WoWInterface and Curse working together to help protect authors and other site-users

[Elesarr]

Originally Posted by Cairenn You haven't offended or upset anyone, at least to my knowledge. The reason many people are sounding frustrated is because we've been answering this stuff over and over again for three weeks now (not counting the whole issue of trying to deal with the situation in the previous year and a half leading up to this), so sometimes people's patience isn't what it might normally be. I do hope that you haven't felt like you were being personally attacked or anything, because I know my community well enough to know that they wouldn't normally do that to someone who is being reasonable and rational as well. If you do want me to go into further detail on any of it, I'm more than willing to do so. I ended up cutting it short because I didn't want it taking any longer than it already had to get it posted.

No, I did not feel anyone was personally attacking me. I have a very Zen way of looking at things which some people find difficult to understand, and I know that I often frustrate people with the way I see things or look at things in a different perspective. A perspective that many people are not taught about.

I found the people in your community to be helpful and informative and I gained more information in the past few posts tonight than I did reading this whole thread earlier

I commend you on your community, you seem to have good folks here, and it speaks volumes about you Careinn.

No, there is no need for further discussion, though I do appreciate the offer.

I thank you again for letting me speak out here so i could be better informed.

/bow

[Tekkub]

Your constant apologizing offends me. That and your avatar, goddamn trees.

[Elesarr]

I have some self image issues and feared offending someone here - hence my apologies - they are heartfelt though.

yay trees

[Cairenn]

*pokes Tekkub*

[Tekkub]

Deeper

you know this post min length req is REALLY ruining the effect of short replies

[Cairenn]

You just need to learn the trick of it.

[Tekkub]

         

[MidgetMage55]

The biggest issue with that Wm pop-up in its client is that even though it may seem like it, WM still isnt trying to become involved in any meaningful way. they are not taking the steps themselves. They are putting that burden on its user base. Personally if i were trying to work with a community of people i would be lurking in the shadows trying to convince other people to do my job for me and then reap the benefits. It doesnt come across very well.

If they truly believe what they are posting in that pop-up they would be trying themselves to contact authors for permission to host.

Though as Tekkub said in reply to a similar post of mine they have no intention of being part of the community as it stands. (paraphrased cause im too lazy to quote it directly)

Of course im sure people already figured that out for themselves.

Midgetmage55 stating the obvious since god knows when. **flex**

[Bluspacecow]

Originally Posted by Elesarr I did not come here to argue and my question is valid. I apologize for upsetting the community as I originally stated that was never my intent.

Haven't caught up to date with the thread yet but I want to clear up something right now.

You have not upset this community. Please don't see our posts as angry. We're just a little frustrated and sometimes that frustration comes out in the tone of our posts.

We would rather have more mature and intelligent posters like you who actually does listen to reason rather than a poster who doesn't listen to reason no matter what we do.

Oh and the key to placating Tekkub is to hang some bacon in front of his nose. He'll forgot about anything if you just wave bacon in front of his nose.

Oh and welcome to the discussion

*hands Elesarr a bacon stick*

Now go taunt Tekkub with that.

[Yhor]

Originally Posted by honem <snip> Oh and the key to placating Tekkub is to hang some bacon in front of his nose. He'll forgot about anything if you just wave bacon in front of his nose. Oh and welcome to the discussion *hands Elesarr a bacon stick* Now go taunt Tekkub with that.

Tekkub is not tauntable. I have heard Tekkub may be trapped, but not taunted, so you might want to get a threatmeter.

