My 2 cents on a map of a closing server

[aristotle]

Having just read about SONO's early departure and his server closure, I would like to share my point of view on any publicly available server map final destination.

These are my still confused opinions on something I have thought about having spent 24/7 for over a year on a great server managed and "haunted" by so many dear friends, developers and builders.

Premise
I believe that a sort of code of conduct should be shared by any server owner who opens his/her server(s?) to the public using the MT servers list and allows access to anyone, though...

..the server owner because of many reasons is and should always be the only one to decide, but ... some guide lines and principles might be underlined and discussed since this community shares many values and this should mean something even for the servers maps final destination.

First: a disclaimer sign at the spawn point (or similar) explaining what would be the destination of the map in the always sad but likely case that the server might go offline forever, for any reason. (trash bin, private / public archive, available on demand, ...)

Why:
Knowing in advance the future of their own creations, the builders around the world would be able to decide which approach is best for them. Some architects/engineers are just experimenting and trying the tools, others are more experienced or just going to share their creations hopefully for the eternity.
It would be nice to show to our grand grand grand sons what their ancestors had been able to accomplish long before time travel, teleportation (????) and using such primitive tools such as these [i]phones, tablets, i3, i5, i7, ... using only a few GB of RAM instead of TB, PB, ... ZB... when analog developers and engineers still existed!

Second
The license under which the map will eventually be deployed to the world on doomsday or whenever.

Why:
This could be regarded as similar to any other copyleft work of art.

Third
Sharing the map of a dying server would be like sharing a source snapshot, that someone else might want to keep alive, fork or even merge with others in an always expanding universe of maps (this might be one of the most important reasons .to make MT manage unrestricted maps, and not to compete with others).

Why:
Our community developers have been acting this way every time, every day, for years. The server owner should or at least could decide to act like them.
I have personally fallen in love with Minetest because I was looking for an open source voxel game/application and its quality did the rest.
Merging great builds from [many] dead servers might open up new horizons to inspire new generations of builders and developers.

[Festus1965]

just go in and /mods = get all mods installed,
then go settings on client to save map local, and visit all places on this server = get a copy on own hdd

so if they decide not to give it, that s your only change, ... to save your builds, and maybe get them in on another world ...
or direct start somewhere else, discussing with that friends on the server to choose together NOW a new server meeting there again ...

everything else is useless discussion and lot time

[aristotle]

just go in and /mods = get all mods installed,
then go settings on client to save map local, and visit all places on this server = get a copy on own hdd

so if they decide not to give it, that s your only change, ... to save your builds, and maybe get them in on another world ...
or direct start somewhere else, discussing with that friends on the server to choose together NOW a new server meeting there again ...

:O I had never thought of it: if no mod had been added / changed / updated it might be cool indeed, but that would be just for what you have visited, be it yours or not.

What I have been trying to point out is that sharing a full map with all mods in worldmods, all the textures, in an online repository such as github, sourceforge, google drive or whatever might be a present for the future generations too: not only for the retro gaming fans or the original builders.

j... everything else is useless discussion and lot time

In my opinion, as a community, we are today in the position of building / leaving new historical archives, some of which we might be really proud of.
Growing older makes me think at the future more than at the time I am in! :D

[Festus1965]

so I just was long time on that world, have
* a screenshot of /mods output, and
* a large saved area on my hdd, vising /spawn, and all travelnet north, south, west and east, also this travelnetstation and walk around a lot,
met jebbedias however ... there ... and a lot of lowminded joinders, now after got up the list the cloned users jump in like the hell - got laggy

local map.sqlite got 20.3 MB ...
* /spawn at -2144,257,1687
* south -3028, 7, -7751
* west -4818,18,1778
* east 6098,11,1867
* north -2067,11,12790
* travelnet -2141,13,9773
and this might be only surface saving ... it is a hard work, so just look for your builds, and maybe get lucky some other server admin might build them in, even difficult to get fixing same mods there ...

