AutomationHub - For all your Automation needs!

[USDMFTW]

Ok, so we found out our first cheater on AutomationHub, spamming the ratings button with multiple accounts.
We track pretty much everything and get notified when several weird things occur. People doing this will get warned or banned, depending on how severe things are theyve done. Ranking will ALWAYS be reset, no matter what. Shame we have to do it this way, but yeah. Soon we will implement a report button so the community can moderate itself to a certain extend and keep an eye out, especially when we end up getting quite some users. Votes connected to a certain userID will also be deleted, so everything will stay in order the way it is supposed to be.

Hope this clears things up.

So, they made multiple accounts to increase there rating and decrease others...thats quite sad.

[07CobaltGirl]

So, I found an issue with editing car/engine images. It won't delete them or allow me to change them. I loaded them backwards (statistics loaded below, promo loaded under statistics) and every time I changed them, it kept the old image. I had to delete the model and engine to change the photos around. I also got a gateway error (timeout) several times while doing so.

[strop]

Hard refresh didn't do it for you Kristina? I found it did for me!

Aw, while I was expecting there to be some spammage going on (happens everywhere), I was hoping my rating would go up as a result of the corrections, not down! (though i got a lotta work to do still and i still find it funny that I have the most votes, for better or for worse). I still have 16 registered votes on the system or so it says, had the suspect ones already been reset?

[07CobaltGirl]

Nope. Only thing to make it put pics in the correct slots was deleting/recreating the model/engine on my page. Not a big deal for me, but still not working right. I will certainly be more careful with future postings. hahahaha

[utopian201]

Ok, so we found out our first cheater on AutomationHub, spamming the ratings button with multiple accounts.
We track pretty much everything and get notified when several weird things occur. People doing this will get warned or banned, depending on how severe things are theyve done. Ranking will ALWAYS be reset, no matter what. Shame we have to do it this way, but yeah. Soon we will implement a report button so the community can moderate itself to a certain extend and keep an eye out, especially when we end up getting quite some users. Votes connected to a certain userID will also be deleted, so everything will stay in order the way it is supposed to be.

Hope this clears things up.

What is the point of the ranking anyway? It will get worse when we have more members. In any online community, I've found whenever you attach a number beside someones name, be it post count, reputation, upvotes, views etc people will always try to try to increase it.

[strop]

I can see where utopian is coming from, but when Wizzy explained how the voting works to me (hence why spammers create more than one account to vote), the system in itself (when not abused) seemed fair. Also I can see the merits of at least some kind of ratings system, as it does emulate what we do on a day to day, real world basis. Furthermore, politics, the way we present ourselves, the cars, any criteria is up for judgement and that's just how it goes in real life as well: you can't tell people how to think about your own company! The main concern I have is that the ranking system would be difficult to navigate once enough companies have the prerequisite number of votes, so its usefulness becomes inherently limited as the world expands. After all, in real life, even if your company is good, if nobody pays any attention to it, you may still go under, compared to even companies that people love to hate that somehow manage to garner as much business via negative attention (branding politics, like, say, Apple. Or VW, but VW doesn't count because they're a bit of a monolith anyway).

That being said, I do wonder whether some kind of upvote or kudos system might be better, though for the life of me I can't currently imagine how such a system would work

[WizzyThaMan]

Well, utopian, that's with pretty much a lot of things, right? You can do anything in life and there will always a way to cheat. Not allowed to drive faster than 50km/h here? Let's see, Oh look I can do 60km/h! There will always be a downside, and sure people will abuse the trust you give them to keep things in order, but that's why we put in effort to easily correct them.

We are currently looking at a system and see if that works. I don't want to spoil everyones fun, but that might include having to wipe the database, though. Only those that I talk to often could probably keep their company, but for anyone who I don't might have to reregister. READ ----> I'm not saying this WILL happen but there is a possibility!!!! <----- So please dont be upset, but this will make everyone life easier and turn AutomationHub into a more thriving and fun community.

Later today we will implement some extra security features and a WYSIWYG editor so you can easily change your car and engine Additional Info and your Company History into a more appealing textsheet.

