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Like all internet "debates" this one will lead nowhere Don't you think?

No, software design discussions often/usually do not lead "nowhere". But as you aren't open to suggestions for anything, in the case for sure it will lead nowhere. So will finish up my comments here before moving onto SmartDebuff and/or Healbot after years of using/testing/recommending this mod.

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No, it doesn't but I give up trying to explain it to you, you're unable to understand the subtleties apparently.

No actually, I understand perfectly what you are trying to do. You have this strongly held belief that no matter how few people actually see the spam alerts, pushing them will "better their game experience". And you want to forcefully social engineer that experience for those people, regardless of any secondary effects for those who will not see them. Yes, going ahead and adding an option for people to choose to stop their spamming might change slightly the social engineering you are trying to implement.

What you are failing to understand is that forced spam is bad mod/software behavior as well as worsening the game experience for those who know what the mod is doing and don't wish to have it doing that every 1/2 hour. Even if the receivers can disable seeing it (but not actually disabling receiving or transmitting it).

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I didn't add it, it was there from the beginning... check in the previous alphas if you don't believe me (I know you don't)

You know I don't? Charming.

No, disabling seeing the spam wasn't there "from the beginning". It was put in during the past 3 weeks of alphas. The last release version - - 2.5.2.2 from Oct. 30 - - has a "Check other players" button. Which can't be turned off on the receiving end, but also doesn't spam them regularly by design. As pointed out before, that is also bad mod behavior. But as its similar to what some other mods have had in the past, I didn't say anything.

The turning point was the alpha from a few days ago: Reverse the way the new-version detection system works: instead of asking everyone what version they use, each Decursive will now announce its version every 30 minutes when zoning. That's the extreme end point of bad mod behavior/social engineering. Thus I brought it up.

I stopped testing alphas of this a few weeks after you put in the extreme mommy-knows-best/social engineering behavior (yet again) of popping up warning alerts and disabling alphas after a set period of time (that can't be turned off...heh). I commented out and changed line 256 (at the time) among others in DCR_init.lua to disable the alerts. After a while, I got tired of removing the social engineering.

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I like to boldly go when no one has gone before and I kind of hate conformity. I knew you would bitch about this update system... you did as expected. That's the difference between us.

Cute. And bitching eh? Charming. Wish I was psychic too. No, pointing out why forced spamming is bad mod behavior isn't bitching. But its apparently something you don't want to hear. Social engineers rarely want to hear questions raised about the "righteousness" of what they are doing.

If you deny you are into social engineering/mommy-knows-best design, will bring up the following Decursive changelogs:

- - Added a notice message for those using Decursive in an unpackaged state mentioning all the disadvantages and problems involved. (Message will be displayed once every 24 hours).

- - Added a message when Decursive's installation appears to be corrupted to prompt the user to install BugGrabber and BugSack.

- - Added an expiration feature to all dev versions (message displayed at each login and error reports disabled once the expiration date is reached)

- - Small addition to diagnostic massages when a library is too old (with the backwards-compatible design of Ace3, that's particularly amusing)

- - the previously debated forced update spam

and on and on.

As someone who designs business software with accepted "good behavior", seeing a WoW mod that has worked relatively well in the past (despite the above changelogs), but has finally added the worst behavior out of the thousands and thousands of mods I've tested over the years is something I wanted to bring up. And try to work out.

I wasn't asking to totally get rid of the bad behavior/mommy-knows-best/social engineering system. I was discussing adding an option to stop the behavior for those who would like not to have it active. The issue doesn't affect me as I use StopAddonMessage. It does affect guildies, friends and many others who come to me about mod recommendations. Who I am now recommending to drop this mod (despite being the #1 choice in the past) when the pushed spam goes to release and use instead either SmartDebuff or Healbot. Oh well.

Heading into actual WikiCreole quotes:

Quote from Archarodim:

Google Chrome?

Nope. There is no automatic update mechanism installed for it in Linux. In Windows, you just have to go into Window's Scheduled Tasks (XP)/Task Scheduler (Windows 7) and disable "GoogleUpdateTaskUser...".

