18 Mar, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 121st comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
There's no serious constructive debate going on about (…) the actual telnet negotiations.

I asked you a serious question about exactly this and you didn't respond to it.
Maybe you are right though that this discussion is a waste of everybody's time and energy since it's clear that you're really not receptive to other opinions, no matter how many people share them.
19 Mar, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 122nd comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
Serious discussion can be taken to PMs.


An RFC over PM's?
19 Mar, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 123rd comment:
Votes: 0
wrkq said:
Wait. Do you guys really want to put these crawlers similarly to how google scans the web? If so, may I ask how? Trying to telnet to random ports at random IPs in search for muds? Baaaah. I thought that's more of a convenience, where you register your mud with a mssp listing site once, and it refreshes the data automatically… and in that case, you wouldn't registe if you wouldn't support it, right?


So you're saying that all the MUD listing sites that exist right now are just a figment of my imagination, because MSSP didn't exist until a week ago so nobody had any reason to register their MUD with any listing sites until now?

You might register your MUD with a listing site even though you don't support MSSP (we've had listing sites for years now and MSSP is a week old) and then that site might decide to automatically start crawling every MUD listed there. Some sites already do this for status checks to see if the MUD is up, so the idea is that those status checkers (Mud Server __Status__ Protocol, get it?) can now grab some metadata about the MUD while they're at it.
19 Mar, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 124th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
You might register your MUD with a listing site even though you don't support MSSP (we've had listing sites for years now and MSSP is a week old) and then that site might decide to automatically start crawling every MUD listed there.


That's entirely true. And if some listing site actually
makes a nuisance of itself with incomplete logins, you could
just ban that IP.

The scenario you're describing involves someone who monitors
their incoming connections for malfeasance, presumably with
the intent to prevent it. Such a person is unlikely to be
a helpless babe incapable of handling the rare case of someone
from some ip poking at the login screen too often.

I certainly can't guarantee that it'll never occur that
some site will start poking at muds more than it ought. I certainly
can't guarantee that isn't happening *now*. But the idea that
this is somehow awful enough to warrant adopting an exclusionary
MSSP is unconvincing to me.

You seem like a clever person and seem to be up on the
technical details. As I did with Scandum, I feel compelled to
point out that the technical details are not the thrust of
my advocacy. It is that the purpose of the protocol is
best served by making it plaintext, not that the protocol
itself
is better in plaintext.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net/forum/index.php?topic=...
19 Mar, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 125th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Cratylus said:
I think you must use telopts where they are appropriate. I do not think that
for the purpose stated weeks ago in your original post, telopts are the right tool.

Then I suggest you find a good name for your protocol and stop calling it MSSP, that's just gonna confuse everyone and it makes it clear you're not talking about MSSP but something else entirely. MSSP as currently defined is beta since it has long passed the point where things are just theoretical, and you're clearly not willing to work on a compromise.


Wow, pot… kettle….

The LORD of "My way or the highway" complains about someone ELSE not being willing to compromise????

During this entire process, you've shoveled your way past every complaint by claiming that we're all too stupid to understand you, and that web crawlers will be better off not listing the muds run by people who can't rip apart their connection handlers to add this. You've used circular logic to shoot down individual suggestions because they'd break the overall protocol, which is what we're trying to define.

I think we're done here. You clearly have your agenda and have cherry-picked what you wanted from us.

Hey Crat, how about SMSP? Simple Mud Status Protocol?
19 Mar, 2009, tphegley wrote in the 126th comment:
Votes: 0
Ok, so, I ask this question:

Why can't we just write a small module (something that could be placed in any mud) that just creates an php file and places it in public_html/file.php and have the sites crawl that file? If the filename is uniform and maybe the php file updates itself every day (maybe to see if the mud is up?) then it would work. Then the crawler could just take all the information down and put it in a file under the mud name on their site.

