How do we know who to listen to?

[vonunov]

http://forum.cubers.net/thread-3413.html

The OP says that someone unidentifiable joined his server and threatened to blacklist if it he didn't change his MOTD. OP had no way of knowing that it was Jamz, as he tells it. OP had no inclination to listen to some random person giving him orders, and I would agree.

So this makes me wonder: Is Jamz going to come in to my server someday under an alias, not identify himself, and tell me to change something or be blacklisted? If I can't find out who the person is by their in-game name or otherwise can't establish that they have any authority over me, I'll tell them to go and fuck themselves. What else did Jamz expect here?

Now I'm afraid that someday some dev/admin will pull something like this again. So what's up with this?

[V-Man]

Generally, if you provide contact information, that is how people will get a hold of you.
If I understand that situation clearly, the server had no proper contact info, so it was going to simply be taken off the list due to the controversial MOTD.

Jamz decided to go into the server to try giving the server owner one last opportunity to fix the problem before being (otherwise) inexplicably removed. He did not have to go into the server to warn the owner; had he not, then the owner's post would have been "unh! Nobody told me anything was wrong with my server! Why was it removed??" To which the response would have been "1) you gave no contact info so that we could tell you that 2) the MOTD is contrary to the rules."
Lesson? Put your contact info in the server extended info! And expect the devs to come knocking if you have controversial methods or settings (such as "Anything goes: Hacking ..." for the MOTD)!

[vonunov]

Cool, thanks for clearing that up. It sounded to me like that was the first and last thing done. :P

[jamz]

Thanks V-Man.

Jack, I make every effort possible to contact server owners before I block their server. There are plenty of opportunities for them to make contact info public: server name, MOTD, serverinfo_en.txt, this thread. If they choose not to do this, I check the server's IP history with player logs and forum registrations. Sometimes I still have no leads after this.
This particular guy was a fool. In a previous game there was a cheat in the server and IIRC he was deliberately blocking kick attempts, using admin. I could see he was on an internal IP (the admin, not the cheat). He then deliberately ignored any attempt to communicate with him in-game; not helpful, regardless of whether he was aware of who I was. I may have acted inappropriately in this case, but there were extenuating circumstances that make it unique.

[vonunov]

Hey, no problem, man. :) I just came away with the idea that all you'd done is connect to the server and start telling the guy what to do without giving him any reason to care. It worried me a little. Thanks.