions before the post was deleted of your child

18:45

all 5 of them could've been ruled out

I'm sorry, I didn't think of that

no worries

Fuck

it's alright, this is obviously very charged

I do not think of anyone that had access to those channels to be capable of this. I still don't, everyone at the start of the discussion was on the same page even though we couldn't have foreseen how some took it the wrong way

it's 100% guaranteed one of those people i listed

Some did change their minds as time went on but it doesn't make sense that because I didn't that I deserved this

it's probably safe to remove me, AuburnRDM, luchaos, Jamiras, MrOwnership, and Scott from the list.

wes

it's 100% guaranteed one of those people i listed

I need to ask, based on what?

18:50

Things have been very heated the last few days

those are the only people with access to the channel. those are direct screenshots, not a data breach

18:50

someone got those screenshots from one of the names on that list above

Sorry I'm not following

someone in the mod channel took screenshots, shared them in a side server, and that's where the person who DMed you got them from

Everyone on mod and admin can see that thread and channel

every mod and admin + tele is in my list above

wes

it's probably safe to remove me, AuburnRDM, luchaos, Jamiras, MrOwnership, and Scott from the list.

I am asking why anybody here is being ruled out

18:51

I'm still having trouble considering them as capable

18:52

But they had the same access as anyone else involved

me: I guess you just have to trust me, but I didn't do it.
AuburnRDM: I've been chatting with Auburn exhaustively over the last several days, I can't conclusively rule him out but I just find it impossible to believe it was him.
luchaos: is probably not even aware this is going on, and who would he share it with?
Jamiras: has been largely uninvolved and avoids side servers.
MrOwnership: is probably not even aware this is going on.
Scott: Again, a case where I just trust him completely.

18:53

that still leaves 11 people though

I know you are not that knowledgeable of discord but frankly I have next to zero tech knowledge in general. Are you absolutely sure it couldn't have been anyone outside of this have access?

18:54

That list I mean

yes, i am absolutely sure of that

18:55

from a technical POV, it is not possible to access a channel's messages without the correct perms

18:55

i even looked to see if i could get the reactions from the deleted message using the API. unfortunately discord hard deletes stuff from their database

18:56

that's why this is so distressing. i'm looking at the name of the leaker right now, but i'm also looking at 10 other names.

18:58

Before we go any further, I apologize for not asking this important question. Is there any support you need from me right now? You're the victim of harassment.

I am receiving support from my available family right now while I calm down. Since I have barely slept over the last 5 days I'm not doing anything until I've had a decent chunk of sleep to digest

19:03

Thank you for asking. Right now I am too charged to consider that. I am considering my options on where to go from here

I understand completely. This is very distressing, and what you're feeling right now is the natural response. I need to be completely frank with you and tell you what you already know: this is a serious safety incident. You have total control of what I'm going to share outside of this private conversation, if anything at all. I know the sender deleted their account, but if you haven't already, you need to report them to Discord. I would please ask that you also bubble this up to Discord's safety team. Please see: https://discord.com/safety/doxxing-policy-explainer The statement Scott is going to put out contains this text:

[b]Were there death threats or doxxing against RA staff?[/b] There have been no confirmed doxxing attempts or death threats directed at RetroAchievements staff. We have confirmed doxxing took place within our community however, and the perpetrators have been permanently banned. We take the safety of all community members seriously and will continue to act swiftly against such behavior.

I implore you, please let me remove that line I've bolded. The removal would not be explained and would not be traced back to you - period.

The discord account that sent this has been deleted. From what you've said it's doubtful I could recover anything meaningful from it, and even if I could it's probably a throwaway that's not linkable to the person who leaked from the server Right now what I need to know before going further is what possible options I have for staying at RA. There is a leak in our private moderation channels. There is currently deciding on the policy that started all this in full knowledge that they did this to me. It is entirely possible this was done to prevent me from participating in site policy

19:15

There is* = They are

The statement Scott is going to put out was ghostwritten largely by me, authorblues, and AuburnRDM.

