The current reporting system is a pain in the arse, and I think a lot of shitty drivers are falling through the cracks because nobody can be bothered to spend five minutes reporting when they could be racing.

Why not set up a web system for handling reports? Perhaps allow drivers to flag the current race for a potential report in-sim, then let them review those flagged races when they've finished racing so they can look at the replay and decide whether it was as bad as it felt at the time.

The current system encourages people to sit out the next race to produce a report for the previous race. This actually discourages people from viewing the replay before submission, because they're already missing a race in order to do that. If you removed the whole reporting system from LFS entirely and put it on the web - but allowed people to flag races they might want to raise a report about in-sim and this produced a list of races in the CTRA admin panel (File a report from this replay?), it would give them an opportunity to just save replays, review them before reporting, then file if necessary via the website, and thus not miss any racing in order to tell you about idiots on the server.

My 2p.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

+1

You can already flag replays, effectively. The last time I filed a report, it was a few seconds of effort after I crossed the line. I picked the person that was being an idiot, picked the previous race, and in the description put "next race", stored the report and was waiting around for the next race to begin.

Later that evening, I edited the report on the website, picked the next race in the sequence from the drop-down, added some more useful explanation, watched the replay to make sure I was right and filed it. You have to use the website to submit the report anyway, so I do all the hard work there.

Unfortunately, the way the system works right now, the replay isn't saved until the beginning of the next. At that point, the filename is generated from the time the race ended. The advantage of the existing system is that almost no text or action is ever dropped.. the end of one file meets the beginning of the next. From an admin perspective, this is invaluable.

i don't see the problems with the ingame solution. it's great. it takes less than one minute to fill a report with dummy-data, selecting the right replay and store it and then you can review the replay and editing the describtion on webpage. i do so and i do not break racing filling reports is done in a separate session by me

[edit] ups, the sam the fast was faster

Quote from SamH :

You can already flag replays, effectively. The last time I filed a report, it was a few seconds of effort after I crossed the line. I picked the person that was being an idiot, picked the previous race, and in the description put "next race", stored the report and was waiting around for the next race to begin.

Later that evening, I edited the report on the website, picked the next race in the sequence from the drop-down, added some more useful explanation, watched the replay to make sure I was right and filed it.

I do it this way too, while everything is still fresh in my mind

I hadn't thought of it in those terms - fair enough.

Perhaps make it more obvious in LFS that it's possible to just store data for review and submit it offline? I (and maybe others) think that it's not worth disconnecting to look at a replay and then re-connecting to race again, having lost your grid slot and any chance of joining the next race.

If it was more obvious that the report tool was good for just flagging a race for potential reporting - and you improved the way it references the particular race you want to report (remembering the date/time a particular race started isn't too user-friendly, and waiting for the restart to begin the report procedure is going to result in no reports) - it might be more useful.

Sorry to bitch about this - I think it's a great idea to have this stuff in-game, but I think it needs a better UI. Perhaps also include buttons to all these functions as a part of the end-of-race scoreboard display, so people don't need to remember any "$commands".

Definitely some good ideas Kev. I didn't mean to sound dismissive, and I do recognise the interface could definitely be simplified/made more accessible. I've added your suggestion of flagging current races. It'd be good to get that.

Reading it back it sounds a bit like I'm looking for a more streamlined way to report practically everybody I race against.

While this would certainly make for a satisfactorily rapid rise up the leaderboard I'd much rather achieve this through charismatic campaigning, resulting in a legion of loyal supporters banning everybody ahead of me in the points standings, and trampling upon anyone else who might stand in my way.

/me chortles

there has to be a little effort involved I think and not tooooo streamlined or there would be reports for too many silly things that don't warrant them, because it's so easy to do.... then the actual needed reports would take longer to deal with due to volume....

that's my thought

It's a very good point. We vastly improved the quality of reports by moving the submission to the website. We very rarely dismiss reports these days, because the standard of the complaints are very high. When we first launched, you could submit from within the system and a large majority of the reports we got were nonsense reports.

We want it to be easy to file a report, but we want it to be a good report. When someone reports without specifying a lap, we're often left watching a 12 lap replay only to find they've selected the wrong replay and not bothered to check. There's a balance out there somewhere, but I think perhaps the ability to raise a report on the website after the event wouldn't hurt.. whether or not it lists flagged replays. I'll have a look into it

When the reports first started coming in when X-system was launched a good 80% of the reports were dismissed. Now we are looking at over 80% being accurate =)

I don't want to see it too easy for people to create reports, we will end up in the same place as we were when X-system launched. Flagging sounds good although thats exactly what the system does now, maybe a 1 click flag would be easier, who knows might get more people onto the website =)

Quote from SamH :

You can already flag replays, effectively. The last time I filed a report, it was a few seconds of effort after I crossed the line. I picked the person that was being an idiot, picked the previous race, and in the description put "next race", stored the report and was waiting around for the next race to begin.

Later that evening, I edited the report on the website, picked the next race in the sequence from the drop-down, added some more useful explanation, watched the replay to make sure I was right and filed it. You have to use the website to submit the report anyway, so I do all the hard work there.

Unfortunately, the way the system works right now, the replay isn't saved until the beginning of the next. At that point, the filename is generated from the time the race ended. The advantage of the existing system is that almost no text or action is ever dropped.. the end of one file meets the beginning of the next. From an admin perspective, this is invaluable.

I do the same thing! It is always good to review after I have cooled down a bit. This way I can be objective and make sure it wasn't me who needed reporting

Reported few driver recently,but I would jump through hoops to remove these guys from your servers, would be good to able to submit my own saved replays so I know 100% I have sent the correct replay.

Is that possible?

No can, I'm afraid. There's no way to pipe externally saved replays into the system. The system stores every replay for every race run on the CTRA servers, so if it happened on the CTRA then the replay is available online.

The only thing I can suggest is to download the replay linked to the report you're submitting, and verify that it's the same race as the one you're thinking of. If not, you can select a different replay from the same day in the drop-down menu.

how do i mail the doof? my ctra says i'm dissallowed

Read the first stickied thread in the CTRA subforum. http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=34839

You were banned from using the UKCT server at all for 30 days, though, because UKCT as a whole finally got sick of you trying to cause trouble. do0f cannot unban you from the UKCT server.

I have served my ban & I can get on the servers.
(i cant see how stating facts is interpreted as trying to cause trouble but we're not here to discuss that)

Okay, then there's no issue.
[edit] I've allowed MyCTRA access again.

Thank you I will be good from now on.

Quote from anttt69 :

Thank you I will be good from now on.

I should hope so. That was not very nice what you did and a public apology would be greatly appreciated =) But have a chat with Doof and see what he says.

what boders me the most about reporting is that it takes impossibly long untill it's even assigned to an admin! takes like a week...

Quote from koolby :

what boders me the most about reporting is that it takes impossibly long untill it's even assigned to an admin! takes like a week...

What difference does it make for you, if it takes one day or one week?
These people are doing this for your pleasure in their spare time, give them a break?

We have been struggling recently with manpower, it's true to say. Some of the CTRA admins have been busy with work, some have been without the internet, and some have been busy helping with other leagues and teams etc. We get to them whenever we have a spare few hours. Most of the time we average at around 4 or so outstanding reports, but at the moment it's creeping up a little and there's very little we can do about it. Sorry!

Hey Sam, we all have a real live m8. Dont worrie, you admins all take your time. No rush needed.