[Elesarr]

hehe - ty for your nice posts

this is indeed a good community

[Seerah]

Yeah... WowMatrix does not have a public representative, nor have they made any public statements since that October 2007 thread on wowace when they were first asked to do things respectably. If you didn't read the thread that Cairenn linked on the last page, I will paraphrase:

WM: look at our new updater - it downloads from wowace and hosts the mods on our servers. Yeah, some of them are old versions.
Cladhaire: please remove Clique, it's hosted without permission
Funkydude (wowace mod): please stop scraping the wowace servers - you're bypassing our ad views
WM (to clad): why remove Clique?
Kaelten: please don't scrape and mirror wowace
WM (to wowace): "and there is more than enough advertising revenue potential to go around the various players in this growing market." (direct quote)
Cladhaire: "You said it yourself, you want to be part of the "growing market". This isn't a market for me, this is a hobby and I like being able to control where my addons can be downloaded. I choose to make them available at one specific addon site, and regardless of how silly you think the request is, I'd rather give advertising revenue to someone who's busted their ass working for me, rather than some random new entry to the "game"." (direct quote)

I've bolded the most important part...

They admitted they just wanted to be part of the addon distribution market and get ad dollars. We understood that in October 2007. But never, not once, since that October thread has anyone heard one public peep from WM. And never have they talked to us at wowinterface... We've just gotten the cold shoulder, as have others who tried to contact them.

[Elesarr]

ty Seerah for your post - it is very enlightening. /bow

[Tekkub]

Yea, that pretty much covers it. When asked to remove addons and not to scrape, they "didn't understand why" and then just kinda ran off to hide in their own corner of the internet.

[Elesarr]

hey tekkub I got a [bacon stick] for ya....

[Zyonin]

I remember that post on WoWAce when it first popped up. WoWMatrix (the company) still stinks just as bad as when they first appeared. The quote:

and there is more than enough advertising revenue potential to go around the various players in this growing market.

says a lot about WM's (or should I say Acreon Inc, the company responsible for WM) attitude toward the community. They see dollar signs, easy ones at that. The interesting thing about Acreon is there is almost no info about this outfit, just a mention on Wakoopa and a few DNS lookups. I don't know about anyone else, however from my PoV, that lack of info stinks like a truck load of week old fish sitting in the August sun.

[protolif]

To all who will listen (or read anyway),

The problem isn't in dowloading one addon. It's when you have over 30, and you need something to speed that process up. If you can write a better app than WowMatrix, please be my guest. Until then, stop crying. The updater provided on this site no longer functions, and has been "in development" since February. If you had focused your efforts on that, rather than this holy war, it could be done by now.

As a Linux user, I have no other viable option than WowMatrix. I've tried using the Curse Client via Wine, and it worked for 1 day, until they decided to create a Premium version, and now their popup ads (Forced to run in IE) crash the application, unless you upgrade to Premium. If they released a client that ran natively in my OS, I just might, but not until then. I submitted a ticket, and provided as much info as humanly possible, and got ignored, as I am not "officially supported". Curse and WoWInterface have effectively alienated their Linux user base (and probably Mac's as well). Anyone who is concerned with profits would know that is a mistake.

As to the ads displayed on WowMatrix, there are 3 very small and unobtrusive links to "gold farming" and "powerleveling" guides (that only an idiot would click anyway). I am very doubtful that profit is generated by this, unlike the popup windows that Curse would have us endure.

Your anti-WowMatrix propaganda is something akin to the MPAA & RIAA's cries about the big bad internet pirates. QQ moar. The statement that WowMatrix causes additional stress on your servers on patch day is completely false. What it actually does, is delivers only content that users need, without all the images, flash ads, javascripts, and html code. If anything, it actually relieves stress from your servers. A few years ago, before there were updaters, sites like Curse and WowInterface would not load at all on patch day. You should be thankful.

As to developers rights, you only care because it serves your interests. Commercial addon development is a thing of the past. If you want to make money off World of Warcraft, go work for Blizzard. I believe in Open Source, and will no longer be using any addon that isn't distributed with one of the following liceneses: GPL. LGPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, Academic, Creative Commons, or Public Domain.

Sincerely,
James Dunn

[Vyper]

Originally Posted by protolif To all who will listen (or read anyway), The problem isn't in dowloading one addon. It's when you have over 30, and you need something to speed that process up. If you can write a better app than WowMatrix, please be my guest. Until then, stop crying.

