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Development Update 9/29 Battle Beta Locusts swarming the air. The rivers running as if they were blood. McDonald's going all vegetarian. Site Feedback being entirely happy and positive. Me having a date that does not end in disappointment and regret. These are all signs of Armageddon, various omens of portent that signal the end of the world. We are one step closer to another big omen as well: we're opening zOMG to scalability testing. What's that mean? That means if you applied to be a beta tester, then we're letting you in -- literally hundreds of thousands of people. If enough people show up for the beta tests, then it means that we're going to be absolutely swamped with people, and there is every chance that our servers will go up in flames. This is a good thing. No matter what you do, how many tests you run and clever strategems you devise, there comes a point where you just have to have a lot of people jump onto something so that you can figure out the slow spots. Well, subsequent zOMG tests are going to focus on this: we're trying to get as many people as possible into the game so we can make sure that, when the game is finally out and available to the general public, that it is fast and responsive and handles the load well. Site Downtime Last Friday the site inventory was down for about 12 hours while restored from backups. What happened? Well, every different database that we have is generally running on multiple servers. We use something called replication, which means that whenever data goes into a database, it actually makes it to multiple machines. This a) makes database queries faster (since you can ask multiple servers for data), and b) provides you with assurance that you won't lose the data, since it's on multiple servers. Unfortunately, a performance change that we had done last Tuesday or so had unveiled a MySQL bug, so replication had broken. This meant that we had one server with up-to-data, but it hadn't been communicating properly with the other servers. We found the bug and replaced the problematic query, but still had to bring the other servers up to date. Well, on top of that the master server had a problem, so we had to take it out of rotation. This mean going to our 2am backup and replaying the binlogs -- descriptions of every single change to the database since 2am. Since item norm is an extremely busy database -- during some times of the day we can get thousands of transactions per second -- it took a while to replay the binlogs. At this point we've fixed everything, and item norm is running on new servers, and everything is good. Icon Bar: Pro/Con You may have noticed the icon bar was temporarily replaced with a dropdown, but then we reverted the change. Don't celebrate (or complain) just yet -- we're going to roll out that change again. We wanted to add "trading" and a couple of other options, and clean up the code a bit. I'm agnostic on the icon bar: it adds color to the page, but I remember being entirely confused by it when I first joined the site. Antibot So, we've been doing a lot of antibot work in the background. Sometimes you see it (i.e., CAPTCHA), and a lot of the time you don't. One of the big changes that we made was in adding a "frozen" status to new Paypal buyers -- basically, if you're using a Paypal account for the first time, we make you keep the item for a week before you can sell it back to store or put it on the marketplace. (The standard fraud sequence: Botter creates account, uses phished Paypal account, buys cash shop items, sells them (to shop or marketplace), takes gold and sells it.) The items being frozen gives us and Paypal way more time to track them down and make sure that they aren't able to profit from their phished Paypal accounts. Other changes that are planned? Well, we're talking about a global CAPTCHA, rather than one in every part of the site: basically the idea is that after some amount of time, you'll get a CAPTCHA in the header that you'll need to fill out before you can start earning gold again. I'd like to see some sort of "registered human" option: basically, you can prove to us that you're human, and if you do that then we'll remove all CAPTCHAs from your Gaia experience. Ideas are welcome here. Aquarium Some people are reporting that the overseer isn't giving them stuff every day, and others are saying that they have items in the tank that they can't remove -- if anyone is running into these problems and has a reproducible case, can you please comment on the journal or put a thread in the Aquarium Forum? We'd really like to track down any glitches. Coming This Week Coming this week are a huge zOMG beta test and maybe a new flash thing. Some inventory fixes are still in QA, and pending. Bugs Fixed (Last week) - UI tweaks and changes to arenas - bunches of optimization to make inventory backend faster - various guild issues - hide display of winners for current week in arenas - fixed the ranking of winners in arenas - tweaks to My Gaia Bugs fixed (This week) - fixed multimedia link in settings - fixed checkboxes in settings - fixed header info for "see past winners" in arenas - fixed problem with marketplace graphs being out of date - improved searching by user name in arenas - fixed week numbering in arenas - tweaked display of homes

Posted by: Panagrammic Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 04:09am

Read my journal!

