Solving Misinformation

[Stefatorus]

Misinformation is a big issue on mc-market, with people lying and misinforming people on the forum or resource page in order to earn money. This goes from having a simple exaggerated claim (which would be fine) to outright misinforming or hiding part of the truth to make the end product look better.

My thread is one that will be controversial and I'm aware of that.

Some of the misinformation found on the forum includes:

• Hiding potential drawbacks of solutions or plugins, "custom jars" including practices like reduced mob ticking which makes mobs behave and move differently, to removing functionality to the game that is considered useless without actually specifying that it may affect players in any way.
• Using help threads to promote your own services or spread false information that can directly (for example advertising your own host as the best without clearly stating your ties with the host) to information that can help you indirectly (by encouraging people to purchase a product you sell maintenance for)
  
• Abusing mc-market's title system to create a false sense of professionalism, with many technically poor "businessmen" hiding behind complex wording and providing bad services once they are hired.

Examples (Will add more as time goes):

Spoiler: What is misinformation here

Ram has not been a limiting factor for years now. The limiting factor that prevents servers from sustaining many players is processing power and, once you get to over 300 players, networking. Huge ram usage can be solved by installing OpenJ9, which usually reduces around 50% of the ram usage without requiring more than installing it and solving some of the plugin issues that may arise. (Which often takes less than 1 hour).
Some plugins like LibsDisguises do have issues with it, though; which makes it an imperfect solution.

Conclusion
I believe this issue needs to be discussed and addressed, as it slowly makes the forum less reliable and less trustable. Many of the large network owners have stepped away from mc-market since it's often full of information you can't trust and products that don't work yet are advertised to be a panacea.

 

[alice]

No. This would involve extreme over-moderation (the forums is already over-moderated), and there is no real way to objectively to measure any of these things.

It is up to the end user to spot exaggerated/misleading marketing. If the user doesn't get the product that they paid for (such as a plugin removing functionality without explicitly mentioning it), then they can open a scam report.[DOUBLEPOST=1576615024][/DOUBLEPOST]

Ram has not been a limiting factor for years now. The limiting factor that prevents servers from sustaining many players is processing power and, once you get to over 300 players, networking. Huge ram usage can be solved by installing OpenJ9, which usually reduces around 50% of the ram usage without requiring more than installing it and solving some of the plugin issues that may arise. (Which often takes less than 1 hour).

And as per your example, a user could just open a scam report if the OP advertised his VPS service as being able to host a lot of servers but could not due to limited processing power and network speed.

 

[SSH]

And as per your example, a user could just open a scam report if the OP advertised his VPS service as being able to host a lot of servers but could not due to limited processing power and network speed.

The post was from me, I wasn't offering a VPS, I wasn't offering anything and theoretically, yes, you could run as many servers as you'd like on there. Some hosts run like that.

 

[Harry]

We already have rules in place which prohibit posting misleading/misinforming content on our platform, as well as a rule extending to our resource section specifically:

1.10 Do not post content intended to mislead, lure, or shock users.
1.10.1 Do not false advertise, post screamers, promote clickbait, or rickroll.

6.1 Do not submit resources whose download is not and does not function as described.

If you come across any content that you believe violates these rules, go ahead and report them using the in-built report button under every post/thread/resource; cite the rule and why you believe it's misleading for good measure.

This thread seems more suited for our general discussion section unless you have suggestions on how we could tackle this perceived issue further?

 

[Stefatorus]

We already have rules in place which prohibit posting misleading/misinforming content on our platform, as well as a rule extending to our resource section specifically:


If you come across any content that you believe violates these rules, go ahead and report them using the in-built report button under every post/thread/resource; cite the rule and why you believe it's misleading for good measure.

This thread seems more suited for our general discussion section unless you have suggestions on how we could tackle this perceived issue further?

The description of the channel also includes giving feedback, which is why I've posted this.

As for the rules, it's too hard to get them enforced. Half of the false advertising we see is hard to judge without professional knowledge in the domain. You can't report somebody for giving false advice when the moderator that verifies the validity of the report has little experience in the domain, for example.

It's also simple to blame misleading as simply not knowing any better. You can't punish somebody for doing his best, even if he ends up giving some really bad advice.

What is required is something to give people the ability to actually know if they can rely on somebody. Sadly, reputation isn't helping. It only shows the seller has focused on mc-market and has his clients coming from that, and that he is reputable in terms of payment/finishing services.
At the same time though, it does give a sense of trust. It's the same as with Premium and Supreme. People with the rank look more reputable to the average Joe roaming around the platform. It's an issue as it uses the reputation of the site to promote falsehoods. That ends up deteriorating mc-market's reputation. All, in turn, leads to worse profit margins for people selling here.

The post was from me, I wasn't offering a VPS, I wasn't offering anything and theoretically, yes, you could run as many servers as you'd like on there. Some hosts run like that.

Theoretically doesn't mean it's a good idea. The user asked for advice. You had 2 options: to tell him the whole story, explain the pros and cons and give him the ability to choose or just slap some advice that in this case is wrong.