I tried a bit around:
I got the spawn area up there in 257 nodes into my server, but as I don't use moreblocks, a lot would get lost.
the jail:glass changed to default:glass, I don't use vines (lag), but basically can remember it as it was, some repair ...

further difference in [Mod]s: I have not
* anvils
* asphalt, -stairs (from 2013)
* bucket_privs
* building_blocks (07.08.2013)
* caverealms
* chatlog
* currency
* delineator
* diamonds
* fishing
* invhak
* irc *
* jail (got, uses 650 KB for what)
* moreblocks (too much memory using)
* names_per_ip
* nyancat (will not)
* pizza
* stairsio
* streets (f909bfe 04.082018 ?) with ... concrete, -shotfix, -mod, -poles, need: "ts_workshop" (together +1900 KB memory)
* tpr (there are travelnet, for what ?)
* trafficlight (f909bfe on Aug 4, 2018)
* unifieddyes (too much memory)
* vines (off, too busy)

so far, this are also important to have on your local host, when using the map-copy before save an area, as otherwise the nodes are just empty !

So this are some I collected just as time, so whenever go to another server what can input areas, you will loose some nodes, mean repair - but not rebuild yours ...

Have fun

[Festus1965]

hmmm
Image Spawn on Server Thailand
that an Idea how much will get lost (like nodes from moreblocks), and how much work that might be

[bhree]

This component may be the most important to backup and may be inherited by rightful builders:
1. Game data
2. Subgame
3. Mods
4. MT builtin
5. world folder
6. minetest.conf
made by privileged parties.

Everything packed and made publicly accessible, game data should be zipped, password protected and kept by moderators until the time come. Estimated size will be around 10 to 20GB. The problem may be related to players privacy as players has been trusting admin for any stored information including spawn points, private notes, love letters may be and now they made public. The decision should be handled first by moderators.

But those backup will make a perfect duplicate of the server and virtually keep it eternal.

[Festus1965]

yes I know this, but the admin is gone dead, and the rest decided not to keep server running, so mean no access to any of this data
but builds can be saved my way ....

[bhree]

We should break down each components within current players reach:
1. Partial local map save from volunteer players or moderators should jump to every corner of the map to have them.
2. and 3. mods from original publishing sites but custom ones may be nearly impossible.
4. without customization builtin will be the easiest , with customization will be like 2 or 3.
5. and 6. nearly impossible to restore to current situation and fine tuning. It will need players who keeps chronological record.

I have read a book Living and Dying in Virtual World and this should be taken wholehartedly in MT community.

[Festus1965]

I ran around like a devil, but that is BIG, using every porter I see, and there are a lot,
and running around thous areas as far I can see builds,
So I got so far the 4 main exits and the teleport city
there are not so much important mods for the builds,
and it depends on the gamer, builder of his area to ask, and to show what to take,

and fix it on new server, as he know what is was before, and he want again ...

but the most important thing I mean is forgotten.

The players have to find together and look for it, as most wanna stay together also ...
I just showed up, as I had this merging worlds a year ago myself, what is coming, lost but if, fast rebuild main areas to keep together if FAST doing.
At Wildes Land world was lost about more than a year - so gamer spread everywhere and had new bases,

maybe tomorrow I check the travelnet-base ... how bad would this areas look like. If too much losses ... mhhh, I have it local already ...

[bhree]

Remember Festus, you are trying to save a unique world of its own. Without admin or equal to god power and I can say it wont be easy.

[Festus1965]

Remember Festus, you are trying to save a unique world of its own. Without admin or equal to god power and I can say it wont be easy.

No, I know how to do, if no admin support,
and told him/her what have to think about, when wanna do it ... as shown an example, which is now at my server the sonos-memorial

[Sokomine]

this should mean something even for the servers maps final destination.

You're right about this. Fortunately, most servers are shut down for other reasons than the admin dying. People loose intrest, have too much RL work, server becomes too expensive, or it wasn't even planned to run the server that long. It would be great if server owners could state from the beginning (or whenever they feel a serious change is needed) what they want to happen to the map once they themshelves are no longer willing or able to run the server.

Second
The license under which the map will eventually be deployed to the world on doomsday or whenever.

