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

[Bluspacecow]

Originally Posted by Tekkub /em waits for new, tekkub-specific WM drama to start. I hope I get some pissed-off emails tomorrow.

Bacon

Bacon

Bacon

Originally Posted by Jalandar Seriously, these kinds of posts are getting real old, and take away from the real debate, and give more opportunity to those who oppose WM to paint all those who support WM as being at this level. As that is what this entire thread seems to be descending into, and any attempt at legitimate discussion of issues related to these events ends up getting treated with derision and disrespect, I'm bowing out at this point. Maybe it is time for another thread to be made for more serious, non-venting, discussion of the issues raised.

Oh I see, so whenever there's a post that you don't agree with, it's a "clueless wonder" post. You people have got to get your brains out of your butts for one second and think with it. Do you want to be objective, do you want to be "intellectual" about things and at a higher level?? THEN THINK! You buy into this crap and you support it, and when some of us don't buy into it or support, we're the ones who are wrong? COME ON! Besides, how can ANYONE be at a higher "level" about a MMORPG called World of Warcraft? It's entertainment! Nothing more, nothing less. Quit getting your underwear all tied around your you know what over it. For pete's sake!

Originally Posted by Shirik o.O Have you actually looked at anything other than the big "Update" button on the screen it provides? We do not ban people for having opinions. If we did, approximately 50% of the posters in this thread would have been banned.

Yeah, they have 4 or 5 little links at the top of their window....5 LITTLE links...not flashy "find dates and sex now" ads or "30 days free of male enhancement drug" ads...do you think i want my kids seeing that?????????

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being considerate toward the users and not forcing them to look at horrible ads. WM does a GREAT job of this, if you ask me...and most of their links, if not all, pertain to WARCRAFT and not to "Ford" or "vonage" (what's on your site now). What does Ford have to do with WoW addons???? Wow, even Facebook is doing better than this with their targeted ad system.

[Zyonin]

Originally Posted by petrakid Yeah, they have 4 or 5 little links at the top of their window....5 LITTLE links...not flashy "find dates and sex now" ads or "30 days free of male enhancement drug" ads...do you think i want my kids seeing that????????? There is absolutely nothing wrong with being considerate toward the users and not forcing them to look at horrible ads. WM does a GREAT job of this, if you ask me...and most of their links, if not all, pertain to WARCRAFT and not to "Ford" or "vonage" (what's on your site now). What does Ford have to do with WoW addons???? Wow, even Facebook is doing better than this with their targeted ad system.

Adverts on WoWI are geo-targeted. Users in different regions will see different adverts. I for example see mostly Italian and EU adverts. Do the adverts have to be WoW oriented? Consider that many WoW oriented banner ads tend to be from gold farming, powerleveling and other RMT oriented businesses of which have no place anywhere on a legitimate WoW fansite.

Just about all of the WoW oriented banners ads that I have ever seen either come via Massively (the Microsoft venture that provides the ads on Blizzard sites and Battle.Net) and Goggle Ads. This site uses neither network.

If you find adverts that have objectionable content, then please contact the admins. List the advert, the advert URL (right click and choose Copy Link Location) and your country/region. Then the admins can yell at their ad provider and get the provider to yank those ad from the rotation.

[Vyper]

Originally Posted by petrakid Yeah, they have 4 or 5 little links at the top of their window....5 LITTLE links...not flashy "find dates and sex now" ads or "30 days free of male enhancement drug" ads...do you think i want my kids seeing that?????????

You're being melodramatic. WoWI does not include those kinds of ads as mentioned before. While it's possible one may have slipped through the cracked (If so, contact the admins with a screenshot and they will take care of it), if you see them regularly it means that you are likely infected with spyware, replacing WoWIs adds with it's own (actually quite common).

[Kaelten]

Has anyone noticed that most of the people showing up to protest haven't been active in the community at all until this week?

Many of them haven't even had accounts.

I've noticed it on curse too...

[Zyonin]

Originally Posted by Kaelten Has anyone noticed that most of the people showing up to protest haven't been active in the community at all until this week? Many of them haven't even had accounts. I've noticed it on curse too...

Yah, lots of one post wonders that we will never see again after this storm blows over.

[Spookie455]

Originally Posted by Lykofos Yah, lots of one post wonders that we will never see again after this storm blows over.