There is no mechanism built-in to WoW to disable Decursive's update alert spam.

Quote from Archarodim:

there are two things: - The new version alerts. (a popup at login every seven days that can be disabled) - The hidden system making them possible. (the invisible version announce every 30 minutes when zonning)

Ah, so you've added an ability for a user to manually disable seeing the forced alerts on the receiving end? Well, that's a bit better than nothing. But it brings up the question: what's the point of this system again?

What you apparently want even with this one-side disabling: to force poor mod newbies - - who might not disable the receiving end alert notification - - to be alerted to new versions. You may believe the spam "improves user's experiences". But no, in fact pushed spam is very much "bad mod citizen" behavior.

Its the (il)logical extreme end point of previously seen manual update checks that can be done on command of a user instead of automatically through various boss mods, etc.. Instead of the mod flipping up "Look at me! Go and update!" notifications as Decursive does, instead you have raid leads, etc. screaming at you through Vent to update. Which can still happen with the detected Decursive versions available on user's About tabs....heh.

Its still being belligerent and still forcing the issue. Its still "bad mod citizen" behavior to force out comms like this with no option for the user to turn it off. Whether or not anyone receives them.

But with the ability to disable the receiving alert spam, it defeats the point of a lot of (social engineering) you are trying to accomplish, don't you think? And if it was so critically important & innocent for people to be pushing/spamming mod update notifications within WoW instead of outside it, would there not be a lot of popular, regularly updated mods other than just Decursive doing it (i.e. MobMap back in the day, Recount, MSBT, etc.)? There isn't.

Oh well. Providing an option to disable the forced pushes would alleviate some amount of the bad behavior. If you don't want that and instead want Decursive to be a bad mod citizen, that's unfortunate.

Oh well. Belligerence in this context=aggressiveness. A questionable feature which works behind your back and is designed not to be turned off=aggressive. Despite your impressions, addons which aggressively spam/alert others to updated versions can in fact annoy people. As shown by Phanx's quotes, among others.

Certainly not annoying since no one actually sees this so called spam nor is negatively impaired by it either (despite what you think).

Huh? The issue here is the fact you really (really) want to force this update notification for others to see, with no choice for them at all. It is both annoying and useless to many others, despite what you think. And being forceful/aggressive like that is being belligerent.

Not to mention that point you have intentionally overlooked: the number of people who go and update in the middle of a raid after receiving the spam...or remember to do so afterwards who wouldn't update on their own anyway is very small. If you offered a choice for the notifications, there would be no issue here.

Spam can mean two things in the case here: quantity of data, which you have claimed is not a lot. But also every half hour "mommy-mod" forced alerts to updated versions. That's also spamming. Similar to gold seller spam in trade chat. Or if you take offense at that characterization, its similar to software update checks that can't be turned off. There is no (Windows or Linux non-dongle) program I know of that has update checks that can't be turned off.

Again, oh well. You feel the need to force mommy-mod update notifications/spam that no other mod I've tested does, among the tens of thousands out there. Bad choice. GL with it.

Well, that's unfortunate. It seems you really want the mod to be purposely belligerent & annoying for the express purpose of social engineering poor mod new users who may not update as often as you like. Note that spamming update notifications ingame in no way means that those people will actually go and update.

1 & 2) If that 59 bytes sent every half hour is actually true, its still 354 bytes every 4 hour raid session. Which is more than 0. Don't you think?

4) What does not apply here? From the link I provided earlier:

"If you raided back in the days when threat meters required everyone to run them, or in a guild where everyone was supposed to have CTRA, oRA2, and/or a specific boss mod and the raid leader ran version checks all the time, you probably remember what a gigantic pain in the ass it was, and how much time was wasted trying to get every single person running the exact same version."

and

"The only things you need addon communication to track are cooldown reductions from glyphs (because there is no API for finding out which glyphs someone else is using) and the targets of casting spells (because there is no API for finding out the target of a spell being cast by someone else, until after the cast finishes and the spell actually affects the target)."

most certainly apply here.

- - "Doing this version check does have an importance because Decursive is very popular..."