User Comments: [79] Viewing page 0 of 2 · Goto Page: 1 2 » [add]

Spirrow
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 04:18am


	Prove I'm a human option somehow would be great. Why not make it a quest? Like... a long quest or something? A Quest that can't be botted? My 2 pennies. Not that I don't love getting sweet captchas like "master batch"! rofl

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 04:21am


	I can comment here? I bought some items from the cash shop. I reported this to a mod asking what to do but I received little help. I put a bamboo and chest in the tank. They didn't show up in the tank but they aren't in my enviro anymore. They are listed as IN THE TANK. I can't see them to take them out so I have wasted space & lost items I PAID for =[ I re-bought them after but if you LOOK at the screen shot you can SEE I have more than what you can see LISTED. http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f95/squarecons/_DevilishTenshi89/Gaia/Other/aquarium.png bahhh maybe a "remove all items" button can be added?

devilish tenshi
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Fallaryn
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 04:35am


	Oh man. can't wait for the big test

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 04:37am


	How come the major bugs from the item normalization have not been fixed yet? It's been several months since item norm was released, and the biggest problems with it are still broken. 1) Not being able to sort items that are equipped to your avatar 2) Items that you equip to your avatar are moved to the end of the list 3) Constant errors when trying to rearrange inventory 4) Customize me tabs having to load every time 5) Ads on the customize me pages Does it really take months to fix something like this? Is it even being worked on? I know that different teams work on different things, so when people complain about new stuff being added but old stuff being broken, the reply from the staff is usually "Oh, there's another team working on that." I think all Gaians would really appreciate it if you would show a huge effort to fix these problems from the item norm. Assign more people to fixing these problems, instead of making new features. We all enjoy new features, but it's very frustrating and maddening when some of the most important things on the site are broken, remain broken for months, and there is no indication that they are being worked on. I know tons of people who are frustrated because they can't arrange their inventories. I know people who haven't changed their avatars for months because it would screw up their inventory order. I know people who don't change their avatar simply because the edit avatar page is irritating 'cause of every tab having to load. And please, for the love of Gaia, please take the ads off of the Customize Me pages! It's distracting. It's irritating. When equipping items with multiple poses, the ads get in the way. Often times, when trying to click on a pose, instead it clicks on the ad behind it instead. The avatar customization has always seemed like a very private part of the site for every Gaia. Nobody else gets to see it but you. It was nice and clean, and you could concentrate on dressing up your avatar. With all these new ads on those pages, avatar customization is now ruined. Whenever I go to customize my avatar lately, I just want to get in and get out because the ads are so frustrating. I used to spend my sweet time in there, enjoying changing my avatar up. But not anymore. Please, please, please remove those ads. Please, please, please fix the problems with the inventory arranger.

The Sweet Mango
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Kunai Jones
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 04:50am


	Ah, very nice. Thanks for the beefy update. That said, a couple of quick questions. First, there are still issues with the Avatar Arena. Things are getting better, sure, but I feel that what it's really missing is randomization. What's happening is that every time a more popular entry draws a vote, it dumps the next pageview onto the following avatar in the order in which the entries came in. So that entry is getting lavished with views and comments that are spilling over from the entries highlighted in the Popular tab, while other entries are ignored for hours or even days at a time. It's better if there's a randomizer to spread those pageviews around. More randomization is needed in other areas as well. Clicking the "Avatar" tab itself in the Arenas takes you to a random entry, but clicking either of the sub-categories under that tab takes you to the same pre-selected entry over and over again. Last week that particular entry drew over 6,000 votes from that exposure. Those rates could have been spread around much more effectively if that had been a random entry. The other big issue is that you can see a person's average rating by going to their Gallery page. Don't get me wrong, I love the Gallery system, it's a truly inspired change to the setup and I couldn't be happier about it. But the issue is that if you can see how a person is doing then you can target them for downvoting. It seems unlikely, but a person could bring a guild of 100 of their friends to attack a person's high average pretty easily. It's fine for the creator to see their score as it develops, but it's very dangerous to expose it to everybody. Gaia should know that fact better than anybody, since it was part of the guidelines you included in the previous incarnation of the Avatar Arena. You can find these and more continuing issues in this thread. I apologize for the attitude and..umm..frank candor of some of the people in there (including myself) they just get very passionate about this part of the site. For many it's the one thing that keeps them invested in the site from week to week. One developer in particular named with the screenname Pirula has been corresponding with a prominent AvA competitor, and the two of them have initiated a lot of the fixes. So I just wanted to bring her to your attention for interacting directly with the userbase to improve things. She rocks. Once again, thanks for keeping us up to date on the development side of things. For many people your journal entries are indispensable. Have a good rest of the week!