While that can be done for *new* maps, it will be difficult to impossible for existing maps. The server owner certainly holds the right to present the structures created by the players on that particular server by running the server. Transfering the entire map to another server admin ought to be no big problem either as long as the conditions of access don't change. But the server owner does not hold the rights to release the map under any self-choosen license...

In most cases, it would help a lot already if server owners could state from the beginning what their general intentions regarding builders are. This may range from really caring about builders and investing a lot of work to keep it running, even saving structures if a map reset really cannot be avoided (like VanessaE does), down to servers where building is not the goal and protection as such doesn't make sense (i.e. capture the flag servers), or servers that are run as an experiment and intended to be shut down after a couple of days/weeks/months. Most servers range somewhere between these positions.

Sometimes there are cases where protection exists, but players can't be certain that their creations will always be attributed correctly (by showing them as owners of their buildings) - or even loose protection entirely due to time passing and the areas loosing protection. This is a big problem for me. Or good buildings beeing removed because someone else needed the place for his/her own project. Protection often can't be kept if all there is is a capture of the map using local mapsave. But then at least nothing is protected - instead of wrongly attributed areas.

Third
Sharing the map of a dying server would be like sharing a source snapshot, that someone else might want to keep alive, fork or even merge with others in an always expanding universe of maps (this might be one of the most important reasons .to make MT manage unrestricted maps, and not to compete with others).

I don't think forks of a map are a good idea. At least not diverging ones. If one server takes up a map and continues it, that's fine. If more than one does, it'll get very confusing for all concerned soon.

At least mods are usually less of a problem. Most will work fine with the latest version, perhaps even latest MT, with some adaptions. Moreblocks was a huge problem back when Redcrab went offline...

[texmex]

Interesting points! Something for new server owners to consider.

[sorcerykid]

While that can be done for *new* maps, it will be difficult to impossible for existing maps. The server owner certainly holds the right to present the structures created by the players on that particular server by running the server.

I'm mostly in agreement here, but I'm not sure that copyright law is up to speed with virtual and augmented reality. My suspicion is that courts would hold that without some pre-existing license agreement, the players automatically own the copyright to their artistic works stored in Minetest maps (including reproduction, adaptation, distribution, public display, etc.) and only they can choose to grant or revoke those rights to other parties.

Where exactly multiplayer voxel worlds fit into the bigger picture of intellectual property has yet to be tested in the courts. However, the fact that Section 117 of the U.S. Copyright Act accounts for software on hard drives and floppy disks shows that the United States Congress is still in the dark ages when it comes to digital technology.

Transfering the entire map to another server admin ought to be no big problem either as long as the conditions of access don't change. But the server owner does not hold the rights to release the map under any self-choosen license...

I believe the server owner has limited authority in that respect, other than to transfer the world to another individual that is to be charged with the same responsibilities. Such implied consent from players whose artistic works are in jeopardy of misuse, yet absent of any written contract, is of dubious legality.

Of course, an end-user downloading the map from another server, only to republish it elsewhere without authorization of the server owner and all respective content creators (even if the intention is preservation), is likely to be in violation of copyright law in countries that are members of the Berne Convention.

Protection often can't be kept if all there is is a capture of the map using local mapsave

This is one of the reasons I never use the Areas mod. Not only is it inefficient by design (all protected areas in the map are checked in a loop every time that a node is dug or placed), but the ownership data is never stored with the map itself. In contrast, TenPlus1's Protector Redo mod retains all ownership information directly in the node metadata, so it is much more suitable for eventual archival purposes.

Overall, I think this is a healthy discussion, and one that is long overdue. I'm interested to see how we, as the curators of these emerging technologies, can work toward the goal of online preservation while still respecting the rights of our many valued server operators and content creators.

[rubenwardy]

This is one of the reasons I never use the Areas mod. Not only is it inefficient by design (all protected areas in the map are checked in a loop every time that a node is dug or placed), .

This is not true if you compile with spatial partition support - a quad tree is used instead

[sorcerykid]

This is one of the reasons I never use the Areas mod. Not only is it inefficient by design (all protected areas in the map are checked in a loop every time that a node is dug or placed), .

