Posts by Allink

    Have you first read the pre-application checklist (Click Here) and do you meet all the requirements and agree to all the standards within that checklist? (Yes or No). If no, your application will be instantly denied.

    Yes.

    What is your Minecraft name and time zone where you normally are online? (e.g. GMT+1:00 or MST). - Your Minecraft name must match your forum name or your Minecraft name must be in your forum profile.

    My Minecraft username is G6_, and I am usually online in the time zone that the United Kingdom is observing (GMT/BST).

    What date did you first join the Total Freedom forum? (MM/DD/YY). - Required 1 month forum registration.

    02/09/2022

    Do you have a discord account? If yes, post your username#discriminator here. (Not required, but highly suggested).

    Yes, my Discord username is allinkdev.

    What describes you best? Choose student, employed, unemployed, or retired.

    I am unemployed!!!

    Do have any skills such as artistic design, coding, computer security, etc? If Yes, provide detail.

    I am skilled in programming and interested in computer security. I am terrible at art.

    How often can you be on the server to perform administrative duties? State either daily, several times a week, once or twice a week, or less than once a week. We realize that school or work will prevent constant service.

    It usually depends on the month, but I think I will be available to perform administrative duties from once or twice a week to several times a week.

    Names of admins that have recommended you? (Must pm admin(s) to confirm recommendation.)

    Do you have a family member or friend that shares your Minecraft account or a Minecraft playing family member with their own Minecraft account who might use our server or forum? (Yes or No). If so, are they presently an admin on Total Freedom? (Yes or No).

    No & no.

    What personal qualities do you have that would make you a good admin? (Answer with a short paragraph).

    As a developer, I am familiar with the commands of the plugins used for server administration. Alongside being responsible for maintaining the custom plugins TF uses (i.e. TotalFreedomMod, FreedomNetworkSuite and Plex although that isn't official but related), I also develop clientside Fabric mods in my free time (notable examples include DeviousMod and ShutUpMojang).

    What continent do you live on? (e.g. N. America, Europe, Asia, Australia/Oceania).

    I live in Europe.

    Can you handle being an admin without it negatively affecting your school grades, work, family, real life, etc? (Yes or No). If no, your application will be instantly denied.

    Yes.

    Have you read and understood the note(s) below? (Yes or no).

    Yes.

    Are your accounts secure? Meaning are your passwords strong, not easily brute-forced, and not used across multiple websites?

    Yes.

    they have some really good open source software, but their closed source software always seems to be terrible. i just can't get myself to use windows anymore. would be nice if they rewrote it without worrying about compatibility with legacy applications so that most people using computers had a better experience without having to switch platforms.

    placing Eva in an admin role poses a security risk to TotalFreedom.

    I wholeheartedly disagree. For as long as I've known Eva (going on what, 3 years now?), she has always been a very impartial person & not afraid to dole out punishments/criticism to her immediate friend group.

    and therefore given that evidence has arisen that admin notes were leaked between an admin (presumed, but not confirmed to be Declan)

    I find it quite funny that you're bringing up an on-going investigation where a culprit hasn't been identified (hint: Declan didn't do it) in an administrator application of which the only connection is that the applicant and the user who was allegedly leaked their admin notes (4 words by the way, "Obsessed with maliciously exploiting.") are friends. We can't exactly be demoting Video just because he's friends with maniaplay, now can we?

    We can simplify the process. What about skipping the whole development branch and opening pull request directly to main? Releases can then be created monthly (if there are changes) or when a critical update is to be deployed.

    Yeah, just have a main branch and then create branches off of it to add features & fix bugs, and then open those pull requests. There's no need to have a "buffer" branch like the purpose of the development branch, since as we've seen it just gets in the way of deploying critical security fixes in the plugins we maintain & convergent histories between the development branch and main branch (i.e. the main branch getting merged into the development branch, which ideally shouldn't happen with that system. Ever.)