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 05:02am


	((I have an aquarium glitch. I'm on Firefox 2, Windows XP, and I click the blue link after my prize (30 gold) appears from the overseer. And Firefox crashes. Completely. I restart, and it asks to restore my session. If you need more information, please don't hesitate to PM me, kupo.))

Little Maki-chan
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Lissianthus
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 05:09am


	Pan... One of my favorite things about the Aquarium is the variable layering. Is there any chance this might be a lead-up to more flexibility in item layering on avatars?

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 05:11am


	"Registered Human"—I wish very much that this could happen, but it can't. Isn't it true that anyone, at any time, could lose their account to a hacker, keylogger or even just a garden-variety scammer, and the evildoer could hook the stolen account up to a botting program? If the victim had already proven themselves human, the account would go unquestioned for the rest of its existance.

Platonix
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Chema
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 05:31am


	I just want less captchas in profile comments. gonk

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 06:06am


	I applied to be a beta tester, but was not let in. Does this mean that you have only selected a specific batch again?

Blaze-kun
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XDmaster4
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 06:10am


	yay a big test. i really like to participate in that one :3

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 06:33am


	Thank you for all your, and your teams hard work. heart For the drop down - I don't like it. I like visiting people's websites, journals, profiles, etc. The bar was great - everything was right there. Now, the drop down it takes that extra step for me to get that information. The look of it doesn't mesh with the "quote/edit" button. It makes it look really off. If you were updating those buttons too, it wouldn't be such a big deal. Also, the placement just doesn't feel right. You have the two buttons by themselves and then a drop down. I definitely preferred it being all in one place.

pirhan
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Erebea revius
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 07:17am


	This isn't a complaint - just early feedback ^_^ : Please don't remove the bar, as you said it adds colour to the page and in all honest because this site is so white especially in the forums nearly every change that is made just makes it more and more sterile and unwelcoming. Not to mention that drop down box is totally hideous and uninspired, drop down menus my be great for site navigation but not in the forums themselves. Please reconsider removing the bar. EDIT: Why not have a site wide poll (I believe there is a particular primate who isn't exactly busy at the moment) and ask us who user the forums the most if we want the old bar or the new drop down menu?

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 07:48am


	Hey Pan, about the antibot, captcha, and registered human part... What about utilizing the random events (giftboxes and trunks) as a type of antibotting measure? If a person doesn't claim the box, it will log them out. Since you would need something that would happen more frequently, you could add a new box with a much greater chance of occurrence, but that only spits out daily chance prizes (or lower). Since random events occur on page load (i believe), it would hit botters much more often since they load pages much more frequently, and since you can get random events on any page, it could be a step closer to a global, if not global, without suffering from the negative opinion people have of the captchas. Thanks for keeping the site up and running. ~Bunneh edit: If bots can claim random events, then you could just put a captcha in before a user could claim them. Users don't like captchas, but putting it in something that would give them a prize once they filled it out would go over better than one that appeared in the header. Especially since when posting in the forums, users rarely see the header since after posting they are brought to their post at the bottom of the thread, instead of the top.

Caramel Bunneh
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morozco024
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 07:55am


	Thanks Pan for the update and skooling Gaians on what happened w/ the database outage...if you don't give detailed descriptions of your work in the last week people will never understand...we know it's time consuming, but really great stuff... Thanks to you and your team (and everyone else inbetween) for all your hard work. Oh, and thank God you're brining back the drop down user options in forums...I love the new look...hated that eyesore of a user bar...

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 08:51am


	Registered human: That sounds so philosophical or something. How does one prove one's own existence? 0.o I'm a human I swear! There could be a few ways to prove you are human, but a bot could possibly do them all. One way is after a number of completed captchas without any warnings against your account, you could have all captchas removed. It could be abused, but I see it as one of the few ways to do it. I can't think of anymore at the moment though.

stormoftara
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Rampant Stupidity
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 09:52am


