Informational non-content on Bananas

[damerell]

Speaking only as an ordinary OTTD user, I would much prefer this junk was not on Bananas.

[wojteks86]

"Your mailbox never said you don't wish to receive penis enlargement ads. So I sent one to you just in case."

Yep, iGRFs are junk.

[2457]

that igrf in question did not violate any rule written as far as i know.
it contains an advertisiment. so it is "content".
no abuse-proof filter can be made up.
ignoring this igrf equals a to a welcome msg to more igrf files.

i have a personal opinion that can sort the above. but no interest in that solution.
question is what those people say who run / code the bananas?

[FLHerne]

it contains an advertisiment. so it is "content".

I would dispute than an advertisement (not a teaser, or even a screenshot, just a brief description and a link) is 'content'. It doesn't have any effect on the appearance or use of the game whatsoever, and in fact does nothing at all other than displaying its own description...

Either use it, or don't - it really is quite rude to reject the fundamental point of Bananas, and then undermine that point in an attempt to gain an advantage from it anyway.

[2457]

I do agree with you, it should do something to manipulate in some way any aspect of the game.
and bananas was created to give easy acces to files that do the above.

but even so, the term content does apply to the igrf.
it contains something, that is information. and that makes it content...
so.. i think that the term content is way too wide to use.
bananas should not just deliver content as an advertisement is content too.
surely originaly no one wanted it to be an advertisment distribution platform.
but then again i can't recall reading anywhere that bananas is a service to deliver grf files that change any aspect of the game.
from this point of view nothing against the rules happend.
sure, its "wrong", but untill it is not clarifyed what counts toward accepted content, it is - by the rules- legal.

this is just like a backdoor in the jungle of laws.

[Alberth]

this is just like a backdoor in the jungle of laws.

That always happen when you try to catch intended use in words. They can always be interpreted in a wrong way.

That's why judges not only look at what is literally written, but also on intent.

[Arie-]

I've read the entire discussion and while the iGRF may strictly be following the rules, common sense dictates to remove the file. Perhaps the developer of the iGRF may disagree with that decision, in the interest of the BaNaNaS system however, I think it is wise to act. If the developer of that iGRF decides to no longer use BaNaNaS in the future, so be it.

[SquireJames]

Well Arie, the odd thing is that (as far as I am aware) the owner of the file has already decided that they do not agree with the way Bananas operates, which makes their use of it for advertising even stranger.

[YNM]

Wait... what ? Who did it ? I mean, even as somebody who can visit their closed forums, I oppose it ! At any rate ! BaNaNaS is a content-only place ! No ads !

OMG THIS HAS TO BE REMOVED ASAP.

P.S. oh and regarding that ads is a content, to note, ads is like an empty box. Just a litter, not so useful at all unless their place got recycled.

And latest news : Simuscape became harder to reach. S***.

[ChillCore]

Who did it ?

Irrelevant ... it could have been anyone.

Let us hope the author is willing to at least replace it with a proper teaser sometime soon; then we have nothing to complain about anymore, even if the teaser never gets updated with something new.
Before anyone asks ... I am not going into the debate of what proper is .

[kamnet]

Wouldn't it make a lot of sense to find out what the users of the game think with regards to the iGRF (assuming the forums are an accurate representation of the user base)?

Which forums are we going to use? Are you just going by tt-forums? Would you like to include Simuscape? What about the German, Russian and Romanian forums? Were you aware there's also a thriving OpenTTD community on Reddit? What about players hanging out on YouTube, and Google+, and Yugscast? Do we ask them all, or just some of them? Personally, even if you include all of those sources, I don't think it comes close to evenly representing all of OpenTTD's players.

[jonty-comp]

Perhaps the OpenTTD website? Arguably everyone that plays OpenTTD should go there at least periodically. It'd just take ages to get a 'reasonable' sample.

[Transportman]

I think 99% of the players don't care about it at this moment. The problem might grow if there are coming more and more iGRFs, since then the Online Content becomes basically useless for the regular player if those iGRFs are not moved to a separate section, since the distinction content vs. information GRFs is small. I mean, !! doesn't say "I only contain information and do not actually work" to me. And before someone starts again with what a content GRF is, I think we can to at least agree that this information GRF is not it.

[planetmaker]

People should visit the OpenTTD forum at http://forum.openttd.org and maybe ask there

[TSH]

The official OpenTTD site links to TT-Forums so I guess that makes this the most logical location to get answers from, even if you find out about the game from another community everyone is likely to come across this one at some point, though as jonty-comp says the OpenTTD website could be used.

I think Transportman is right in saying that the vast majority of users won't care at the moment but we should be forward thinking about if/when it will become a problem to users, anything that makes BaNaNaS easier to browse is a step in the right direction really.

[jonty-comp]

The official OpenTTD site links to TT-Forums so I guess that makes this the most logical location to get answers from, even if you find out about the game from another community everyone is likely to come across this one at some point, though as jonty-comp says the OpenTTD website could be used.

I forgot that the official OpenTTD forum is TT-F.

[Katve]

And latest news : Simuscape became harder to reach. S***.

How it become harder to reach? I am registered and I can't see it?

[Rubidium]

It seems like the majority on the official forum thinks that these informational NewGRFs are spam and should be removed.

Since we try to not remove things, I gave them to have a maximum version so low that no (unmodified) client would see them. Furthermore I have done the same with the few NewGRFs that have an invalid GRF version, and are thus unusable.

We will not come up with a strict set of rules of what may and may not be added because then people could just do the bare minimum to fulfil the rules to circumvent the "common sense" that bananas is for content and not for advertising links to external sites.

Furthermore, the terms of service does not state that we have to distribute or accept everything. It is merely about granting bananas the rights to perform its duty (repackaging and redistributing).

[frosch]

On a related note:

The established method to advertise NewGRF without hosting is GrfCrawler.
It has all the features for an advertisement platform indepenent of hosting the files, including dead download links, removed files and other incompatibilities.

To simplify usage of GrfCrawler, in the next days OpenTTD will gain the feature to open a browser window with GrfCrawler and issue a search for missing files. The feature will be available from the "find missing files" windows when loading a savegame or when joining a server, as well as from the normal content window.

[Transportman]

Furthermore, the terms of service does not state that we have to distribute or accept everything. It is merely about granting bananas the rights to perform its duty (repackaging and redistributing).

So implicitly the devs have the right to remove anything as they see fit?

Will GrfCrawler then also be a bit more prominently placed? For example at the BaNaNaS-upload page a line of text: Please use GrfCrawler if you don't want to upload your GRF?