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Extending chat events to 28 days


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29 members have voted

  1. 1. How long should chat events be stored?

  2. 2. If 28 days, should the additional days be restricted?

    • No - anyone with Events power can view them all
    • Yes - restrict to main owners
    • Yes - restrict to main owners but it's adjustable with Gcontrol power
    • N/A - I voted "14 days" or "Neutral"

This poll is closed to new votes


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This suggestion was originally discussed by Contributors, as published in September's Monthly Contributor Log, but is now being posted here for your input.

 

The suggestion is for Events and Eventstats to be extended to 28 days. events.pngeventstats.png

 

Why?

Spoiler

The current search limit of Events and Eventstats is 14 days, which only provides statistics over a short term. Extending the duration to 28 days, however, would allow users to review chat activity over a longer period of a month. Users will have more statistics available to them, spanning a longer period of time, which allows for a more technical analysis for those who find them useful.

 

For example, this could help main owners make better-informed decisions about their staff. Main owners could easily see which users have been consistently hard-working or inactive over the last month, which will assist with their decisions to recruit, retain and remove staff. With events only spanning 14 days, it can be currently difficult to gauge the activity of staff in the long term. Events don't always correlate perfectly with activity, but they can provide a good impression if someone only has 0 events in a month versus another staff user who has dozens/hundreds.

 

Furthermore, if a main owner decides to take a hiatus from xat and leaves control to someone else (e.g. to focus on studies), or they decide to take an extended vacation, they'll be able to return and have a better impression of what happened during that time.

 

How?

Spoiler

To implement this change, Admins could add a "days" box to the Events section, just as Eventstats currently has.

 

What it currently looks like:

 

image.thumb.png.378359f9f1afb7174497fa619881f09a.png

 

What it could look like with the "days" box added (credit to @Abrahan for the concept image):

 

image.thumb.png.31e7fb2d44071195700877e165fc4498.png

 

The added "days" box would allow the user to specify a period of up to 28 days. The default search could become 7 to match Eventstats.

 

On the Eventstats section, two new histograms could be added that both have twenty-eight columns each representing a day. They could be placed above and below each other, rather than side-by-side as the current fourteen-day histograms are, to avoid stretching the page too far.

 

Arguments against

Spoiler

Main owners are only a very small minority of xat's community, but many more users will be affected, so the change could be imbalanced.

 

Furthermore, some main owners may not want events to last that long, for privacy reasons. They may not want other users snooping on their chat activity for an increased period of time. There'd be a larger window of opportunity for those users to report their chat, if using events as evidence. For this reason, the additional days of events could be visible to main owners only or with an option added to Gcontrol power to adjust the minimum rank of whomever can view them.

 

However, events are a public record anyway - also restricted to subscribers who have the power - and there's nothing to stop those users from taking screenshots of events every two weeks and keeping permanent records anyway (although there'd be a much greater window of time for users to take screenshots, if events were extended).

 

Please let us know your thoughts below, and vote in the poll.

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I think it is a very good idea, I really don't see any kind of disadvantage or negative points with this option, and to be honest, this is a case where I don't see how much "privacy" can be revealed through events,  when you can simply see the moderators or general staff in charge of a chat fulfilling their function.
 

Although in some chats, I have seen comments from owners expressing their fear that their chats will be closed due to reports, where the main cause is the large number of unjustified bans or kicks, fights, insults on the reason for the ban, arrogance, among other reasons and unpleasant actions that can be seen through the events.

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  • 4 weeks later...
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It would be really good to extend chat events to 28 days. In fact, it would be even better if it could be extended for more than 28 days. If I make a suggestion and give the idea to extend the chat events to 90 days, for adminators would it be may possible to apply this idea? For example, if a person of who quit xat 3 months ago banned or demoted, he wants to see who and why him banned, and in possible rank demote, Of adminators, it might better good for that person to increase their chat events 90 days. I had left xat for 3 months and when I came back to xat I was wondering what happened in xat chat rooms. I wanted to see the events of 2 or 3 months ago. I could not see what was happening, whos decide to go back to xat want to see and know what happened on xat.

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I think this idea to extend the event storage is good. However, I would also like to suggest chat events have an option to be private. I think everyone reserves a right to privacy and as such, should have such an option available at their disposal. Granted not everyone can check it, but I think having that option would also be a good idea.

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1 hour ago, Enter said:

I think this idea to extend the event storage is good. However, I would also like to suggest chat events have an option to be private. I think everyone reserves a right to privacy and as such, should have such an option available at their disposal. Granted not everyone can check it, but I think having that option would also be a good idea.

