|
|
| What's Happening |
 What's Happening
The LEVEL SYSTEM HAS BEEN CHANGED!!! May 17, 2021
These changes make it fair so people who support the chat get higher levels and will not always be lower than
those who joined earlier. The changes to the level system a breifly as follows...
- Operators can only increase level depending if they have renewed, no more automatic increases or retroactive
increases for idle accounts.
- Credit was giving for old accounts before 2015 so no account levels should decrease.
- Levels will now be calculated as 1 level per month.
- Levels have no forseeable maximum.
The Details
The database was cleaned manually with help of a script to put New Account Start Dates in order. I ran a
program to fix these. Then using these dates we calculated a level based on the old system of 1 level per month
for the first 12 months plus 1 level every 3 months after that without limit. I think the max level came out at
like 109. We checked our records starting in 2015 for how many months have been paid and how many are currently
paid. If the calculated level was higher than paid months or current paid, we put the highest value in paid
months. So it is not really paid months but some credit for long time members and level won't go down. As we do
not have renewal records before 2015 we used this credit system instead plus the renewals since 2015. Then we
calculated level again using a 1 level per month system with the max set as the paid months aka credit.
If you renew the paid months increases by the amount/months you renew so your max level increases. The system
will calculate your level based on your start date with 1 level per month to a max equal to months
added since account creation, plus the credits as mentioned above. Note that some users have renewed
over 109 months and have old accounts and they are now above the 109 mentioned above.
Another note, since the system is 1 level per month some ops potential based on time will be calculated
at 25 X 12 or level 300 but based on the limit won't have this level. Once they renew for say 12 months,
the limit will go up by 12. When the daily update occurs the level could jump 12 levels in one day. Renewal
limit has been reset to 14 months in the future.
Please support Alamak and thanks. Keep Alamak friendly!
Purging old accounts will proceed as I have time.
New proposed changes to be implemented as I have time 11/20/2020.
As of Nov 20 2020
Older accounts which have not been renewed since Oct 10th, 2016 and are expired
will be purged and not renewable by Dec 31st, 2020 or earlier.
We will be changing the level system!
Higher level ops can kick lower level ops if they are abusive, but we need
to make sure that older memebers who are inactive to not get precedence
over newer members who value a clean happy chat space.
Under the old sytem ops could add an account and then leave it inactive for years
then renew and get a high level based on time since account creation. Levels were
calcualted from account creation date assuming they would keep the account active
with 1 level per month for the first year and 1 additional level every 3 months
until a maximum of 60, (the old/current system).
This doesn't seem fair because idle (not renewed) accounts still increase in
level.
This is where it get complicated, but as of Oct 10th 2016 we have records of both
PayPal and office renewals and new accounts.
Older Accounts before Oct 10 2016 - Accounts before this date will be updated
via the old calculation of level as per what it would have been on that date (max 60).
This will be the base level. Then we will add on 1 level per month with no max,
but limited by the number of months billed after Oct 10th 2016.
So, if your total renewal after this date was 24 months, your max extra increase would
be 24 months. Yout would get 24 extra levels even if you signed up more than 2 years ago
because you only billed for a total of 24 months since Oct 10th 2016. This also
means if the account is old enough (36 months or more) and has a max of 24 based
on total renewed time and you renewed for 12 momths, the account would be recalculated
at level of 36 when the server refreshes the levels, (once per day); pretty much 12
levels in 1 day.
Ideally a very old level 60 account on Oct 10th 2016, renwewed Oct 10th 2016-2020
would be level 60 + 48 = 108.
Accounts after Oct 10 2016 - Accounts started after this date will get an
increase of 1 level per month, to max of the total months billed (same as above).
This means if you only billed 1 momth in 2017 your account would be level 1. If you
then renewed it for 12 months it would be recalculated at level 13 when the server
refreshes the levels, (once per day). If continually renewed the account level would
be 48 after 4 years.
This means new accounts will go up once per month as long as they are renewed but old
accounts have incentive to keep them active.
Server Fixes
As of Nov 5, 2020 the old server at the Denver NOC was retired and we migrated to a new
server also in Denver. The server email is fixed and should be working properly and
sending notices for successful billing. The webpage to send messages to office is fixed
as well.
Most everything is working, let me know if you find any problems, just go to the
contact page and send a message to the EM Office general subject. Thanks!
Deleted Emails
If you submitted a problem or responded to a problem between Oct 1 and Oct 7th it was probably
lost or deleted or sent before our email services were restored. We apologize for any inconvenience
and please use our new ContactUS form as soon as it's ready!
Contact US & Email
The contact us page has been down since the shift and it's first priority.
The reason for this is we have been installing and reinstalling our emails system (several times).
Our new email system supports virtual users, our target being to add email for Ops possibly with
individual virtual domains for each Op or at least your own (alamak.com) email.
Mail Upgrades
The problem was that Alamak receives enourmous amounts of spam email which makes it literally
impossible to respond to any valid customer problems. Between Friday and Monday we had over 1000 emails
that went to invalid email addresses (emails never used or removed) and over 100 that went to my personal
mailbox mostly of the type 'make money fast', 'buy viagra online' and 'see my sister naked'.
The software we have been using to block this is called TMDA, it's a nice package and works well but
was not compatible with the qmail-smtpd-chkuser patch. Normally qmail-smtpd recieves email checks
for user accounts and delivers mail. If invalid it can be either dumped it or bounced. Normally bounce
is a good idea to let people know that the email has failed. Unfortunately spammers almost
always use invalid email accounts, so first we recieve an invalid email (using network traffic), then
we bounce that back to nobody (using more traffic), and then that bounces back to the postmaster account
to inform us of the failed bounce!
It's much better to read the incoming email header and block invalid emails at the smtpd level before
recieving the whole body of the email. Our machine doesn't need to bounce since it returns failure directly
to the offending machine. These errors are probably ignored by spam boxes but at least real users will get a
failure mail message and we don't do triple bounces. This is what chkuser patch for qmail-smtpd does but this
patch does not work with TMDA coded email responses! Anyway, after a few hours of hacking on the patched
qmail-smtpd we managed to get it working with TMDA! Something we could use to protect future Ops emails
from spammers too!
On to fixing up a new Contact US form (uses email so the email had to be fixed first).
Ops Commands Page
It's broken or at least looks screwy and we know it has to be fixed.
Games
Games will be next in line to get our basic games back up and running on SG (Cybermyst,Hangman,Minesweeper,
and possibly a rewrite of Blackjack). Currently we're not supporting Galactic Conq. (I do love
the game myself but it's not popular enough to generate sufficient support).
Freehome & Guestbooks
We'll be restoring the guestbooks as the original with possibly a topical change to style to make it
consistent with the rest of the new site.
Freehome is running but the web hosting is going to be taken out and converted to a new system
using php and virtual hosting for Ops. It should be vastly better and easier to use than the
old freehome. Ops will get at least thier own hostname like joe.alamak.com.
Provider Switch
Quite litterally our network expenses are eating us out of house and home so we are considering a shift
to a new provider and possibly new platform. We'll be setting a test box somewhere and messing with the
chat code there to see if we can get it working.
Flood Robots
There is a report that the robot blocker is no longer working and some more advanced robot has come out able
to get around the norobot code. We'll be checking this out soon!
This Page
Since some of you are very curious what is going on in Alamak I am considering to write a quick little
script so I can drop some notes directly to this page to keep you informed as to what is going on.
|
|