This is not true if you compile with spatial partition support - a quad tree is used instead

Thanks for the correction. I was going based on the #minetest-hub IRC discussion from a few weeks ago. It was suggested by some users that the areas mod is inefficient with large numbers of areas due to excessive looping.

Core devs were online at the time, but oddly nobody chimed in about quad trees. However, that is good to know. Of course, the areas mod still doesn't allow for preservation of ownership information via local map saves.

[aristotle]

Third
Sharing the map of a dying server would be like sharing a source snapshot, that someone else might want to keep alive, fork or even merge with others in an always expanding universe of maps (this might be one of the most important reasons .to make MT manage unrestricted maps, and not to compete with others).

I don't think forks of a map are a good idea. At least not diverging ones. If one server takes up a map and continues it, that's fine. If more than one does, it'll get very confusing for all concerned soon.

Well, specialized maps might be developed:

• medieval maps of castles and villages,
• deep space futuristic stations with no earth at all,
• colorful cities of present, past and future times,
• underground realms,
• underwater worlds (hopefully booming in the near future due to 5.0 improved! support),
• ...

Survival mode guys would be able to try their skills in different epochs and environments, CTF enthusiasts in complex hide and seek environments,, parkour experts would have almost infinite levels at their disposal with minor adaptations ...

As a creative mode only guy I cannot imagine all the "forks" or "compositions" that might be better suited to friends who are more into survival, ctf, adventures, ... but this does not mean that others will not be able to do it...

It would not just be forking, but probably more merging, blending, cleaning according to other principles of beauty, difficulty, compatibility of style or goal (eg historical, tutorial, used techniques)...
the sky is the limit.

[Festus1965]

mhh if a museum open itself for famous arts painting something ... who is then the owner ?

so I have no problems to, like I did, copy my own builds out of a dying world,
as I see also no problem for every gamer to do this for his builds
as the thinking about a server might die was never discussed also ... hoping that gamer die first ... and not mind anymore in this case

[aristotle]

This component may be the most important to backup and may be inherited by rightful builders:
1. Game data
2. Subgame
3. Mods
4. MT builtin
5. world folder
6. minetest.conf
made by privileged parties.

Everything packed and made publicly accessible, game data should be zipped, password protected and kept by moderators until the time come. Estimated size will be around 10 to 20GB. ....
But those backup will make a perfect duplicate of the server and virtually keep it eternal.

Exactly.

... The problem may be related to players privacy as players has been trusting admin for any stored information including spawn points, private notes, love letters may be and now they made public. The decision should be handled first by moderators.

While that can be done for *new* maps, it will be difficult to impossible for existing maps. The server owner certainly holds the right to present the structures created by the players on that particular server by running the server.

I'm mostly in agreement here, but I'm not sure that copyright law is up to speed with virtual and augmented reality. My suspicion is that courts would hold that without some pre-existing license agreement, the players automatically own the copyright to their artistic works stored in Minetest maps (including reproduction, adaptation, distribution, public display, etc.) and only they can choose to grant or revoke those rights to other parties.

Where exactly multiplayer voxel worlds fit into the bigger picture of intellectual property has yet to be tested in the courts. However, the fact that Section 117 of the U.S. Copyright Act accounts for software on hard drives and floppy disks shows that the United States Congress is still in the dark ages when it comes to digital technology.

Transfering the entire map to another server admin ought to be no big problem either as long as the conditions of access don't change. But the server owner does not hold the rights to release the map under any self-choosen license...

I believe the server owner has limited authority in that respect, other than to transfer the world to another individual that is to be charged with the same responsibilities. Such implied consent from players whose artistic works are in jeopardy of misuse, yet absent of any written contract, is of dubious legality.

Of course, an end-user downloading the map from another server, only to republish it elsewhere without authorization of the server owner and all respective content creators (even if the intention is preservation), is likely to be in violation of copyright law in countries that are members of the Berne Convention.