Well, the same thing can be said about boss & threat mods brought up in the Phanx quotes above.

- - "The problem here is that WoW add-ons don't have access to anything but the game so the only way to have a working version check is that every user announce his version for others to listen."

No actually, its not a problem. Other ways: through the Curse Client or doing it manually outside of WoW. Its as even though other people may already regularly update, you still want the mod to be belligerent and annoying and spam others all the time. For those people, it provides nothing but annoyance. And the actual benefit to those who don't update is questionable, as noted in the quotes above.

5) "Well here is the trick you're not getting: it's thank to the 1/4th of people keeping their mod up to date that others will know that a new version is available. So if those people were not announcing their version it would defeat the whole purpose of this system."

The trick here you aren't getting: whether its as little as 1/4 or (more realistically) 1/2 or more of the users updating outside of WoW, those people get no benefit whatsoever from either broadcasting or receiving version check spam inside WoW. Such mod behavior actually has negatives, as mentioned. So no, if they have options to disable the broadcasting and receiving, it would not "defeat the whole purpose of this system".

The only thing such options would potentially defeat - - besides belligerent mod behavior - - is the low percentage situation of someone having the most updated version annoying someone without the most updated version.

As well, what about those people who are using StopAddonMessage or similar and blocking the checking? Is that not also "defeating the system"?

- - Finally, this isn't a petition to completely get rid of the version checking. Only a request to add manual options for informed users to be able to manually disable both the broadcasting and receiving.

The fact of the matter is that currently the mod is designed to be annoying and belligerent to the large percentage of users who in no way benefit and in fact get disadvantaged (annoying alerts, etc.) from version checking. Whether any users gain net benefit from version checking at all is another matter (brought up above).

Is social engineering poor mod new users by forcefully broadcasting version updates all the time really worth the annoyance to informed users who can't turn that off? Note again that spamming version updates ingame does not automatically mean that those people will actually go and update.

So hopefully a way to manually disable the broadcasts can be provided.

Reasons:

1) Increased bandwidth used. People on limited bandwidth will reach their caps sooner. Those paying for every byte will have to pay more.

2) Due to 1), also greater potential for other Decursive users to get disconnected from the game randomly. As happens with excessive use of the addon comm channel when receiving messages from someone using the same mod(s) you are. Which certainly decreases the user experience.

3) Not especially relevant perhaps, but despite earlier issues, I have still been using and recommending this mod to others for dispelling debuffs. And have been for years.

But if there isn't an option to disable this version spamming, I'll move on to something like Healbot or SmartDebuff and stop recommending Decursive to guildies, among others. Can't recommend people to necessarily use something like StopAddonMessage to prevent belligerent spamming by a mod...that in other respects is great.

4) Phanx's well-reasoned argument for why mods don't need to be doing version checks or most other inter-mod comm.

5) Many people may not want to have a mod doing something they really don't need to have done - - being informed randomly there are updates and/or using up bandwidth pushing out version announces. Due to them keeping consistently up to date on their own either manually, through the Curse Client or otherwise.

If there are average to advanced users doing that, what point is there to continue to spam version announces for those people? Why can't those people turn it off if they choose to?

Its pretty much a "this mod is worse than my nagging parent/friend/wife/husband"-syndrome when you provide a feature that can have negative effects on gameplay, can be annoying and useless for many users and can't be turned off if a user so chooses.

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Thus the ability to give people an option to manually disable the version announces/checking is far from useless.

Heck, have it turned on by default. For those who never update mods, which I assume is the point of providing this feature, it can potentially be useful.

But I haven't yet heard why providing an option for people to manually disable version announcing/checking if they want to is a bad thing. In fact for those who don't want it/need it, having such an option in fact increases the betterment of the user experience.

In the new alpha: "Decursive will now announce its version every 30 minutes when zoning (on PLAYER_ENTERING_WORLD). No other mod I know of arbitrarily spams the addon channel with its own version announces.

Whether version checking and/or announce spamming for a mod is really necessary or not is one issue (it isn't). But will you be providing an ingame option to completely disable this new version announcing/checking if someone prefers not to use it?