Banning inaccessible servers from the meta list

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Angeba
Posts: 88
Joined: Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:23 pm

Banning inaccessible servers from the meta list

Post by Angeba »

Recently the xpilot meta server is massively spammed with inaccessible servers. For example today there are about 300 servers with the map `Lifeless' all from the same IP address.

An easy solution could be to change the default value of the xpilot server option `reportMeta' from `true' to `false'. This would prevent servers from being listed by the meta by default. Newbies will generally not know that their server is reported and published by the meta and so their experimental servers will show up on the meta without their intention.

Probably I should post this to the xpilot-ng forum/tracker.

An additional solution would be to add a check to the meta server code, which tests whether any reported server is allowing connections. Any servers which don't connect would simply be ignored. But as far as I know the meta server code is not open source, so I can not help here.
rotunda
Site Admin
Posts: 77
Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2010 2:19 pm

Re: Banning inaccessible servers from the meta list

Post by rotunda »

I think filtering these servers out at the meta server would cause confusion, since the server option reportMeta would no longer (explicitly) do what it means. Changing the default value to false is a good idea and easy to implement. Unfortunately, it could take a long time for existing servers get upgraded.

Personally I do not consider showing inaccessible servers very problematic. Most of the time there is nobody playing on all of these 300 servers, so the client does not show them at the top of the list, and I can still easily see public servers.
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