Hope that clears everything up for now.

Nope. Only thing to make it put pics in the correct slots was deleting/recreating the model/engine on my page. Not a big deal for me, but still not working right. I will certainly be more careful with future postings. hahahaha

The hard refresh should do the job (ctrl+f5), but apparently not for the StatsIMG. We took note of this and will fix it ASAP. Thanks for notifying us.

[utopian201]

My point was that it is important to think about what behaviours you want to encourage in any community and attach a score to that.
I've worked in this area before (for a Facebook social game) and if you get it wrong, it can go downhill easily

[strop]

I have been thinking about this over the course of this afternoon, and what I'm about to tentatively suggest might be too inconvenient to actually implement on the Hub (given what you already have to maintain and moderate), but might work if we tied it in elsewhere:

What do you think of some infrastructure to leave actual feedback about the cars and whatnot? I was going to leave a note on my profile (once it's even complete) to encourage them to PM me specific feedback, but I don't know how compelling it would be compared to having an inline system there.

[07CobaltGirl]

I have been thinking about this over the course of this afternoon, and what I'm about to tentatively suggest might be too inconvenient to actually implement on the Hub (given what you already have to maintain and moderate), but might work if we tied it in elsewhere:

What do you think of some infrastructure to leave actual feedback about the cars and whatnot? I was going to leave a note on my profile (once it's even complete) to encourage them to PM me specific feedback, but I don't know how compelling it would be compared to having an inline system there.

On this note, what if you linked the company owner (07CobaltGirl in my case) to their forum profile? I'm guessing, by what I have seen on most of them already, everybody is going to do this, and if they don't then they won't be able to get the feedback this way. I mean, sure, you can search here for it now, but if it were linked, it would make messaging easier. It would probably have to be discussed with Killrob & company first, but it would be a good way to implement strop's suggestion without adding additional infrastructure.

[WizzyThaMan]

Well, since we got a greenlight from the developers, it is safe for us to say the following:

We have agreed on connecting your username you use for your game (basically also the one on the forum) to AutomationHub. When you register, it will require you to register with the same username AND email address (so it can verify that it is really you!). ONE IMPORTANT THING: you can have a different password, but your password would be safely stored and encrypted with us anyway and no, we can't decrypt. If you want more info on that encryption, look up md5 hash.

Basically, it boils down to when you want to make an account, you need a bought account from Automation. This way, people can't randomly spam accounts and vote and AutomationHub will kind of be integrated into the whole Automation community. It's all safe and sound and will be much better experience for everyone! Good news for AutomationHub, Good news for you!

As for commenting, we might add a system that will be like the playstore. You comment with a rating and it will say your name, too. This way, you get proper feedback (or not) but atleast know who did it and you can eventually report that if it's trashy (when your car is trashy, expect trashy ratings! ).

It will take some time, but we work on it a lot really. So please be patient! Like the game, this site will evolve into something spectacular and we try to serve all your needs as much as possible!

[07CobaltGirl]

So, no demo users allowed on Automation Hub accounts!

[strop]

This s is excellent news wizzy!

I don't know what to think of this, but to clarify, will rating something require leaving a comment (of sufficient length)? Or will it be possible to just leave a rating?

Most systems I've encountered allow for both, I don't mind either way, but just to make things more complicated :p the former frequently provide an incentive to leave a comment. I don't know just how important the ability to be "anonymous" when giving feedback is here... The downside to mandatory identification may be the formation of "tit for tat" or "I scratch your back"... Mentality, esp. Since the votes can be changed.

[07CobaltGirl]

OK, I finally figured out the photos and text for Automation Hub. Check out my company page! haha

Swanson Motorsports Engineering on Automation Hub!

[WizzyThaMan]

@strop: We want to leave the comments as not required. This way, you don't always have to type something. Your rating and username will be there always.

@CobaltGirl: We have the issue with the not-editable engine statistics image sorted out. Somehow it wouldn't work the same as the car engine and had to give it another appropriate name in the coding. It now is as solid as a rock!