[Warning] Admin flag = DANGER!

Hi gang!

I've been on the Empire for a good 250 days or so and too frequently do I run across (new) players who end up seeing their trust being violated because they gave away the admin flag way too easily. Even this very evening on SMP2 did I run into such a situation. Now, I know what you might be thinking: there are warnings all over the place, so why take all this effort to post yet another, maybe obvious, warning?

Answer: because we can, and because I honestly think that some messages cannot be repeated often enough (but all within moderation of course!).

Now... I could write up a whole story about the dangers of the admin flag but we decided to do something different. I'm not going to tell you, we're going to show you!

Warning: although we obviously staged this the dangers we're showing you here are very real. If Aya wasn't my friend and she actually wanted to cause trouble then she could have cleaned out my entire promo collection. This is NOT a joke!

I know, I know... Pictures, or it didn't happen. We'll get you pictures alright:

Well, she seems friendly enough right? Willing to help me with my cobble generator, she'll make it so that I can get much more cobblestone in one go. All she wants is the admin flag. Why? Simple; because it's such a hassle having to ask for all those different flags and permissions. Well, like I said, she seems trustworthy enough. And so:

And sure enough: it became quickly clear to me why she asked me for this. Because now she could remove the cobblestone (to test), expand my build and even open up the result chest to clean up after herself. Makes sense, right? Easy!

So why all the fuss? Well, that usually starts the very moment when you're not paying enough attention for a while. For example: when you're offline or in my case while I'm writing this tutorial:

See what is happening here? Aya used the /p ShelLuser command and that showed her that I'm actually 'Away' or 'Afk'. That status message will be automatically set as soon as you're standing still for approximately 5 minutes. And as you can see it shows for everyone. /p <name> can give you a lot of information about your fellow players, it even tells you if someone is online or not.

So now that I'm away and not paying attention to what she's doing Aya can simply walk into my storage and...

Notice how she first tries to talk to me before grabbing my voucher?

This is honestly my promo chest. And I'm lucky that she settled for a stable voucher and didn't grab my support voucher up there.

Remember: When you give an admin flag to your fellow players you're basically giving them permission to do all kinds of things on your residence. It is most certainly not your fault if people suddenly abuse your trust like this (and no one should claim otherwise) but it is your responsibility. You need to be really careful who you trust.

And the admin flag... As we showed you here: that allows a player to do just about everything they want. So: don't give an admin flag to any random player you meet, because it can be easily abused!

So, what should I have done instead? Simple!

I should have given her the 'build' flag instead of the 'admin' flag. Now she can remove the cobblestone, she can work on my build and.. Oh yes: that chest which she cannot open? All it takes is one simple sign:

So now when I go AFK and Aya sneaks into my storage to grab my promo's she's in for a disappointing surprise:

But just because they cannot steal your items doesn't mean that you shouldn't be careful. That warning up there is given for a very good reason:

Grrrr

Oh, and one final thing... While it is true that supporters can set a custom away message so that people can see why they're not here, the 'Away' status is something equal to all players. Being a supporter or not has nothing to do with that:

Here you see that Aya went afk (away) automatically after a few minutes, and you can see that she's not a supporter right now.

But once again, bottom line guys: Please be careful when handing out an admin flag, only give this to players you absolutely trust.

Want a rule of thumb? Most EMC veterans will only give out admin flags to people who they know in real life.

SO yeah... stay safe, be careful, don't trust just about anybody.

Wait this actually happened? Well good thing I have an overprotective sister

[EDIT] I think this is staged to prove a point. Still a GOOD idea to do this to warn new players on the forums. Good job there!

10/10 would read again.

lol shyguy. good PSA there shell

I save myself with the edit button

store ur promos in ur /vault like i do! ^.^

i tried to sell the voucher on smp2 & smp8, but no one wanted to buy. so i gave it back ^.^

This message brought to you by GRIP.

Also, I am not sure how helpful this would be because not a lot of brand new players come to the forums immediately. Maybe edit the Admin message flag to have a link to this thread?

Saw this while I was in Yamaguchi-shin, thought it applies—

I hope you reported that scoundrel

I see a scenario like this happening all too often, especially among the younger EMC members. I have never given out an admin flag, myself. I prefer to give the permissions one by one, however tedious that may be. At least that way I know what I'm allowing a person to do on my residence.