 

This is good idea. but anyone with events power can view all events. New add-ons can be made that can change the properties of the events power that already exists some new features can be added, or an improved advanced, more comprehensive and different events power can be designed.For example, if anyone have that more advanced with new events power, that person should have the posible to edit who can see their events. But of course these new improvements seem difficult to be possible in the html5 version of the changes.

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8 hours ago, DUYGU said:

 

This is good idea. but anyone with events power can view all events. New add-ons can be made that can change the properties of the events power that already exists some new features can be added, or an improved advanced, more comprehensive and different events power can be designed.For example, if anyone have that more advanced with new events power, that person should have the posible to edit who can see their events. But of course these new improvements seem difficult to be possible in the html5 version of the changes.

 

Agreed. Perhaps such an option can be added in gcontrol? I think it would be nice to implement this feature to compliment extended events.

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I initially considered voting when I first saw this thread last week.

When I saw the results of the vote and read the following quote, I dismissed the idea.

Quote

Ultimately, the group voted in favor of extending the current limit of 14 days to a maximum of 28 days, subject to further approval.

 

I do not like the events power because it keeps a lot of information.

This information is available to anyone who has the power or knows someone willing to use the power for them.

 

I retrieved every events of the last 14 days from Chat.

From these data I plotted the number of actions of each member of the staff over 24 hours.

 

2020-11-25-events_chat_graph.thumb.png.308d00c508c9b8593ef2575d25cfa56a.png

 

We can see on this image that Meow's activity drops sharply between 08 and 15 (UTC)

We can thus assume that Meow:

- is unemployed or is in holidays

- lives in an American time zone (UTC-6 if we assume a sleep schedule of 02:00 to 09:00)

 

I wanted to attach my spreadsheet, but the forum only accepts images. Sorry about that!

 

By using the eventstats power, I can also look at the same data, grouped by days.

Note that I still looked at the raw data I scraped with the events power for this.

 

2020-11-25-hessy.thumb.png.9ed0d5b3aeffcce638a739d3474fd552.png

 

We can see on this image that Hessy made the 2020-11-14 (I checked the raw data to make sure it's not the 15th).

That day was a Saturday.

They made no action from Friday, 20:10:57 to Sunday, 19:06:36.

We can assume that Hessy spent the week-end away from xat.

 

We can also take a chat where a bot is configured to make every new user member.

By filtering the events, we can know who went to a specific chat for the first time, and at what time.

For example, I know that Enge went to Kulitz09 for the first time the 2020-11-20T11:53:03Z.

 

I own a chat. I use it to idle and talk with my friends.

It is unlisted and does not store messages. Outsiders are warmly welcomed with a free trip to the ban pool.

By using the events power on my chat, you will see that Paraplum kicked somebody the 2020-11-19.

You can assume that Paraplum is my friend.

 

I am uncomfortable knowing that people I've never met could gather this kind of information about me.

Former director of CIA and NSA General Michael Hayden said: “we kill people based on metadata”.

 

By the way, I think these features are illegal in Europe under the GDPR: when did we give consent? How do we revoke this consent?

I'm not a lawyer, so take that with a grain of salt. ;-)

 

10 hours ago, DUYGU said:

For example, if a person of who quit xat 3 months ago banned or demoted, he wants to see who and why him banned

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you cannot ban someone who has been offline on a chat for too long.

As for the demotion: why not just ask?

 

I (wrongly?) assume that people voted yes because :

On 10/21/2020 at 3:12 AM, Steven said:

No reason not to.

 

... and not because they actually need the extra 14 days.

 

Honest questions to chat managers who use events (I don't):

- Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to look at more than 14 days of events?

- How often does it happen?

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1 hour ago, Enter said:

 

Agreed. Perhaps such an option can be added in gcontrol? I think it would be nice to implement this feature to compliment extended events.

 

yes it would be nice if it could be added to gcontrol. so we would be in control of the chat events and only we or the people we wanted could see the events that we do not want anyone else to see. Hiding events with gcontrol or a similar power is a really good idea. Even if it's possible, the chat main owners can still see the events, I don't gues the events will be completely hidden

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1 hour ago, XeR said:

I initially considered voting when I first saw this thread last week.

When I saw the results of the vote and read the following quote, I dismissed the idea.

 

I do not like the events power because it keeps a lot of information.

This information is available to anyone who has the power or knows someone willing to use the power for them.