    Any further simplified process will be ultimately at the risk of unknown or unstable code making it to prod.

    This is what pull request reviews & testing are supposed to prevent. Which would still happen with the simplified system that Tizz kindly suggested.

    Tbh I like the hub, it acts as a buffer for the freedom-01 server when it goes down. It'd be nice if players could autoclear or autotp themselves from within the hub though.

    I think /autotp and /autoclear being accessible outside of freedom-01 is a good idea. Not particularly sure how the implementation would go, however. But, TF being a network and the only 2 servers other than Freedom-01 being somewhat active only when the Freedom server is down only increases development cost without, currently, much gain. I don't think we'd lose much if we removed the Bungee entirely (or replaced Skyblock with freedom-02, which could be used as a more enjoyable buffer instead of the hub), and we would gain some development cost back as we wouldn't have to implement the cross-server synchronization stuff (bans, etc.) that seems to currently be planned. I do know a few people actually enjoy Skyblock, though, so we probably shouldn't go through with removing it :P .

    I can't find a better way to describe TF as a server that shows us why the common adage "don't rest on your laurels" is so telling of reality. Everyone seems to more than eager to bring up our past successes but do not think to mention what we can do to improve the server in the future. Let us all remember that the present is merely a culmination of all of our actions in the past. Repeating our past actions and/or staying the same would absolutely not fix the core issues that this server currently suffers from. The past should be used as a learning opportunity so we don't repeat our historical mistakes.

    Let me not be mistook here, as I am not trying to dirty the memories older players have of this server. But let's not pretend that the past wasn't full of rampant corruption, insiding and general incompetence. We need to focus on the present & the future, not the past. We can't just stay the same forever, and expect the players to stay. That's not how players are retained. You need to constantly iterate upon the core idea that the server offers.

    The power of relatively inactive management needs to be split up and given to others. There's no poison worse for any sort of organised entity than that of unreachable/uncontactable management. There could be some sort of executive activity requirement, or some policy with similar effect. No hate to the current management, but they all clearly have better things to do with their time. There are multiple people (including me) who have enough free time to constitute at least a few hours being spent exclusively on TF everyday.

    As a developer, I can't begin to put into worse how fustrating the state of TF is. Our development team, while currently small, has enough manpower to constitute maintaining the server and the custom plugins. However, that's made incredibly difficult because of the way changes are officiated. In the next paragraph I will lay out the procedure for getting a change to TFM pushed to the server:

    1. You make a branch off the development branch in the TFM repo.
    2. You commit your changes to that branch.
    3. You open a pull request for the changes to be merged into development.
    4. You wait for another developer to review your changes.
    5. If necessary, you make the requested changes and then go back to step 4.
    6. If your changes are approved, you or another developer merge it into the development branch.
    7. The changes on the development branch are tested until they are deemed ready for the main branch.
    8. Successful testing on the development branch means that it will be merged into main.
    9. A release will be created from the main branch.
    10. That release will be put on the server.

    Now, this is quite standard procedure for any large open source project with thousands of contributors, however considering TotalFreedomMod is a project that is worked on by volunteers and in their own free time, step 4 and beyond take really hard to complete.

    What I suggest is that all future endeavours relating to the development of TF are stripped of the more excessively bureaucratic aspects (i.e. having one main branch and removing the release system). Pull requests and separate branches are a good thing, but the way everything is setup and operating at the minute is just downright silly.

    I truly want TF to succeed. However, the way it is at the moment, I see no other eventuality other than its slow and painful death. Major change needs to be enacted, and fast.

    Docker isn't that complex once you learn how to navigate its quirks and really get to understand it. I'm sure Video would easily be able to pick it up, if he hasn't already.

    It was more about the mounts and finding them. Not impossible but due to our permissions setup it's of relatively significant complexity and more so than when video used to access the dev server.

    Fair enough. I don't see this being much of a hurdle assuming that they're correctly documented for system administrators & changes are properly communicated to the entire system administration team.