Community Bans - A banning solution for the MC community.

Discussion in 'WIP and Development Status' started by Sh8kezula, Jul 29, 2011.

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  1. Offline

    Sh8kezula

    Update 9/23/11

    Goal:
    CommunityBans was founded on the idea that no players should be community banned from servers without proof of guilt that is available at the time the ban was issued. We also believe that all proof should be publicly available for reference. If a community ban is issued, then there will always be data available for the community.


    In an effort to reduce abuse in the system and prevent players from being banned by malicious server owners, CommunityBans will require the use of other protection plugins, such as LogBlock to issue bans for grief, and NoCheat to issue bans for hacks, before a community ban can be made by the server. Even if a server does not meet the requirements to issue a community ban, they can still be protected by the database of previously banned players.


    CommunityBans understands that not all server owners have the technical skills to setup a secure server. Our goal is to not only help protect these individuals from malicious users by giving them access to the CommunityBan Database. It is also to provide server owners access to much needed tutorials, information, and a community of players as well as server owners.


    If all servers owners become educated on how to prevent grief and hacking, we can reduce the need to issue community-wide bans. We only want to remove the most malicious users from the community. We are not looking to ban everyone that has removed a single block of sugar cane.


    [​IMG][​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Working Features:

    • Kicks, mutes, unmutes, tempbans, server bans, and unbans anyone.
    • Fully configurable
    • Incorporates an external language file for different languages and custom messages
    • Supports Permissions (2.x/3.x), Bukkit "SuperPerms", FlatFile, and STRONGLY DIS-RECOMMENDED ops.txt
    • Can automatically gather data from: LogOres, BigBrother, and IPNotify! (Used for community bans which have not been implemented yet
    • Fully supports an internal database with no user configuration required!
    • Lets you decide which types of Community Bans you consider go against your server's rules (You can uphold bans for griefing, but ignore bans made for flying)
    • Authenticates with the CommunityBans Database on startup
    To Do List:

    • Make CommunityBans contact the CommunityBans Database when a ban is issued
    • Automatically creates and sends proof to the CommunityBans database whenever a Community Ban is issued
    • Will gather data from AntiXRay, DataLog, HeroChat, Log, LogBlock, NoCheat, and XRayDetection (PM someone on the development team if you want your plugin added to this list)
    • Support collective IP banning. This means that when multiple people submit Community Bans against multiple accounts with the same IP address, we automatically blacklist that IP (can be disabled)
    • Allow you to lookup if a user has already been community banned, for what reasons, and how many times
    • Alert admins whenever a player joins with any community bans on record
    • Allow players who think that they were community banned without merit to appeal their ban
    • Give people very clear instructions when they get community banned how to appeal
    Changes:

    • Added tempban support
    • Switched everything from flatfile to SQLite (internal database with no user configuration).
    • Major bug fixes
    • Officially in closed beta! (however all of the source code is available on GitHub)
    The Team:

    Thanks for reading. :)
     
    microskies and poiuyt580 like this.
  2. Offline

    mindless728

    you may want to hook into some of the anti-cheat plugins (against flying, speeding, and xraying) so that you can see proof of those as well for the banning system
     
  3. Offline

    poiuyt580

    Sometimes lag and a bad connection can cause a false positive NoCheat detection.
    Also, I don't believe there's a plugin for finding if x-ray is used or not - (turned on/off)
     
  4. Offline

    Supersam654

    I know the TO-DO list is long, but it does say on there:
     
  5. Offline

    poiuyt580

    XRayDetection/Nocheat/LogOres aren't perfect. Also, may I ask how AntiXRay would prove a person is using xray?
     
  6. Offline

    Sh8kezula

    We can only accurately answer questions about actual features. Anything on the ToDo list are just plans or things we are still working out.

    We will add features as soon as they have been tested and known to work.
     
  7. Offline

    Supersam654

    @poiuyt580 Thank you for pointing out that AntiXRay doesn't really catch xrayers - one less plugin I need to hook into.
    Also, we understand no plugin is perfect, especially x-ray detection plugins. Because of this, one of the features of this plugin is to let server owners decide if they want to uphold certain types of community bans made on other servers. So if you don't trust x-raying bans, you can simply turn that feature off.
     
  8. Offline

    poiuyt580

    But shouldn't you stop a problem at the source? I mean, a server owner could wrongly interpret the data coming from an xray detection plugin and ban a person. If such a player appeals the ban, how would it be determined whether or not the server owner is correct in his/her decision?
     
  9. Offline

    Supersam654

    When a community ban is issued, the protection plugin that covers that type of ban will be found, and a "mini log file" will be created that is basically the entire log file from that plugin, but only the lines pertaining to the banned user and for a certain period of time will be sent to us. So when someone appeals the ban, a Moderator can take a look at the data and decide if it sufficiently proves the ban or not.
     
  10. Offline

    poiuyt580

    So I assume there would be a standard when determining if it's sufficient or not? For example, when using XRayDetection uses the formula
    Would Community Bans create a formula to use that's consistent with all xray "detection" plugins?
     
  11. Offline

    Supersam654

    Because each plugin is a little different, CommunityBans will be hooking into each plugin separately, vs. a blanket solution for all protection plugins of the same type. Because of this, we are going to let the plugin function normally, and when we get proof for a community ban, we will do basic checks to make sure that the proof is "probably" valid. These would include things like a minimum line count and, in the case of LogOres which flags lines in the file that look suspicious, a minimum number of flagged lines. Again, our specifications for each plugin will vary.
     