	Hey, there. This'll be the first time I post a comment on your journal! razz I read what you said in here about the Overseer not granting items. I wasn't to worried about it; thought it was just a glitch that would remedy itself. However, since you took note of it, I figure I may as well post something about it. I have this account and two mules. One account--my lesser-used mule, has been getting stuff from the Overseer just fine. Fishies are happy. Hurray. This account and my main mule, Coat.Rack, have been experiencing problems with the overseer for the past couple days now. It hasn't opened up for me since two days ago. I just came on here to check on my fish and stuff, and no luck. As far as decorations go, everything seems to be fine. Haven't had any problems with that. I'll check on it again later on today to see if anything happens. Hope you guys get it fixed soon, though! My tank health is going up on my main here to a nice healthy percentage, slowly but surely. I'm excited to see what I get! :]

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 11:03am


	What a mess last Friday, huh? Way to hang in there and get everything put back together. Go, team! Thanks for fixing the checkboxes; that was kind of a long sequence to have to repeat over and over for queries in the Q&A. sweatdrop I don't mind filling out tons of CAPTCHAs. I really am human every time. blaugh

Chocobo Princess
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France Hopper
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 11:53am


	Erm, Pan I can't get (and I actually mean this) anything to work right now. House isn't loading, Car appears to have crashed again, aquarium loads the tank and nothing else, and now not even the daily chance is working. Did Gaia lose another database or is it pissed I've been switching back and forth between Chrome and Safari? Add to that now no posting bonus and had to refresh before this actually showed up. As for overseer not always giving, I've had that once so far. Good to know there's a zOMG beta going out soon though. May update this later. EDIT: Alright I think I know why my account was acting up. Everything's back to normal now. Sorry for any alarm sweatdrop Also, I like the drop down menu for the options better. Much more clean.

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 01:14pm


	@Antibot Now I've been hearing that theres a code you can put in (like a checkbox or anything) that will be in the code but hides from the users, so the only people who use it are bots. You find these and it blocks them out until they can prove they're human by CAPTCHA or somthing like it

General of Clowns
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Ketsushin
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 02:37pm


	Is the economy down again? I can't even open the DC... the marketplace is down, my inventory isn't working... My aquarium overseer didn't give me any stuff today. I wish it could give me itens and not gg... And I wish you could give us some directions on how to improve the aquarium health. It's frustrating... Thanks for your report, Pan! ^^

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 03:20pm


	Thanks very much for a very informative post, Pan! It's great to see you keeping us updated, and I definitely appreciate it. Keep up the great work! heart

Amaryllix
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Jme83
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 04:04pm


	In my aquarium, I'm suppose to have 3 christmas gifts, but only 2 show up. It shows in my decoration inventory that all 3 are in use. I hope this can get cleared up soon.

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 04:57pm


	While it'd be nice to be able to not have to do CAPTCHA and have some kind of 'verify as human', there wouldn't be much stopping someone from interacting on a human level long enough to do so and then switching to botting. I noticed the drop-down switch for by forum posts. I'm not sure how I'd feel about it, I'm so used to the icon bar for so long its a big change. That is how the Arenas are set up though. I do have a like for the icons since I usually just right-click on them and open the page in a new tab rather than navigating there from where I am.

Imaginary Fox
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Raven Noireheart
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 05:09pm


	Battle Beta I'm pretty excited to have new testers along side with us. I honestly think it was a wise move for the developers to add more testers, so that you guys will know the game's limits and capacity when it comes out to the general public. Icon Bar: Pro/Con I saw a topic regarding this on Site Feedback, I didn't get the chance to see this but I do hope you change it as well. The more features for the Icon Bar the better, since I find the old one lacking something, and it looks pretty old now... Arenas Great update, as well as the Cosplay category being added. From what I read from the past I always saw how people wanted this and you listened to them, so thank you for that. By the way what is this new flash thing that you speak of? ninja

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 06:26pm


	heart at telling us what bugs you're fixing/fixed evil at new drop down bar menu rofl At first paragraph about the Armageddon heart heart heart at new zOMG testers crying at elitism from old zOMG testers neutral at header bar captcha. heart at you.

Moonlight Silver
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Dreda
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 06:30pm


	Yeah overseer isn't giving me items everyday. It stopped a few days ago when I added the Planet Earth Item. If that helps. Thanks for fixing the multimedia link, and yay @ being beta tester &w& Then a site-wide captcha would be a good idea. But wouldn't you need to send one out, like.. weekly? Everytime a person on gaia enters it, they could start a bot. Thus destroying that sitewide one for one time.... How it is now, it makes it so the bots are sitting there and can't get past without someone to sit down and fix the problem, which is slowing it down for you to track them down. But if you set up one main one, then they could enter it, and be good. ? Edit: The new bar.. I think you should add some quick references back to the place where they were to make it easier. Like just even a PM or something simple. >.<; If anything that's going to confuse them more. You could add a [ (Mailicon) PM ] etc etc.