But this is something that if we decided to adopt this kind of behavior might change from now on.
In my opinion MT 5.0 is a new beginning, and some further guide lines on newly available maps might be introduced.
We are a more mature and aware community: probably because of this 0.4 to 5.0 versioning change!!! :D

A digression: Ubuntu started at 4.04 and now is at 18.10 soon 19.04: we started low but we can jump high[er]! ;)

[sofar]

The internet archive exists for this very reason, and they attempt to archive much more than just webpages. Their efforts also include games and even online worlds with user created data. The effort is great and I encourage it, but there's one thing that is missing in these efforts.

There is a big difference between an active online community that uses a 3d virtual world, and a copy of the 3d virtual world. Even if you could duplicate the entire virtual world with all the functionality, you still lack the online community, and it would never be the ever-changing and evolving (living, breathing) thing that it was when players were active and growing the world. There's nothing wrong with taking a photograph of the world (a snapshot world) of course, but a photograph of a city is not the same as the city, so to speak.

No amount of disclaimer can change this, it's inherent to the whole MT world concept. This has obvious outcomes - you can't just duplicate a server and expect players to reappear - you'll likely miss player auth data anyway. Even if you did somehow match players, and grant them privs they used to have, it's highly unlikely they will behave and act like they did before.

There are some cases like ITB where making the content available for a very long time is an intrinsic part of the content, but even there it should probably be done through a server "move" rather than a "copy".

So, my suggestion would be to avoid copying, and instead focusing on keeping servers and server communities active, instead. Join those that you enjoy and play on them, and avoid becoming a crypt keeper of dead worlds with no original or alive communities. It can't be healthy for your mind to wallow in dead realms, anyway.

[aristotle]

mhh if a museum open itself for famous arts painting something ... who is then the owner ?

Well, when a museum map is released, everyone, even those who do not know of its existence yet.
Archive.org, git{hu,la}b or similar institutions / sites will be able to preserve them.

Premise: I have an artistic background and some experience developing very small stuff (and blah blah blah) and as such I have always liked signing my stuff, thus I guess I understand those who are looking for recognition.

We have probably never thought of giving rigorously serious credits to any kind of builder before, and I think that still this is not a huge problem anyway. We talk about areas protection to mainly avoid griefing or that a fast neighbor might claim our land and at the same time easily allow some special friends to collaborate with us and take the credit.

Assuming enough time has passed: knowing an unpronounceable name does not make any difference.

The guys or gals who have discovered the wheel have been important to mankind and we will always be grateful to them, but what matters is the invention in itself. the object.

We should be thinking more and more in less selfish ways then before: the school books and the internet demonstrate how much can be accomplished by the sharing of knowledge and ideas.
The more we know, the better we are.

In our case if correct and perfect attribution were a requirement a contract should be signed, but we stay together for the pleasure of developing software, of playing in the different modes we know of, to challenge ourselves in creating the tallest, the smallest stuff ever seen, for the feeling of power that being an admin or a moderator gives us over everyone else (UAH UAH UAH, kicking and banning)....
This community is not against money (we all need it), but this community puts sharing ahead: admins and server owners spend their time and their money to allow us to come online and stay together, the developers spend lots of their time imagining new tools and improving the existing ones, the builders to create stuff in ways that even the developers might have never thought of, ... and yet everyone here is open to new ideas and gentle.
Why?
Just because of this common approach...
Rights and ownership generally exist to earn money and avoid competition: here, instead, we are sharing from the start.
If I took away what others have given to me for free, only a cold bunch of electronic stuff would be mine: from Linux to MT everything I have been using for the last decades on my side is open source (NO ADS!!! no viruses, no malware).
A museum snapshot could just perfectly fit into this.

[aristotle]

...
There is a big difference between an active online community that uses a 3d virtual world, and a copy of the 3d virtual world. Even if you could duplicate the entire virtual world with all the functionality, you still lack the online community, and it would never be the ever-changing and evolving (living, breathing) thing that it was when players were active and growing the world. There's nothing wrong with taking a photograph of the world (a snapshot world) of course, but a photograph of a city is not the same as the city, so to speak.

No amount of disclaimer can change this, it's inherent to the whole MT world concept. This has obvious outcomes - you can't just duplicate a server and expect players to reappear - you'll likely miss player auth data anyway. Even if you did somehow match players, and grant them privs they used to have, it's highly unlikely they will behave and act like they did before.