As you are aware there is currently a movement to oust anybody in mod/admin that willingly allowed clover to have a set

19:18

It is very difficult for me to believe I am not being scapegoated

What do you mean?

19:19

If I believed there was a conspiracy in RAdmin to oust you over the Clover situation I would immediately resign

19:19

Even Scott approved the original message we sent out

During the initial fallout there were calls for mod/admin member that were in support of the initial message to resign. Tele left before this of his own volition, therefore it's reasonable for me to assume parts of the community believe there are still problematic members in the teams. I am suggesting that whoever leaked this is painted me as the sole person responsible in an effort to save RA's reputation

I see what you mean, I didn't think of it that way.

Admittedly I have no proof of that. But there isn't really much to go on right now so it's as good a theory as any

19:28

I still have no idea why anybody would do this

19:28

I am otherwise a very private person on purpose, I shared those images because I felt safe to

I don't either, which also makes it pretty distressing.

19:28

If you choose to remain, at some point, we're going to have to tackle this issue.

19:29

& I'm not really sure what that looks like when we can't rule anyone out. If I had to put money down, tele is the leaker.

What would tele have to gain from this? Their stance was against censorship and doesn't have anything to gain from giving RA any favours right now

I view it the other way: here's an innocuous leak of someone who supported me, then someone takes that and twists it to what you're seeing now.

I understand. You view it as way to add fuel to the fire

Yea

I didn't consider that

The child photo leak could've been just as "innocent" (even though it's a COMPLETE violation of trust/privacy): "look he had a kid, that's great!" Then this insane person connected the two dots and you got those DMs.

Right now I am unsure if I should let that announcement go out or not at all, even with the removed line. Frankly that would strengthen my position to leave

19:35

If it's alright with you, please ask them to hold of for a little while until I get my thoughts together enough to write something in mod-chat. I understand not making the situation worse but from my perspective it's entirely possible there is someone in there right now who believes they are getting away with this

Alright. I want to note we want to get the announcement out within 24 hours

I'll pause my social media attempts right now to get something written up

What exactly would you like me to share with that close-knit group (Scott, AuburnRDM, Nepiki, authorblues) so they'll hold off on publication?

19:38

I don't want to breach confidence

I am not okay with mentioning that there has been a doxx. I have not been swayed that any of the members of mod/admin are not involved and want to avoid letting them prepare anything beforehand to counter I am not sure on how you should word this. I understand you all want it out within the next 24 hours so I guess all I can ask is that you ask that it be halted while you are looking into something concerning and you are not at liberty to share

19:42

I am putting my trust in you because honestly if you were involved right now I don't see you being this motivated to help me

I'm only going to send a message to my group chat with those people. An explanation is not needed to the broader mod+admin group

Thank you

I want to be sure I have my wording right

I will get started on that message immediately. I may take breaks to take my mind off it by doing other busywork because I want to make sure I also get this wording right

19:44

All I wanted to do when I finally got back to the computer was to work on my single ticket and potentially do some dev work since it relaxes me, I don't even know how long I've been at this

‍

that certainly resonates

19:45

all the time i spent dealing with Robbie's crap all i was thinking was "man, i wish i could be working on [insert RetroAchievements feature here] right now"

You don't really consider how much of you is out there until you decide to pull back

19:46

You in general I mean, I know you are a semi-public figure and therefore have some knowledge of this

yea ive said many times i wish i did all that stuff under an alias

19:48

alright, we're holding off on publication.

19:48

the ball is now in your court!

1

Okay, it's 10pm here and I need to sleep. I'm sorry but I will respond to you tomorrow. Before I send this out I am planning on the worst case scenario. I will look through all my current projects and make sure they are in a stable position before posting in mod chat because I feel I am responsible for them. You are free to doubt this and take steps to back them up if you think it's credible that I would vandalise them or another sets on site.

nah i'm not worried about that

just want to be sure we can get our community announcement out tomorrow. i don't think we can delay another day. lots of sensitive situations happening at once!

‍

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