  12. Offline

    Connor Mahaffey

    I'm assuming you've got a server to use to host the banned player list?

    Also you say "We" quite a few times - are you part of a team?
     
  13. Offline

    jeffadkins51

    Yes there is a team.
     
  14. Offline

    poiuyt580

    Will the specifications be publicly available so that server owners don't accidentally ban a player?
    Also, what happens if a player happens to be lucky?
     
  15. Offline

    Sh8kezula

  16. Offline

    Supersam654

    Yes, what constitutes a server ban (just your server) and a community ban (everyone's server) will be very clearly laid out and some basic examples will be given for each scenario.

    Also, can you please elaborate as to what you mean by "player happens to be lucky?"
     
  17. Offline

    poiuyt580

    Discovering large veins of diamonds next to each other with minimal stone and mining them quickly.
     
  18. Offline

    Supersam654

    LogOres specifically states in their plugin that when one ore is mined, all ores within a 5 block radius of it are ignored to prevent false positives from people finding a vein (which is very common). We will have to do more extensive research with other plugins, however, if an anti-xray plugin doesn't already compensate for veins of ores, CommunityBans will definitely add a check for that before a ban passes though our automatic approval system.
     
  19. Offline

    Sh8kezula

    If we do find however that we cant accurately detect Xray, we will not make this reason available for a CommunityBan.
     
  20. Offline

    DerpinLlama

    You shouldn't be relying on non-perfect plugins and potentially malicious servers/admins to make multi-server bans.
     
  21. Offline

    Supersam654

    If certain server owners do not believe in the integrity of anti x-ray plugins to detect when someone is x-raying, then those server owners can set CommunityBans to ignore community bans against people for x-raying. These server owners can still enjoy every single other benefit that other CommunityBans servers get, including issuing community bans, being protected by the community blacklist, and more. When a player joins with 1 x-ray ban and 1 griefing ban, admins on that server will only find out about the 1 griefing ban simply because they don't care about x-raying. this allows PVP and anarchy servers to use CommunityBans as well. When they use it, they would probably just turn off the alert for Griefing bans and use CommunityBans to just detect known hackers/flyers

    And as far as malicious servers, several checks have been put in place to ensure that this does not become an issue. These checks include preventing servers from issuing community bans if too many of them have been appealed and revoking all community bans made by a server if it becomes blacklisted or is removed (taken offline forever/extended period of time)
     
  22. Offline

    DerpinLlama

    How many servers/detections does it take for someone to get a ban? Surely one accusation by one server is not enough to ban a player?
     
  23. Offline

    Supersam654

    Honestly, that feature is also up to server admins. In the config file, there will be a setting that defines how many community bans someone needs to have before they get autoblocked from the server. In the instance above where that server didn't trust anti x-ray community bans, then any x-ray bans against that person would not be counted in the total.
     
  24. Offline

    Sh8kezula

    85% of all bans are for grief. Grief bans rely on quality plugins like BB and LB for data. Every ban for greif Uploads the LB or BB data within a 1 hour time frame of the Griefed block. These bans will be highly accurate, and if anyone appeals the data is referenced. That is it. No lies from malicious server owners and gibberish from griefers. Just raw data.

    For Xray bans and Fly bans and Hacking bans:

    We are aware not all of these plugins can 100% pick out the offender.. We are also aware that there are lots of false positives. These systems are still being worked on. Because of this we have added a feature to let server owners choose to ignore these types of bans. (if we decide that they can even be made community bans.)

    These bans will also include mandatory upload of data to be made community bans.. So once again if they are appealed the data is looked at.
     
  25. Offline

    mindless728

    on the server i moderate for, griefing is 0% of the bans as it is a pvp server, most of ours are for cheating/glitching
     
  26. Offline

    Supersam654

    CommunityBans has been specifically designed so that it can be used on a wide variety of servers. Instead of just calling a community ban a mark against someone's record, we treat it as a mark against someone's record for doing a specific action. Because of this extra level of sorting, pvp servers can have the exact same benefits that a creative server or something in between can have. As a PVP server, you simply don't care if people join your server who previously griefed on other servers, so in the config file, you can easily turn off the feature about community bans for griefing. This allows to you to use CommunityBans just as a known-hacker database giving your server a good layer of protection without having to deal with automatic anti-griefing measures.
     
  27. Offline

    shatteredbeam

    How do you guys plan to pull LB/BB data and keep it secure? The raw text output of these is relatively easy to fake, and that strikes me as an easy way to falsify records. Images are prone to the same standards, but are much more obviously faked. Are the users still copy/pasting data in for proof or is there some automated system that pulls relevant LB/BB for you and posts it along with the ban reason?

    Most of our bans are based on Flying/hacking/xray and this new Free Running mod. With LB and BB data easily accessible we don't have issues with griefing nearly as much.
     
  28. Offline

    Sh8kezula

    The data is pulled and uploaded automatically when the ban command is issued. It is not uploaded manually by the user.
     
  29. Offline

    shatteredbeam

    That works great. What about with methods that might require screenshots, how is that going to be handled, or are you not using screens at all?
     
  30. Offline

    Supersam654

    Screenshots will not be used. Quite frankly, a screenshot proves very little in any case, and plugins that create actual log files do a much better job at proving things. Even if images were accepted, I would be very skeptical that a player standing next to a crumbled house actually blew up the house just because you have a picture of the player standing next to it.
     
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