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 06:31pm


	I'm sad to see the icon bar will be going back in. I just think it's poor choice for the design. Glad to hear about working on the inventory backend.

Kilani
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PCLong
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 06:53pm


	Aquarium...not sure how to replicate it but it didn't give me anything until way late last night and today it gave me the same amount yet the % of tank health had gone up by 2% points. I have no idea how that works, but I have been keeping a log in my journal. Also my mules have not had the overseer give them anything today

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 07:00pm


	Quote: basically, you can prove to us that you're human, and if you do that then we'll remove all CAPTCHAs from your Gaia experience. People would just prove themselves human and let bots take control, no?

dBEf-GAEc-18E-BBAf
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Cautionary Tale
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 07:12pm


	Thanx for the huge update Pan. biggrin I'm not sure how to reproduce it for you but I haven't received any items from the Overseer for the last two days. As someone else mentioned, it seemed to stop after I added Aquarium Earth. My overall tank percentage keeps going up but still no luck with the Overseer. I'm very glad to hear about any bug fixes with the Inventories! I hope to see though some more detailed info about if and when the scrambling and random movement of items in our Inventories is being fixed. I don't have much of a problem with the pagination while dressing my avatar but I do have a severe dislike when my items rearrange themselves. Keep up the hard work! There are some of us that do appreciate the stuff you and your team do for the users. biggrin

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 07:19pm


	I don't know about replication, but My clam didn't open yesterday, despite proding and hasn't opened today either. I use google chrome on WinXP and Win Vista and less Opera on Win TabletPC. (Mostly on Vista yesterday, Oprea/Tablet today once and XP/Chrome again now.) I put in my fishes one at a time after the three original ones. I sometimes chose the same temperature or the same song and save just to see the hearts on fishes. Hope you fix that bug! Thanks a lot for the beta test oportunity for us users!

Kibrika
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Kamika Sugi
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 07:30pm


	Battle Beta Ah, stress testing. This is one of my favorite occupations when it comes to testing online games biggrin I just hope I'll be there to witness all of it as this is also a stress test for my computer. But it was rather funny to see all these threads about the invitation PMs, thinking it's some sort of a scam xd Site downtime That took you quite some time to fix all of it eek But it's interesting to know how servers are set up and work so please, continue the lesson blaugh Icon Bar: Pro/Con Well, I'm happy with either of hem although the old one looks a bit out of place and as pirhan already said, the quote and edit button need a make-over as well to fit with the look and feel of this site when the pull-down menu is being rolled out again. And another thing: I think it would be better to place that pull-down menu on the same spot as the old bar. Some of the users said the space where the bar once was, seemed rather empty. But you could also roll out a poll about the positioning of the menu. Antibot The frozen status for new bought items in the Cash Shop and store seems like a good plan since it makes the job of tracking stuff much easier. As for the global CAPTCHA, I don't know what the exact plans are but will this global CAPTCHA reappear in a new session? And are you guys testing the strength of the CAPTCHAs from time to time? Some botting programs have advanced OCR and can easily decipher the CAPTCHAs of some websites. Bugfixes I'm glad the team finally managed to fix the options on the account preferences page. I can't even remember how many times I had to tell users how to work around it. Same goes for the multimedia link. Kudos to that! heart

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 07:50pm


	All of the information in this entry made me smile. Thankies, Pan! One thing, though; about the botting things. Wouldn't a human be able to just hang around the site themselves until the "Prove you're a human" thing pops up, fill it out, and then once they're free of captchas for the day just assign a botting program to their account?

Jaganshe
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DestiniiHaruya
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 07:55pm


	I sure wish I'd applied as a beta tester... When you were looking for testers, I couldn't find where you submit the form...(I bet it was somewhere obvious like a thread in zOMG! Discussion... crying ) It'll be sad to see the icon bar go, but I must admit, I liked the new drop-down set-up. If it was a little more streamlined, and had trades, IMs and emails on it... hinty hinty xD Some days the Overseer doesn't give me anything... I thought I was just unlucky, but if it's supposed to give you something every day... wahmbulance Mmm... new flash thing? Ooh... an improved cinema lobby? Is it an improved cinema lobby? Pleeeease give us an improved cinema lobbyyy~! x3 Masterpieces done! Thank you! Hermes' Moon, here I come! Kiss me my Gimpi, computer screen no sora kara... <333 (Get the reference? PM me!)