Why could this not work instead of completely creating a new protocol that would do the same thing(albeit it different ways of doing it)? You're getting information both ways. I would think one would be MUCh easier then the other. But then again, that's just my low level knowledge (no knowledge of telnet) speaking.


***EDIT***
I guess one argument would be that not all muds have websites.
19 Mar, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 127th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
You seem like a clever person and seem to be up on the technical details.


Thank you. And you seem like a practical enough person to realize that just printing out a single line of text advertising that the MUD wishes to participate in the status protocol removes the need for people to make changes to their code or configurations despite not wanting anything to do with the new protocol. :)

If you're thinking about a pure-text line-based protocol then the crawler already needs to be able to parse text lines. Making it check for a SUPPORT-MSSP\r\n or whatever before sending MSSP-REQUEST is pretty trivial and alleviates the problem.

Quote
Why can't we just write a small module (something that could be placed in any mud) that just creates an php file and places it in public_html/file.php and have the sites crawl that file? If the filename is uniform and maybe the php file updates itself every day (maybe to see if the mud is up?) then it would work. Then the crawler could just take all the information down and put it in a file under the mud name on their site.


That was brought up already, although I wouldn't ever suggest PHP (that language should be shot in the face, and its authors should be shot in their faces, and their pets should probably be shot in the face too) but rather an XML format designed specifically for doing what MSSP does, DOAP/RDF/etc.

The argument was that some MUDs do not have websites or their websites are on different servers and so writing out those files periodically would entail a lot more than just an fopen(), fprintf(), fclose(). Which is a perfectly valid point (my servers runs in a sandbox and can't access the web files, for example) and pretty much closes the issue.
19 Mar, 2009, tphegley wrote in the 128th comment:
Votes: 0
That's what I figured.
19 Mar, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 129th comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
Thank you. And you seem like a practical enough person to realize that just printing out a single line of text advertising that the MUD wishes to participate in the status protocol removes the need for people to make changes to their code or configurations despite not wanting anything to do with the new protocol.


YES! That's me! I am!

But…how is this done without people bitching and moaning that they don't want "I-DO-MSSP"
printed out in their login banner, while avoiding telopt?

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
19 Mar, 2009, Guest wrote in the 130th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Well, the current discussion isn't going anywhere. There's no serious constructive debate going on about the variables or the actual telnet negotiations. Given how transparent and unobtrusive the telnet implementation is I don't see any reason for mudlist crawlers not to implement it.

This is yet another thread that has turned into off topic trolling and rambling, so I'll have to drop out of the debate and make a very specific announcement thread because dealing with this crap is a total waste of my time and energy.

Serious discussion can be taken to PMs.


I guess that pretty much ends serious discussion at all then. Nobody in their right minds is going to try and conduct public protocol discussions behind closed doors unless they're Nancy Pelosi.

http://lpmuds.net/forum/index.php?topic=... <— Linked because I think it's entirely valid, to the point, dead simple to implement, and gets the job done. I support the plain text method 100%. The plain text methods don't require anyone to rewrite network handling, and you can monitor the activity easily through log files and not need to parse foreign requests. It doesn't matter that some MUDs already have MCCP support because plenty of them don't even handle that correctly.

As far as adoption, SmaugFUSS will not be seeing this if you insist on shoveling telnet opcodes down the network layer's throat. I see no value in rewriting Smaug's network layer to deal with this. It's far simpler to adopt the proposal Cratylus has put forth and use that instead. But since you've decided not to discuss this further, I think the idea is dead before it ever truly lived. It's also now impossible to follow any meaningful discussion with it spread over 5 different sites.
19 Mar, 2009, kiasyn wrote in the 131st comment:
Votes: 0
honestly, i just wrote mssp into the mudbytes crawler because i wanted to try making a telnet state machine (which is actually a fucking brilliant way of doing it).
so there.
19 Mar, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 132nd comment:
Votes: 0
Samson said:
As far as adoption, SmaugFUSS will not be seeing this if you insist on shoveling telnet opcodes down the network layer's throat. I see no value in rewriting Smaug's network layer to deal with this. It's far simpler to adopt the proposal Cratylus has put forth and use that instead. But since you've decided not to discuss this further, I think the idea is dead before it ever truly lived. It's also now impossible to follow any meaningful discussion with it spread over 5 different sites.