Yes, you can run a server on a PI. Will you tell somebody that he can run his network on a PI? Theoretically he can.

No. This would involve extreme over-moderation (the forums is already over-moderated), and there is no real way to objectively to measure any of these things.

It is up to the end user to spot exaggerated/misleading marketing. If the user doesn't get the product that they paid for (such as a plugin removing functionality without explicitly mentioning it), then they can open a scam report.[DOUBLEPOST=1576615024][/DOUBLEPOST]
And as per your example, a user could just open a scam report if the OP advertised his VPS service as being able to host a lot of servers but could not due to limited processing power and network speed.

Mc-market is not over-moderated by any margin. Compare it to Spigot, and you'll see a huge difference. Mc-Market is currently as free as it can get. People can give their own opinion, and militate over it even if it may be wrong.


Misinformation tends to steer away proper clients. While false promises and corporate play is good enough for the average child or server owner wannabe, it isn't something large networks (which are the ones that bring in the money for the community) accept.
I've worked with over 10 enterprise networks. I'm pretty certain to say they want facts, not falsehood. Another thing you'll see with actual businesses is that they don't care about the culprit, just about the result. If the result is bad, then they will avoid something; in this case mc-market.

 

[Harry]

The description of the channel also includes giving feedback, which is why I've posted this.

I understand that, however, we can't further this perceived issue if there are no suggestions on how it could be tackled. Not to mention that your OP is currently standing on three disagrees, meaning it doesn't seem like a widespread issue on our platform.

If you can't put any suggestions forward, this thread definitely would've been better suited towards our general discussions section.

As for the rules, it's too hard to get them enforced. Half of the false advertising we see is hard to judge without professional knowledge in the domain. You can't report somebody for giving false advice when the moderator that verifies the validity of the report has little experience in the domain, for example.

We have quite a diverse team in terms of experience/professions; from developers to artists, we can fill in each other's pitfalls in knowledge surrounding a certain topic or domain.

If you find that a report was rejected, and you believe the moderator has misunderstood/lacked sufficient knowledge to handle the report, it would be best to open a support request.

In regards to SSH's post, I've since removed it as I agree that his post is very much misinforming, considering you could never have an infinitely scalable server, regardless of the amount of RAM.

It's also simple to blame misleading as simply not knowing any better. You can't punish somebody for doing his best, even if he ends up giving some really bad advice.

Indeed, and this is why we issue a verbal warning if there's reason to believe the author of a post was misinformed themself or did not intend to misinform others.

What is required is something to give people the ability to actually know if they can rely on somebody. Sadly, reputation isn't helping. It only shows the seller has focused on mc-market and has his clients coming from that, and that he is reputable in terms of payment/finishing services.
At the same time though, it does give a sense of trust. It's the same as with Premium and Supreme. People with the rank look more reputable to the average Joe roaming around the platform. It's an issue as it uses the reputation of the site to promote falsehoods. That ends up deteriorating mc-market's reputation. All, in turn, leads to worse profit margins for people selling here.

What do you suggest should replace our reputation system then, or how would you go about tackling these issues?

 

[Joshua C]

I would hardly agree with this, everyone has a different type of information with them.
MCM is a place to share your knowledge but of course many would not get the information correct or are likely mislead by someone you also may not know of, if this gets into a rule then everyone who provided false information just because they were also misled by someone else on their behalf would only get this case worst.

The only way for this happen is if you notice the lack of information, you can surely correct them this may help both the person with the wrong information and the person with no information.

 

[Jack]

There will always be posts made by people that don't know what they're talking about.
Concerning the "false advertising" - if you buy a product that is advertised falsely, get a refund or open a scam report.
Advertising your own services without disclosing your affiliation is a conflict of interest, although I would argue that this could potentially be grouped with the "no referral links" rule (maybe this rule could be expanded on a little bit).
Otherwise just use your brain when buying here (as you should when you purchase anything.. like reading reviews on Amazon, you should read other users' review of a product here).

 

[Stefatorus]

The reason I'm bringing this as a big issue is that it's steering away clients and making the reputation of information spread on the site generally untrusted.

I've seen quite a bit of false claims getting a lot of gain due to mc-market's large audience and a general lack of interest in the subject. This is something that for many people is fine and normal in a competitive marketplace, but at the same time, it's deteriorating everyone's ability to talk about a subject seriously and technically.

Some things such as custom jars have come up that advertise huge gains in performance without actually specifying the cons of what their solution entails. As a person frequently hired to do performance tweaking on servers, I've been in contact with many of these forks and seen how they can lead to crashes or unwanted behavior; along with their good features. I've had one crash on the server due to loading item frames with maps due to its poor multi-threading implementation. The same goes for many plugins that are sold on mc-market. They aren't carefully checked by resource staff, and often have performance issues. People are used to spigot's premium resources, which are checked to the bone in comparison, and have bad experiences. That, in turn, ends up to people not buying resources on mc-market. As you can see, in the end, it damages everyone, not just the seller.