 

I retrieved every events of the last 14 days from Chat.

From these data I plotted the number of actions of each member of the staff over 24 hours.

 

2020-11-25-events_chat_graph.thumb.png.308d00c508c9b8593ef2575d25cfa56a.png

 

We can see on this image that Meow's activity drops sharply between 08 and 15 (UTC)

We can thus assume that Meow:

- is unemployed or is in holidays

- lives in an American time zone (UTC-6 if we assume a sleep schedule of 02:00 to 09:00)

 

I wanted to attach my spreadsheet, but the forum only accepts images. Sorry about that!

 

By using the eventstats power, I can also look at the same data, grouped by days.

Note that I still looked at the raw data I scraped with the events power for this.

 

2020-11-25-hessy.thumb.png.9ed0d5b3aeffcce638a739d3474fd552.png

 

We can see on this image that Hessy made the 2020-11-14 (I checked the raw data to make sure it's not the 15th).

That day was a Saturday.

They made no action from Friday, 20:10:57 to Sunday, 19:06:36.

We can assume that Hessy spent the week-end away from xat.

 

We can also take a chat where a bot is configured to make every new user member.

By filtering the events, we can know who went to a specific chat for the first time, and at what time.

For example, I know that Enge went to Kulitz09 for the first time the 2020-11-20T11:53:03Z.

 

I own a chat. I use it to idle and talk with my friends.

It is unlisted and does not store messages. Outsiders are warmly welcomed with a free trip to the ban pool.

By using the events power on my chat, you will see that Paraplum kicked somebody the 2020-11-19.

You can assume that Paraplum is my friend.

 

I am uncomfortable knowing that people I've never met could gather this kind of information about me.

Former director of CIA and NSA General Michael Hayden said: “we kill people based on metadata”.

 

By the way, I think these features are illegal in Europe under the GDPR: when did we give consent? How do we revoke this consent?

I'm not a lawyer, so take that with a grain of salt. ;-)

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you cannot ban someone who has been offline on a chat for too long.

As for the demotion: why not just ask?

 

I (wrongly?) assume that people voted yes because :

 

... and not because they actually need the extra 14 days.

 

Honest questions to chat managers who use events (I don't):

- Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to look at more than 14 days of events?

- How often does it happen?

 

This event actually happened to me and I was banned in a chat room where I had never been in for about 3 months, and when I came back to xat 3 months later, I wanted to see who banned me on the events list, I couldn't see it on that list and I talked to the owner and asked him about it but who banned me did not give information about. kept this information confidential. Of course, I looked for an answer to the question of why and by whom a person who is not even on xat is banned. For these reason, I too wanted to give the idea to extend the chat events to 90 days.

Edited by DUYGU
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4 hours ago, XeR said:

Honest questions to chat managers who use events (I don't):

- Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to look at more than 14 days of events?

- How often does it happen?

Yes, it happens every other week or month, my use is often based on aggregated data for general reportings.

 

I am glad you brought all of that, however my question is, how would increasing the time from 14 days to 28 days change it or make it any worse?

 

I am probably not reading your post the way you want to but if anything, it shows that a 1 day event power would suffice to do all of that.

 

On a side note, you should also know that some (maybe all now) bot providers store on an all time basis and with 24h and 1 month reporting:

- your number of messages ;

- the time you spend on a chat ;

- the number of action you have proceeded.

 

The issue with online chat is that you actually don't need events power to store any of these data, unless the chat is not listed. You could scrap it manually at some point.

 

I think this underlines a core issue of xat. Everything is either restricted to a very few users (sometimes just Admin) or everything is made available to everyone through an HCI you can use with a power where everyone can have different use of that HCI.

 

When it comes to official chats, you would rather expect full transparency. When it comes to your secret old hidden chat, you would rather expect no one to see anything. But then, what if you purposely break terms on your secret chat and use it to scam users or threaten them? Then even us wouldn't be able to take any action because we dont have more access than other users on this matter.

 

The best I can suggest is:

- Increase to 28 days events time;

- Make its access customizable through gcontrol;

- Give unlimited access to volunteers.

 

I however feel these features may not be a priority in the to do list, which is why we ended up suggesting just the first one to the public.

 

TL;DR Yes, it is far from perfect and you can already do bad things with events power but neither decreasing nor increasing the time changes any of that.

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  • 1 month later...
  • Volunteers

Thank you all for your input on this topic.

 

This topic will now be closed and the poll results will be forwarded to the xat admins along with the privacy concerns that were also raised.

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