From what I saw of Zeno's patch a rewrite isn't needed, with mth 1.2 you add two function calls to mth in comm.c. One to filter out telnet codes, and another to announce supported protocols to a new connection.

Anyways, I talked with Andrew and he says he doesn't mind supporting both a telnet and plain text version, which I think settles this issue. I opened a new thread and hopefully we can start with a clean slate and get a dual protocol worked out?
19 Mar, 2009, Guest wrote in the 133rd comment:
Votes: 0
Zeno's patch is done? I'll have to see if I can find that. :)

I probably didn't make it clear, but yes. The telopt stuff is fine for those who want it. But for those of us who don't, plaintext it is. As long as the crawlers support the alternative, great. Some method for registering a listing to be crawled and setting an option for "plain text MSSP connections" would probably solve any need to litter the greetings with special codes. That way the crawlers will know what to send to who.
19 Mar, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 134th comment:
Votes: 0
Works for me, less documentation, but I've heard some support for tagging the login screen.
19 Mar, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 135th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Wow, pot… kettle….

To address your little tirade in related threads, tintin++ only responds to IAC WILL MSSP if the debug telnet mode is enabled, which is off by default. Helps if you get your facts straight.

Edit: While at it, the WORLDS variable has been dropped.
19 Mar, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 136th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
But…how is this done without people bitching and moaning that they don't want "I-DO-MSSP" printed out in their login banner, while avoiding telopt?


Use the TELNET version. ;)

Most banners I have seen are designed to be "full screen," often by sending a clear screen code upon connect, or by just printing out really huge fricken' banners. Just put the tag line before that.
19 Mar, 2009, wrkq wrote in the 137th comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
Cratylus said:
But…how is this done without people bitching and moaning that they don't want "I-DO-MSSP" printed out in their login banner, while avoiding telopt?


Use the TELNET version. ;)

Most banners I have seen are designed to be "full screen," often by sending a clear screen code upon connect, or by just printing out really huge fricken' banners. Just put the tag line before that.


Ya, or if you do not want to erase the screen, send 'MSSP-SUPPORT', then a carriage return or a proper number of backspaces, then overwrite the line with "Welcome to MudName" or whatever.
19 Mar, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 138th comment:
Votes: 0
Phew!

Well I'm very gratified that we're working together on one
protocol with alternate transports. I'm very optimistic of its
chances of success now, and stoked at the prospect of
improved mud searches for everyone.

So, now that the plaintext side has its own thread for working
out its details, I'd like to discuss something both sides have
in common…search keys.

I think that the standard should include categories commonly
found in search engines. Offhand I see three categories that are
currently "missing":

ROLEPLAY POLICY: enforced|encouraged|tolerated|etc
PLAYERKILLING: full|none|opt-in|etc
QUESTING: yes|no

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
19 Mar, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 139th comment:
Votes: 0
Questing should perhaps distinguish between auto-generated questing, pre-built questing, and immortal-run quests.
19 Mar, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 140th comment:
Votes: 0
It occurs to me that there's nothing preventing
a mud from providing a crawler with data on other
muds. This strikes me as both a challenge and
an opportunity.

The challenge is fairly trivial. Crawlers can
work out for themselves what kind of trust to
put in muds, and to what extent trust can be
extended to a mud's claim to be, say, "Aardwolf".

Not a big deal, but worth mentioning.

The opportunity imo is great. By allowing queried
sites to provide information not only about
themselves but also other muds, what this sets
up is the capability for a peer to peer listing network.

The question of muds providing info about other
muds probably should be addressed one way or
another. If trust data is to be included, to
future proof a potential p2p mssp, this might be
a good time to think it over.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
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