What storm? It's a typhoon in a teacup.

Edit: Noes, I broke my lurker status.

[ScytheBlade1]

But you did it with an awesome reference, so all is forgiven.

[Zyonin]

Originally Posted by Spookie455 What storm? It's a typhoon in a teacup. Edit: Noes, I broke my lurker status.

He he, at least you did not register in April of 2009. Now that you have lost your "cover", maybe its time to say hi to the rest of the community.

[g5pwnage]

Originally Posted by Cairenn Recently WoWInterface and Curse got together to come up with a solution for an ongoing problem. The problem in question is WowMatrix. The reasons they are a problem are many: WowMatrix violates author copyright and intellectual property rights: They redistribute addons without authors' permissions; When they first started they would scrape the legimate sites for addons then upload them to their own site in addition to deep-linking from the sites; They edited authors' files to remove donation requests and links to their home sites, etc.; and They have failed on many occasions to honour authors' requests to remove addons from their application; In a lot of cases the files served to users have been many versions out of date. This leads to authors having users complain about bugs, bugs that were fixed days or weeks ago in versions that are available on the legitimate sites, causing problems for both the authors and for the end-users; Until the community raised a hue and cry, Wowmatrix didn't even supply the authors' names as to who wrote the addon, let alone provide a link to where the addon was legitimately hosted; WowMatrix leeches from the legitimate hosting sites without permission, let alone compensation. Originally, they scraped our sites so they could upload addons to their own site without permission, in addition to deep-linking from our sites. They have finally stopped hosting the addons on their own site, but they still deep-link from our sites, using our resources to run their program. WowInterface and Curse use a lot of bandwidth every month which costs a lot of money. The way we pay our bills is through site ads, which are directly dependent on users viewing them, and premium memberships. WowMatrix bypasses our download pages, and, as a result, people are not viewing the ads. Of course, this means the ads aren't generating any revenue to pay for the bandwidth. At the rate they were going, if they were allowed to continue using our resources without any compensation, they were going to drive us right out of business. Not only are they stealing our bandwidth and preventing us from being able to recoup that loss, they also have their own ads all over their site and application. They are directly profiting from the stolen bandwidth; and Due to the massive resource drains they put on our sites, we have all experienced heightened loads and weaker performance, especially on patch days. During those days they download so much from our sites that sometimes we have a hard time keeping up to the demands; thus causing legitimate users to experience problems accessing our sites. That's just flat out unacceptable. For months now, both sites and multiple authors have been trying to come up with solutions to the problems caused by WowMatrix. However, WowMatrix just keeps ignoring authors' requests to remove their addons from their application, working around the protections we have put in place, and proving repeatedly that they have no intention of ever becoming responsible, legitimate members of the community. Instead, they choose to continue to leech off the community. Well we, WoWInterface and Curse, have gotten together and between us we believe we may have found a solution to prevent them from pulling authors' addons from our sites to redistribute without permission and stealing our bandwidth any longer. Unfortunately we cannot release details on the solution, so as to keep it viable. "Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah, get to the important question: What does this mean for me, your sites' user?" For the majority of users it should be completely transparent, you should not notice any difference whatsoever, other than improved site responsiveness during patch days. We hope that we will be able to revert the changes made to our sites eventually, if Wowmatrix ever stops violating authors' copyright and ceases stealing our bandwidth and other resources. If you were previously using WowMatrix to keep your addons updated, please use our official updaters (WoWInterface, Curse). You may also mark addons as favorites on both WoWInterface and Curse in order to be alerted when they are updated. Cairenn Administrator, WoWInterface Kaelten Administrator, Curse & WowAce [Note] If you are having any problems with being able to access files now, please post in this thread with details as to what OS you are running, what browser you are using, etc.

First: there's an old adage in the computer security community, and it goes something like this: "Security by obscurity is no security at all". The fact that you hide your methods must mean you think they aren't very strong.

Okay, so maybe that's not the best way to deal with it, but the reason people use WoWMatrix is becuase it is a lightweight way to keep track of addons, WITHOUT having to open a site, and WITHOUT having to install anything. It is completely portable, and uses NO resources when you don't have it open.

Now, before you start ranting and telling me that "Curse's addon manager does the same thing!" It doesn't. It runs in the background, is a MASSIVE resource hog, and I would consider it a form of spyware. It also will not go through your interface folder searching for addons you have already installed, unlike WoWMatrix.