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 08:07pm


	Stopping botters dead in their tracks is nearly impossible. It's incredibly cheap to just hire someone to make a few hundred accounts on Gaia and then prove they're "human" one after the other. I suggest the CAPTCHA pops up at a completely random time so botters can't anticipate on them. It wouldn't stop them from checking back every few weeks to fill out a few CAPTCHAs and be on their merry way, but it would seriously hamper their efforts. Quote: (The standard fraud sequence: Botter creates account, uses phished Paypal account, buys cash shop items, sells them (to shop or marketplace), takes gold and sells it.) I was wondering about that. Glad to see you know what's up.

Aldo
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Masco
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 08:22pm


	I am actually having a problem with my Aquarium. Not only am I not getting my overseer items every day [I get it on and off.], but I also cannot change any of the settings for my Aquarium. No temperature, no music, none of that stuff. It doesn't even look like I'm feeding them! I am just putting my fish in there to die now, I can't do a thing about this, and my heart level's going down. Please, please fix this ;-; If it helps, it doesn't work in either Firefox 3 [which I am currently using and up-to-date with] or Internet Explorer 7 [which I used to double check and make sure it wasn't just Firefox].

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 08:29pm


	My overseer has not opened in 2 days now overall tank health is 8.60

Zirenia
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Arlecchina
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 08:37pm


	Re: Icon Bar: Pro/Con What happened to the View Posts and View Guilds links which was available in the profiles? Am I blind? These links are very helpful and I would like to see it added to the new drop-down or at least put back in Profiles. Also, I think you're doing a wonderful job and I enjoy reading your journal entries to keep tabs on what the developers are doing. Actually being able to observe the development of Gaia is one of the things I find most interesting about the site. Thanks for all your hard work.

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 08:58pm


	I don't like the Icon bar. As long as you can hover over an icon and get its function, what's the advantage of an ugly drop down bar? Also, eliminating the View Posts option is a serious detriment to many legitimate Gaian functions: 1. Checking on bump contest entries 2. Checking to make sure someone you've paid to advertise for you has fulfilled their contract. 3. Checking out people who ask to be your friend, etc... 4. Checking whether someone is a scammer, like when they send you a gift, or to see if you want to send them one. 5. Following staff posts, like I do with Lanzer for AtA There are plenty more ... I prefer to have people be able to check my posts or those of my gifting mules when I gift randomly, for example. My profile does not have the "view posts" link embedded in it; it was only up in the top line and now that's gone. I hope you reconsider adding that option back. Already, too many people have removed the coding from the top lines of their profiles. I'm not a stalker, and this is a public forum, so posts should be viewable. I like the "Registered Human" option because on my laptop, I can't tell I have a captcha on a post because the screen is really horizontal. Usually, I remember to scroll down and use the lower "submit" button but I get worried every time I get one and think "Oh, did I forget one before?" Thanks for listening.

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stellacadente
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 09:01pm


	My last comment was getting tl;dr, so here's some more: I love Aquarium. I really, really love Aquarium. Thanks for making it. I hope people get over their bad selves and either ignore it or embrace it. I look forward to improvements, more options for gold buying, etc... I applied to be a beta tester (was on like page 11 or something of the last app thread) so I hope to get in on the fun.

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 09:15pm


	One more comment, this time regarding the dropdown menu. I understand it and your reasoning behind it, I even think it's a nice idea, I just think it's placed poorly. Could it be in the same place as the old navigation bar? I think that's much more pleasing to look at, it doesn't interrupt the viewing area for avatars. Just a thought if you want to find a compromise between one solution and the other. Also, View Posts is vital, I recognize that. What some people are forgetting is that there's been an option to eliminate that link for a long time. There are new Profile options in place now, maybe your setting for your link accidentally defaulted to Off. EDIT: Okay, looks like there is no longer an option for this after all. Has it just been made a default part of the Forums content module in profiles or what? There should be an option. And if somebody's profile doesn't have the link, you can get around it. Just leave the link up on your own profile (it's in the Forums content module, I think by default), and then when you want to see somebody's posts who doesn't have the link in place, replace your user number (at the end of your View Posts URL) with theirs. Presto, you'll be looking at their history as easy as you place.