There have been several methods posted for dealing with many more addons than that. As a Linux user, you have much better scripting options available than most, making it even easier. Stop crying.

Originally Posted by protolif As a Linux user, I have no other viable option than WowMatrix. I've tried using the Curse Client via Wine, and it worked for 1 day, until they decided to create a Premium version, and now their popup ads (Forced to run in IE) crash the application, unless you upgrade to Premium. If they released a client that ran natively in my OS, I just might, but not until then.

Did you try Gecko? It's not perfect, but it works reasonably well. Also, expecting them to go to a lot of effort to write a client for an OS which World of Warcraft doesn't support is kind of silly, especially when that OS has roughly 1% of the user-base (This from a Linux-lover). When using Linux, you have to understand not everyone is going to support you. You will have to solve some things yourself.

Originally Posted by protolif Your anti-WowMatrix propaganda is something akin to the MPAA & RIAA's cries about the big bad internet pirates. QQ moar. The statement that WowMatrix causes additional stress on your servers on patch day is completely false. What it actually does, is delivers only content that users need, without all the images, flash ads, javascripts, and html code. If anything, it actually relieves stress from your servers. A few years ago, before there were updaters, sites like Curse and WowInterface would not load at all on patch day. You should be thankful.

Are you aware how a web-spider works? It fetches all of the html/java-script. This particular one does it fairly poorly generating more much more traffic than needed. Add to that, when a normal user browses, they generate ad revenue to help pay for the bandwidth WoWMatrix does not. When the WoWMatrix block went into place, WoWInterface's traffic went down 30%, Curse's 50%. Thats a pretty significant drop.

As for the patches when WoWInterface and Curse went offline those were because WoWMatrix was hammering their servers. Curse only had minor problems this patch day, and I didn't notice any on WoWI. By your theory, because WoWM was no longer able to pull, these sites should've been worse off not better.

Originally Posted by protolif As to developers rights, you only care because it serves your interests. Commercial addon development is a thing of the past. If you want to make money off World of Warcraft, go work for Blizzard. I believe in Open Source, and will no longer be using any addon that isn't distributed with one of the following liceneses: GPL. LGPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, Academic, Creative Commons, or Public Domain.

That's your choice, though it amuses me that you apparently feel so strongly about this, yet your getting all worked up over a proprietary game. Also you might want to read those BSD licenses carefully! Some variants are not OSS compatible!

[Tristanian]

protolif : You submitted a ticket on Friday and you claim to be "ignored" because it hasn't been resolved in a couple of days ? What reality are you from, I wonder. Software development takes time. You can either accept this or go ahead and write your own, or go back to your beloved WM. No one cares. Really. No one here is "crying". On the contrary, its condescending and ignorant users like yourself that came here exhibiting the behavior you describe.

The rest of your arguments are as ludicrous as much as the average uninformed (and not willing to be informed) WM user. You are not saying anything new, important or special. You are just iterating the usual BS that the same amount of bandwidth is being utilized when you have absolutely no fraking idea how the WM scraper works (p.s : we do cause the WM code stays in memory after executiong and can be read by debugging tools) and how much strain it puts on a web server by repeatedly downloading and parsing pages over and over again, in order to "check for new versions" or "discover the download link". Multiply this operation by thousands of users for X hours and Y days. In the end you get a kind of traffic worth hundreds of dollars that WoWI and the rest of the websites have to cover but with no revenue to compensate. Why should they ?

Last but not least you mention commercial addon development. The ONLY addon that was widely acknowledged to REQUIRE payment, was Carbonite. Most if not all other addons hosted here (or anywhere else) for that matter, were absolutely free of charge with (maybe) a request for a donation, which is by definition, totally optional.

You fail at making any kind of valid point, but I sincerely hope you feel better after venting your frustration.