Why don't you learn something from the WoWMatrix authors, maybe uncompile their program and reverse engineer one of your own, or, better yet, take these suggestions and MAKE one better! You have a much better selection of addons, and combine your database with Curse's, with a full featured downloader to boot, and you will be a force to be reckoned with.

So, instead of complaining that "WoWMatrix 'steals' your bandwidth" (so does every other user who downloads from your site by the way), DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT...

My two cents...

Yours etc,

William J. Knickerbocker III, Esq.


P. S. I am registered on curse, and have been since '06, I don't use this site often.

[MidgetMage55]

Originally Posted by g5pwnage First: there's an old adage in the computer security community, and it goes something like this: "Security by obscurity is no security at all". The fact that you hide your methods must mean you think they aren't very strong. Okay, so maybe that's not the best way to deal with it, but the reason people use WoWMatrix is becuase it is a lightweight way to keep track of addons, WITHOUT having to open a site, and WITHOUT having to install anything. It is completely portable, and uses NO resources when you don't have it open. Now, before you start ranting and telling me that "Curse's addon manager does the same thing!" It doesn't. It runs in the background, is a MASSIVE resource hog, and I would consider it a form of spyware. It also will not go through your interface folder searching for addons you have already installed, unlike WoWMatrix. Why don't you learn something from the WoWMatrix authors, maybe uncompile their program and reverse engineer one of your own, or, better yet, take these suggestions and MAKE one better! You have a much better selection of addons, and combine your database with Curse's, with a full featured downloader to boot, and you will be a force to be reckoned with. So, instead of complaining that "WoWMatrix 'steals' your bandwidth" (so does every other user who downloads from your site by the way), DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT... My two cents... Yours etc, William J. Knickerbocker III, Esq. P. S. I am registered on curse, and have been since '06, I don't use this site often.

They are building a better one. Its been posted about many many times in this thread. There is also a specific category recently created about MMOUI Minion (the name of the updater) in the forums. Feel free to check it out.

Users aren't 'stealing' bandwidth when they visit the site since ad impressions are generated when they actually visit which are used to cover those costs. Its symbiotic. Visitors to the site are able to download addons and their visiting helps pay the costs. WM uses the bandwidth but its costs aren't covered since people never actually come to the site and are therefore 'stealing' bandwidth.

All of which has been stated many times in this thread which it appears you didn't bother to read much of. Feel free to catch up on the reading and join the discussion armed with the info within it.

[Hic]

Originally Posted by g5pwnage First: there's an old adage in the computer security community, and it goes something like this: "Security by obscurity is no security at all". The fact that you hide your methods must mean you think they aren't very strong. Okay, so maybe that's not the best way to deal with it, but the reason people use WoWMatrix is becuase it is a lightweight way to keep track of addons, WITHOUT having to open a site, and WITHOUT having to install anything. It is completely portable, and uses NO resources when you don't have it open. Now, before you start ranting and telling me that "Curse's addon manager does the same thing!" It doesn't. It runs in the background, is a MASSIVE resource hog, and I would consider it a form of spyware. It also will not go through your interface folder searching for addons you have already installed, unlike WoWMatrix. Why don't you learn something from the WoWMatrix authors, maybe uncompile their program and reverse engineer one of your own, or, better yet, take these suggestions and MAKE one better! You have a much better selection of addons, and combine your database with Curse's, with a full featured downloader to boot, and you will be a force to be reckoned with. So, instead of complaining that "WoWMatrix 'steals' your bandwidth" (so does every other user who downloads from your site by the way), DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT... My two cents... Yours etc, William J. Knickerbocker III, Esq. P. S. I am registered on curse, and have been since '06, I don't use this site often.

As I said before, robing a bank it's also an easier way to get money than working. Why don't you do it? Why don't you complain because banks have hidden alarm switches and whatnot?

Just because WM it's an easier way for you, doesn't mean it is "clean".

[Seerah]

Just like most programs that would like to run on start-up if you let them, the Curse Client has an option to disable that. The Curse Client is also a completely different animal currently than the version I am assuming you tested (because you describe the old one).

And, yes. Feel free to read up on our updater client. The old one still works, too!