Kunai Jones
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LabTech David
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 09:38pm


	Uhh. I hate the new Menu Bar.. Why did you guys change it? D: It added more color to the page and it was cute. The new one doesn't and it's plain old white. .____.

Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 09:39pm


	When I use GIM, guild chat it's showing the other name I had to choose since my name had a space in it. Well, it made me use 2 names, so is there a way I can use the first name they made me choose?

Lady Kayura
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Azazra
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Commented on: Wed Oct 01, 2008 @ 11:14pm


	I wish I had signed up for the beta D; lol.

Commented on: Thu Oct 02, 2008 @ 12:15am


	I really like that they took out the icon bar. It makes the forums that much cleaner - do they load faster now, too?

Arcadian
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Smaddy
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Commented on: Thu Oct 02, 2008 @ 01:01am


	I miss the Icon bar. I liked it just being at my fingertips. I like that the new one is a bit sleeker and takes up less room... but it just adds to the mis-matchness of the entire site. Why change that bar but leave all the other forum buttons the same?

Commented on: Thu Oct 02, 2008 @ 01:05am


	1. I've been having the Overseer problem. For the most part it has been good, and once it actually even gave me two in one day sweatdrop but I'm having the problem of getting no items every now and then (a couple days at first and again today). 2. Where can I sign up for the beta testing? I really want to be one, but I don't know how.

Injan
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Riddle-Me-This
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Commented on: Thu Oct 02, 2008 @ 01:07am


	Registered Human: First you have to ask yourself "what is human?" razz I think whatever system Gaia chooses for "registered human"... it should only be achievable for a minority of Gaians. Something maybe only 20-35% of Gaians can achieve... I think it should be a point system. A few of the points you have to earn can be public, but a majority can be ones that only the devs know (I would even stress that devs avoid posting it in their journals as news spreads fast when its in demand). Examples of public ones can be: Certain length of life on Gaia (1yr) - Doing other requirements might quicken this time. Like doing things that clearly represent human ability Certain amount of items on average (100+) for a few months Certain amount of gold worth Certain amount of event participation Points that Automatically mean no CAPTCHAS -Certain amount of paypal transaction over an extended length of time (lets say a user consistently or semi-consistently purchases items from the Cash shop over a 3-5 month period. Or however long it would take to verify that their paypal account is legit). -Successfully filling out a certain number of captchas without error. Every error would be a minus and every success a plus. Refreshing the captcha wouldn't count. - Devs Recommendation... to users they know are legit (of course, only devs should know this exists, and users... even the ones who are given it... shouldn't know). I think this would make more active users accept the change easier. - Successful purchase of several of real life Gaia items from the shop. I can't think of a reason botters would buy something that requires a delivery address. Not Public Points - Certain amount of hours per week during that life on Gaia (in order to prevent people from just making a massive amount of accounts and leaving them dead for a year). So it literary would have to have a certain amount of time spent on Gaia before that account is considered a person even if they've been a member for a year. - Participation in features that do not benefit bots. Like Aquariums or features not known to have bots, maybe even just certain pages of the site. Like reading stickies that weren't in the main announcements, editing one's profile, subscribing to threads & journals, playing every game at least once (as far as I know... a bot would only choose one game to bot and have separate bots for other games), participating in sponsor quests & shops, watching movies or making use of the Gaia VJ, going to towns, etc. These all separately would be small points but would serve to spend up the "amount of hours per week" requirement. - A certain amount of posts with a certain amount of words per post. I don't know, it took me from year 2003-2007 to make 1000 posts (now i have 4700 yay!)... but I've seen people who have been here for just a month with 4000 posts. Of course, I'm the type of user who writes essays in my posts and used to often break the word limit. So let's make this requirement 9000... with alternatives instead of making this an absolute. I would say a super long post with many words might count as 2-4 posts or higher. A one word post should not count as a post at all (since its most likely a bot or spam). I think Journal comments should also apply, but not profile or arena comments.

Commented on: Thu Oct 02, 2008 @ 01:10am


	Is this last test of the zOMG! for those who have those "Head start" items out of the Rumble box? Ooh, I hope so.....

Ketira
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