 

[Stefatorus]

I would hardly agree with this, everyone has a different type of information with them.
MCM is a place to share your knowledge but of course many would not get the information correct or are likely mislead by someone you also may not know of, if this gets into a rule then everyone who provided false information just because they were also misled by someone else on their behalf would only get this case worst.

The only way for this happen is if you notice the lack of information, you can surely correct them this may help both the person with the wrong information and the person with no information.

I agree with you about being able to discuss a subject and give arguments to back it, but for that to be possible, people need not to claim that they have the absolute truth, but give their opinion and explaining the case where it holds true.

For instance, in the example image I've shown, the user could have said that RAM may be a limiting factor in cases X, Y, Z; which you know.
In most cases though, the argument is presented as the complete truth, packed with cues to make that person be considered reputable, such as good reactions, reputation, and rank on mc-market. That makes people trust you and as such, trust your opinion, even if it may be wrong.

This is how I answered the same question. Don't bother about the response, but the way in which the answer was worded: no oversimplification, and a bit more explanation for each of the things I recommend.

There will always be posts made by people that don't know what they're talking about.
Concerning the "false advertising" - if you buy a product that is advertised falsely, get a refund or open a scam report.
Advertising your own services without disclosing your affiliation is a conflict of interest, although I would argue that this could potentially be grouped with the "no referral links" rule (maybe this rule could be expanded on a little bit).
Otherwise just use your brain when buying here (as you should when you purchase anything.. like reading reviews on Amazon, you should read other users' review of a product here).

I have no issue for myself, but it's something that affects buyers. If buyers are affected, and they see mc-market as a bunch of people selling on a gray market without knowledge of what they're talking about (even if that may not be true), it reduces our purchase counts, and in turn, makes us all lose here.

 

[Harry]

[Redacted - Pruned Messages]

They aren't carefully checked by resource staff, and often have performance issues.

I will respond to this point quickly, considering this is my primary responsibility here as a staff member. We have very limited time to moderate resources, considering the sheer number that are submitted every day.

Let's take plugins as an example. I'll do basic checks to ensure the plugin is actually usable, such as ensuring there's a valid enable method and it's correctly defined within the plugin.yml file.

Beyond this, only detailed testing will bring to light the issues/bugs you're describing, which is time we just don't have as RMs. We rely on users actually reporting these issues so we can look into them further, rather than doing detailed tests on every plugin which 99% of the time, won't have any issues.

The review section is also a key system to ensure that authors get on top of these issues promptly.

 

[Stefatorus]

I will respond to this point quickly, considering this is my primary responsibility here as a staff member. We have very limited time to moderate resources, considering the sheer number that are submitted every day.

Let's take plugins as an example. I'll do basic checks to ensure the plugin is actually usable, such as ensuring there's a valid enable method and it's correctly defined within the plugin.yml file.

Beyond this, only detailed testing will bring to light the issues/bugs you're describing, which is time we just don't have as RMs. We rely on users actually reporting these issues so we can look into them further, rather than doing detailed tests on every plugin which 99% of the time, won't have any issues.

The review section is also a key system to ensure that authors get on top of these issues promptly.

What mc-market can do is employ a system to automatically rate resources based on their code quality. There are lots of automatic tools that can do that nowadays, it would make the work for resource staff easier and would provide a huge edge over Spigot.

If people know they can get better plugins here than on spigot, they will always come here first.

One solution to your specified problem is having a system that does the following:

1. Check the validity of the plugin. Parse plugin.yml and (if existent) bungee.yml and see if it would function.
2. Use https://github.com/OpticFusion1/MCAntiMalware to check if a plugin is malicious. (VirusTotal would also be helpful)
3. Use static code analysis tool to rate the plugin based on it's quality, and optionally do a more complex check that also runs commands, etc and save a report that is then available to users before purchase.

I would actually be able to do that for mc-market free of charge (by open sourcing it on GitHub), as long as somebody can take care of the forum-side work.

 

[Mick]

As others have said, if someone is wrong about something please feel free to correct them. If they're blatantly misleading users or lying about the features of their products, a scam report is the correct course of action.

What mc-market can do is employ a system to automatically rate resources based on their code quality. There are lots of automatic tools that can do that nowadays, it would make the work for resource staff easier and would provide a huge edge over Spigot.

If people know they can get better plugins here than on spigot, they will always come here first.

One solution to your specified problem is having a system that does the following:

1. Check the validity of the plugin. Parse plugin.yml and (if existent) bungee.yml and see if it would function.
2. Use https://github.com/OpticFusion1/MCAntiMalware to check if a plugin is malicious. (VirusTotal would also be helpful)
3. Use static code analysis tool to rate the plugin based on it's quality, and optionally do a more complex check that also runs commands, etc and save a report that is then available to users before purchase.

I would actually be able to do that for mc-market free of charge (by open sourcing it on GitHub), as long as somebody can take care of the forum-side work.

We already have resource mods who do this better than any automated system ever could. They check not only for code quality, but also for whether what's being submitted meets our quality requirements.

I do appreciate the offer to create something like this for us, though.

Denied, thanks for the suggestion.