[Nov]

Originally Posted by g5pwnage First: there's an old adage in the computer security community, and it goes something like this: "Security by obscurity is no security at all". The fact that you hide your methods must mean you think they aren't very strong. Okay, so maybe that's not the best way to deal with it, but the reason people use WoWMatrix is becuase it is a lightweight way to keep track of addons, WITHOUT having to open a site, and WITHOUT having to install anything. It is completely portable, and uses NO resources when you don't have it open. Now, before you start ranting and telling me that "Curse's addon manager does the same thing!" It doesn't. It runs in the background, is a MASSIVE resource hog, and I would consider it a form of spyware. It also will not go through your interface folder searching for addons you have already installed, unlike WoWMatrix. Why don't you learn something from the WoWMatrix authors, maybe uncompile their program and reverse engineer one of your own, or, better yet, take these suggestions and MAKE one better! You have a much better selection of addons, and combine your database with Curse's, with a full featured downloader to boot, and you will be a force to be reckoned with. So, instead of complaining that "WoWMatrix 'steals' your bandwidth" (so does every other user who downloads from your site by the way), DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT... My two cents... Yours etc, William J. Knickerbocker III, Esq. P. S. I am registered on curse, and have been since '06, I don't use this site often.

I agree. I hope WoWInterface and Curse will working on something better (and REALLY better) than the updaters you're providing at this time.

[Bouvi]

Originally Posted by Nov I agree. I hope WoWInterface and Curse will working on something better (and REALLY better) than the updaters you're providing at this time.

Is anyone reading anything? Numerous times it has been stated that WoWi is working on a new updater. 4 Posts above this one and 1 under what you quoted was the last time it was mentioned.

[Zyonin]

Originally Posted by Nov I agree. I hope WoWInterface and Curse will working on something better (and REALLY better) than the updaters you're providing at this time.

Another first time poster that has not read any of the previous posts nor other threads. However, new updaters are coming. CC 3 has been released and has matured nicely. CC 3 for Mac is coming, a beta has been released, it works however it has some rough edges. The new MMOUI Minion is coming. MM is WoWInterface's new updater (not quite correct, its the entire MMOI's new updater. WoWI is a part of MMOUI). Plus MM will be extendable via user written plug-ins so it's possible (if the other sites allow this) for MM to access Curse and WoWUI if the modules are written for it. The early MM API has been released although it could change.

[Tekkub]

Originally Posted by Kaelten Has anyone noticed that most of the people showing up to protest haven't been active in the community at all until this week? Many of them haven't even had accounts. I've noticed it on curse too...

Yes, we discussed this on page 14, or was it 17... where the hell were you?

But there's also people like...

Originally Posted by Spookie455 What storm? It's a typhoon in a teacup. Edit: Noes, I broke my lurker status.

Sure, you are a "one post wonder" too, but look at your registration date. You didn't *just* come here to *****, you've been around just being all "Silent Bob". There's a difference.

[voodoodad]

I think it's been established pretty well by now that not only are most WM defenders too lazy to manually update their addons, they're for the most part too lazy to actually read even the latest page of posts. I think the new WI updater has been mentioned at least once per page for the last how many pages...

[ymir3]

Go ahead and get the "you just registered knives out," Yes I did just make this account, similar to making one on curse to post a similar comment. I was not previously registered for the forums, because I find them somewhat useless. I don't have the time to comb through 50 pages of muck for 1 relevent comment. I am a casual player and same w/ user of add ons. Now that this concern has been raised on the bus. practice of WM, I will end my use of that product. What I don't understand, and concerns me the most, is the venom being spat from the people who are "in the right." You're points are mostly valid and correct, but you resorted to name calling on the first page of the this thread. How does it help your postion to gain any support if you act like a spited 12 yr old when someone takes a postion opisite to yours. If you feel so strongly about being right, just restate your arguement and go on, don't start saying things like, "users don't deserve support" because that will very quickly turn those on the fence away from your arguements. And you also indicate that people who use Dlers are lazy and slothful, then tell them to DL the ones from your site. Why would I do that, I dont' want to be considered lazy and Slothful. I have to say that the moderators from WOWI have been quite a bit better at controled responses then those on curse have been, most of the venom here has been from authors, and I can't really blame a programmer for haveing the people skills of a salted slug, but my god, if you are right, act like your right and just state the facts and refrain from needless name calling. It makes you look wrong in the end.