[Bluspacecow]

Originally Posted by protolif To all who will listen (or read anyway),

Well I think I speak for everyone when I say we try to read every post here very carefully. Not a personal attack but did you happen to read every post here ? Would seem that most of your concerns have already been addressed. Multiple times over ::eyeroll::

Originally Posted by protolif The problem isn't in dowloading one addon. It's when you have over 30, and you need something to speed that process up. If you can write a better app than WowMatrix, please be my guest. Until then, stop crying.

I keep 89 addons up to date. That is up to date with major changes not tagging or localisation updates which are a waste of my time .

I check for updates every week or so (even that's too often) . I might look at 7-8 webpages and download maybe 3 updates to various addons. That's right all 89 of them don't all update every day. 3 Might do (majorly) each week.

So if you're UI is perfectly stable then should be able to afford _not_ to update your addons every day. IMHO this is the problem. It has nothing to do with the quality of the addon updaters. It's the myth that you need to update every one of your addons every single day.

Believe me when I say you don't. I have most of the major addons in my watch list. They don't change in big major UI breaking ways every single day. You can afford not to use an addon updater. I don't . See my sig for details.

Originally Posted by protolif If you had focused your efforts on that, rather than this holy war, it could be done by now.

That's a nice option when people have a choice. Unfortunately they didn't have a choice. It was either block WM or go under. Go load up the front page of wowinterface.com . See how snappy and responsive it is ? This is a direct result of blocking wowmatrix.

Originally Posted by protolif As a Linux user, I have no other viable option than WowMatrix.

Email app. Tabbed browser. Email updates tied to favourites on the major sites. Update each week. See my sig for details

Originally Posted by protolif I've tried using the Curse Client via Wine, and it worked for 1 day, until they decided to create a Premium version, and now their popup ads (Forced to run in IE) crash the application, unless you upgrade to Premium. If they released a client that ran natively in my OS, I just might, but not until then.

I'm sad to hear of your problems with the Curse client. I do know that there are people on wowace.com who use Linux and the Curse client. Have you tried having a look through the forums there for people having similar problems ?

Originally Posted by protolif I am very doubtful that profit is generated by this, unlike the popup windows that Curse would have us endure.

Thing is that advertising on Curse ? Helps pay for the bandwidth you use. Wowmatrix when downloading from Curse uses that bandwidth but doesn't display the ads to help pay for it.

Originally Posted by protolif he statement that WowMatrix causes additional stress on your servers on patch day is completely false. What it actually does, is delivers only content that users need, without all the images, flash ads, javascripts, and html code. If anything, it actually relieves stress from your servers. A few years ago, before there were updaters, sites like Curse and WowInterface would not load at all on patch day. You should be thankful.

Are you aware of how Wowmatrix operates ? Last time I checked it scraps each addon page ie it loads it up 3 times to get the URL to download from. Arrowmaster of the wowace site was able to pull apart it's source code from memory. It doesn't have a list of addon download URLS. It has to load up each addon page to get that info. Also I choose to believe a network administrator like Kalvas and Dolby when they tell me it uses far more bandwidth then simply just loading up the page.

Thing is compare this content patch with the last content patch. Last content patch they did not block wowmatrix and had problems getting content to people (curse was inaccessible and wow interface went to low bandwidth a few times). Now compare it to now. On patch day I was able to load wowinterface.com and Curse up within 30 seconds. Last major content patch I couldn't get access to either site for several days after the patch. The evidence from what happened with the last major content patch seem to refute your statement.

If you want to make money off World of Warcraft, go work for Blizzard

Ok we should then tell sites like mmo-champion, wow wiki , world of raids.com , wow head , that place that makes guild t-shirts , the company that makes figurines of your toons, hotels/restuarants during blizz-con, wow guide book companys , ISPs that do hosting for the realms , wow insider and a myraid amount of other companies/business that have wow-related products that they should no longer make money of World of Warcraft because they don't work for Blizzard ?

Rather silly statement.

Sincerely, James Dunn

I'm seeing a rash of these sort of posts. They make this 3 page essay type answer then sign it sincerely <name> like they are leaving teh wowinterface community forever

Did I just write another feeding the troll post ? Oh dear ...