An open love letter to server administrators

Dear Server Admins,

I am one of you. I help run several servers in my community, and regularly assist friends in running their own. I know what it's like on patch day, excitedly waiting for the Bukkit team to get the first build out. I've been there, with you, part of the excitement. We contribute greatly to the Minecraft community through hosting our servers, providing players with a place to call home and blocks to call their own. You work tirelessly to configure all of your plugins, fine-tuning the user experience for your server to approach that perfect play environment to which you aspire. You're pretty awesome. But when you fail to understand that for most permissions plugins, * means every single permission I want to reach through the internet and strangle you.

Sincerely,
mbaxter

 

Dear misguided Server Admin,

I actually believe that this is incorrect. I think I read somewhere that PermissionsBukkit does not use *.

Plugins only have this functionality if the plugin dev actually includes it in the plugin.yml. Source

So yea, research before you accuse.

Sincerely,
Zaros

 

As I stated, I'm referring to most permissions plugins, not all. PermissionsBukkit is one of the only ones that doesn't include some sort of a built-in *. Yes, superperms doesn't have a * node, but the permission managers add that back in. And it's server admins who use a * node in a permissions manager that accepts it and then don't understand what it means, who are the targets of my love letter.

Please don't accuse me of not doing my research, too. That's just mean.

 

@mbaxter What about the admins that use * intentionally fully knowing what it does?

You might want to do your own research before you act like an ass.

 

Dear Server Admins. DO NOT USE BUKKITS PERMISSIONS SYSTEM IN ANYWAY OMFG YOU WILL CRY!

 

No complaints as long as they accept that with great power comes great responsibility.

 

Dear miss-guidoed kitten loving plugin developer.

How dare you accuse me of not knowing what the star node means. Everyone knows that it means we have quotation marks around our brackets. Duhh.

So do some research before you accuse ppl that arent myself.

 

Does this thread have a point?

 

It used to. Best put it out of its misery.

 

so for people like me, that own, run, administrate, and have root access to the machine itself. for me to give my own sole group the '*' permission, instead of taking 50 minutes to add every single permission node for my 45 plugins to me..is a 'bad thing'?

only one group in my pex setup uses '*' and only one user assigned to it..me. if you would prefer to donate you time to setting up my permissions file for me, to add in the 300+ nodes it would take to cover the '*' I would be more than happy to allow you to do so.

Do not confuse ignorant admins, that probably on the whole don't know what most of anything in bukkit does, and uses hamachi because port forwarding confuses them, with admins that know how bukkit perms and nodes affect who gets what, and uses '*' accordingly to save time.

 

I would never, as you guys are awesome and understand how it works

Complaining that too many devs use the convenience of a "*" permissions node without understanding the consequences. It was this or start adding a "dieeverysecond" permissions node to my plugins

 

oh ok
I agree though, as much as I love the minecraft community to grow, setting up a 1/2 assed server is a BIT too easy (even if its done wrong).
for every 1 good server there is 100 that some person, that downloaded minecraft, spammed his IP to ever place possible, and is bragging "I HAZ MC SERVAR!" all the while spamming the forums with basic questions that should be common knowledge BEFORE giving out the IP.
people trying to find a good server is a needle in a haystack. too many overly power hungry, egotistical admins that dont know what they are doing, using lack of knowledge of how to run one, as an excuse to abuse the 3 powers they know how to use (fly/give/ban) and giving powers to anyone they can to try to get help, then screaming "HALP MY SVR IS GRIEFED!"

not to mention at least once a day I get some guest on mine, that goes "I hav my own sevr can I have admin plz?"
first thing I think is, "wait, you have your own server? if you do, and was a decent admin, you wouldn't have time to goto other servers wanting to admin them too".

Granted mine isn't the biggest, or the best, or even bug free at times (I'm constantly fighting plugins and dev builds all the time to get things working)
But I do it because I want to have a place that people like playing our style can have fun, run by someone half way competent and actually care about them...not for the reason 80% of the other servers are up for, so the owner can use gamemode and give because other servers they played on wont let them

 

I admit, when I first learned to run a server and was using Permissions 3 I used '*'. As a more experienced Admin, I now see that having complete control over every single node is worth the work. When you use * there is no question. There is no on or off, its all there. If you use inheritance and specific nodes, especially in PermBukkit, you can disable the things that you want and the things that you don't want. Since inheritance pretty much runs down, I just disable things as they go which allows for much easier trouble shooting and testing IMO.

Theres nothing really wrong with using '*', but a lot of people do not know how to use it correctly. For instance; a lot of users that have the top rank using '*' also fail to disable inheritance. I hear that its a waste of resources/blah blah, but I've never really seen any effect from it. Still, It annoys me as a bad practice. Another thing is people that use '*' and used ' - foo.bar'. If your going to set '*', set it on a rank that you don't need to remove permissions from. Why would you set '*' for Moderator if you have to type 60 different -perms with it.

Those are the reasons I don't like '*'.

/rant

 

But I see it the other way around Zaros, those of us that can keep a secure perm setup and still use '*' for the server admin love it..or for mods we want them to have all but gamemode and give..its easier to do

permissions:
- -whatever.give
- -whatever.gamemode
- '*'

than adding everything BUT the 2 we dont want them to have.
but overall, peoples lack of knowledge of how to use it, doesn't make the node itself bad, if anything it makes it so the users are the one at error for using something they don't understand.

having a convenient, easy to use 'coverall' permission is great, the fact that some admins dont know how to use it, or promote people randomly they dont take the time to trust with it, is no fault of the node itself. Its like saying you don't like fdisk as a linux command, and rant on its usage, because new people to linux have accidentally tried it not knowing how to use it, and deleted important partitions. its powerfully important to those that know its use..but doesn't mean it should be frowned on as an option because some people use it incorrectly.