Definitely. I could not agree more.
Anyway, since in the old floppy disk days a 10MB hard disk seemed to be huge and today we take for granted to run on TB hard disks, saving maps for the future could be of immense value not only for the current communities but for the next ones too. Completely losing what has been built would be a loss for them as well.

There are some cases like ITB where making the content available for a very long time is an intrinsic part of the content, but even there it should probably be done through a server "move" rather than a "copy".

Yes, that might be an option for anyone who had enough resources to make it happen.

So, my suggestion would be to avoid copying, and instead focusing on keeping servers and server communities active, instead.

I would not talk about copying anymore, but instead preserving, improving, transforming, merging...

Join those that you enjoy and play on them, and avoid becoming a crypt keeper of dead worlds with no original or alive communities. It can't be healthy for your mind to wallow in dead realms, anyway.

Eh eh eh... :D
Life leads us to paths we would not have ever imagined...

Seriously, I understand what you mean but to learn you sometimes need to take your time to experiment with other stuff, trying without affecting others' resources on test platforms, discover the limits of what you are imagining...

Personally I have always felt the need to take some time of silence on the top of a cloudy hill to make new things happen.
In my case, being offline for some time means exactly this: I am trying to find a way to give back to the community as a whole in a way that is good for me (according to the time and the skills I think I have) and maybe open other new doors irl.

Though the picture of the crypt keeper of dead worlds might be quite appealing.. :D even up here, on the top of my favorite cloudy hill!
EH EH EH :D

[Linuxdirk]

Even if you could duplicate the entire virtual world with all the functionality, you still lack the online community, and it would never be the ever-changing and evolving (living, breathing) thing that it was when players were active and growing the world.

Exactly this. Having a local copy of a previously very active and crowded server just feels empty and barren. The world is there but all the people are gone.

I totally understand wanting to have individual builds. Maybe for continue working on them in a local world. But the whole world? No. I don't think that is a good idea. The world changes, either because of good things or of bad things. Wanting to preserve the current state is like permanently living in a dead, empty past.

[bhree]

I've been thinking about this before creating my own server. Other than specific condition i need in an MT map, what will happen with time i would have spent on a server when the server ceased to exist? Of course there wont be any guarantee since everything is free from players' side. And it is unethical to ask more from a server owner. And players seem must know how to turn on making local copy of anything self built on any server. The repetition of players found played server shut down will be the source of totally quitting earlier. Even myself can't give guarantee to players who has invested time to build and contributed to server improvement. May be it is the time for server owners to make model for content preservation and transfer in case anything bad happens who knows.

Managing a virtual world server may be something offline society can't understand yet. It takes resource, effort, time and energy and most probable solution they can devise when we have problem with that is to shut it down. Most people thinks it is only a game, not real people, big deal. Server owners act like god while still can be sick, have family problem even dying. But may be it is a consequence for creating server and have players, something that shouldn't be taken lightly.

There may be a time when server owner feels fed up and almost give up then I suggest he start making a complete backup and make it publicly available in cloud or trusting to someone else. Once handling over is complete and players have made decision then server owner can completely leave. He has done his responsibility of his decision to create a virtual world server. I'm not talking about license since he may only have very short time, his life is on an edge. Community can decide whether the backup should be distributed or destroyed.

I totally understand wanting to have individual builds. Maybe for continue working on them in a local world. But the whole world? No. I don't think that is a good idea. The world changes, either because of good things or of bad things. Wanting to preserve the current state is like permanently living in a dead, empty past.

I call this is the real nether of MT, I imagine traversing such map together with shadows of the past for players who've ever lived there. Nothing wrong with that and this is something difficult to get from RL.

[Festus1965]

I met Tink67 on that Server. So we had short conversation, telling her might read this here ...

Also Mav, a lot translation in Spanish, about that I remember how the gamer from "Wildes Lend" spread after server gone, and more than a year later get data it too late ...

We will see. - I just hope, if get closed, this gamer have time to chat together where might meet together then, with same concept whatever ... not like i happened to us ago.