Even if only 1 new player sees this then I'd already consider it an accomplished mission. This is the kind of message which gets repeated every once in a while. And don't forget that a lot of community members will also warn others in town chat about this.

Naah. I honestly think that EMC already does more than enough here, they're doing an outstanding job IMO. Just look above: the moment you give someone an admin flag the first thing EMC basically tells you: "Whoah, stop right there and undo those changes!". Can't get more clear than that IMO.

Thing is: there comes a time where people really need to think about their own actions.

Every time I see someone in chat talking about admin flag I warn them. Then tell them how to do the flags correctly.

Just a few hours ago Aikar has activated some very exciting new features which, in my opinion, could also very well put an end to the common need of the admin flag. I hope I've shown you guys above what the risks are of giving someone an admin flag.

However, an often heard (valid!) counter-argument is that giving people all those different other flags can often be a lot of hassle. In which cases one simple command to give them admin is a lot easier.

True. But now we have something new. Introducing:

The Flags Chest Interface

If you want to give someone permission to build, open chests and use doors you'd either have to type a lot of commands (giving the other player(s) the build, container and use flags) or remember difficult technical stuff such as: /res pset frienda,friendb,friendc build,container,use t. Second nature for me, but I know some of you guys are struggling with this sometimes.

No more need. From now on you can simply use an easy GUI (the chest interface) and simply select the flags which your friend needs.

All you have to do is: /res cpset <name of player>. For example, if I use this command: /res cpset AyanamiKun then this is what you'll see (using this on my Utopia residence):

The different wool blocks represent all the flags which we have available on our residence, and right now all of them are gray. Which means that I have not set any flags for Aya, so she can only do whatever the currently set permissions allow.

Hovering the mouse over a block will show you what flag it represents, what that flag does and also what its current state is. First I'm looking for the build flag:

This tells me that the current state is False. Aya can't build right now. So to give her this flag all I need to do is left click on this block of wool:

The wool has turned green, which means that this flag is now enabled. On to the container flag:

Maybe you've heard of sub-flags before? Those allow you to control the access to your residence in more detail. For example: container:hopper is a sub-flag, if I'd give that to someone then they could access all the hoppers on my residence but not other blocks (such as chests or brewing stands).

The problem was always to remember those sub-flags, and how to use them. Not anymore. Right now I could simply click on the wool so that Aya gets access to all the container blocks on my residence. Instead I decide to shift-click and find the chest subflag:

And after another left click I've given Aya this flag as well. Clicking on the arrow brings me back to the previous overview. The last thing I need is use, and that too has sub-flags. This time, however, I decide that I'll give Aya all the use options there are:

And there you have it. I've given Aya several flags, even one more difficult sub-flag, and all I had to do was use one command and then click & shift-click on some items.

I know, pictures or it didn't happen, here is the output from /res info after closing the chest interface:

See? Couldn't be easier.

So my latest suggestion: in case you need to give your friend some flags, try using: /res cpset <name> and select all the flags they need. Now there really is no excuse anymore to go admin, because giving others the admin flag does not make it that much easier on you anymore!

And I'm overprotective of my brother.

+1

Haha, great post! Very well done!
The flags system looks incredible too, Chickeneer did a great job on that. Thanks for showing it off so thorougly.
I think on my residence only me and my alt have admin. On OrangeDuck607's res, though, I believe Kephras, AliceF3 and Palmsugar have too. I know, they can do whatever they want... but it's not really a problem.
Even if their account would get hacked or something and the residence would be destroyed or overtaken somehow, it wouldn't be a disaster. So yeah, I don't mind admin flag too much.
Also, quick question: with admin flag, you can give other people flags too, right? That makes it quite different from just giving someone all flags separately.

Correct, which makes the ability to see and set all flags quickly with cset more valuable.

Awesome! Thanks for the little tutorial on the new chest flag update, Shel. I'm sort of a visual learner, so this was very helpful

You should copy/paste that into a new thread so it isn't buried in this one

Thanks for he guide Shel! Looks great as always

It's a popular opinion that Admin flag should only be given to friends you really trust, but that's not even the purpose of that flag. It's really to give your other accounts you own so you don't have to log in/out a dozen times whenever you need to change something.

So try to avoid giving out Admin to anyone but yourself

PS- not sorry for bumping an awesome thread ^_~