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Submission Anonymization

The idea of removing your submissions has been a thing that's been debated on numerous times, both by the community as well as in staff. It's a controversial subject - on one hand, users should hold some right over their files, but on the other, not only does the license agreement prevent such things but SMW Central was also founded as an archival tool for such resources, and archival is important to us as well - even low-quality submissions that were once officially on our site are dutifully archived. Plus, it would be a shame to remove otherwise really good resources entirely, and deprive the userbase of what could be a solid resource, wouldn't it?

To that end, there's a solid middle ground to all of this, and we hope it satisfies anyone who doesn't want to be tied to old submissions anymore: anonymization of submissions.

Many people want to dissociate themselves from their submissions, and that's fine and valid! But, since archival of resources is important as mentioned before, this serves as a clean and simple solution. To anonymize one of your resources, send a message to the appropriate Team Leader in this list, or an appropriate section moderator, and let them know! The effort will be done manually, but identifying information (such as tags in an SPC, included readmes or comments) will be removed, and the Author field will be changed to simply "Anonymous". Do know, however, that once this is done, it is permanent - you won't be able to get authorship back. Keep this in mind before sending a request.

Currently, this new policy is available for hacks - however, you must send an anonymized copy of the hack in question. This is so you can remove any and all possible identifiers that the hack mods may otherwise not know about or be equipped to deal with, such as ASM. The same applies for any submission that requires a .bps patch, such as graphics hacks or overworld graphics. Additionally, this feature is not available for very specific cases that render identification in a submission very difficult to remove, such as (but not limited to) SMWCP or VLDC compilations. Sorry!

All this said, if you'd like to anonymize something of yours, feel free to send your requests!
Well, this is an interesting feature that I feel is a good addition.

I'm just wondering where/who can we send our anonymization requests as it wasn't clear to me.
Hello.
It can be sent to any section moderator in the section of the resource you'd like to anonymize: for example, if you had a port in the SMW Music section, you could contact myself or any music moderator. Updated it to make it a bit clearer!
That's a cool and new feature, sure!
Even if isn't possible to delete a submission still a positive step, but i have a somewhat, curious question:

At the moment someone removes the own name of a hack can someone else take their own in the future? Or will anonymous hacks be like lost games in the community, in a way?

Not that i care but when you put your name on something you're telling the world that you created it. Wouldn't that serve as an opportunity for someone else to become the new author of this anonymous project?
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Authorship of a submitted resource is generated when someone submits a resource. If we anonymize a resource, it means that as far as our site goes we will never attach an author to the resource again. And if we find that someone is trying to claim wrongful ownership of an anonymized resource, there could be grounds for some form of punishment on the site.

In short, I'm not particularly concerned by that possibility, because there are two or three ways to prevent that kind of thing from happening.
Originally posted by FPzero
Authorship of a submitted resource is generated when someone submits a resource. If we anonymize a resource, it means that as far as our site goes we will never attach an author to the resource again.


So if i don't want my name to be related to my hack, it becomes anonymous still remains my own? The only difference now is that the author's name will be anonymous, is that it?

Or while that a hack is anonymous it becomes public and nobody can't (not even the original author) claim it? As if the hack was made by someone but the original author no longer wants to be remembered by it?

I'm sure it will be safe inside SMWC but not sure outside the forum. I have so many questions, i'm sorry lol.
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As far as the SMW sections would be concerned, your hack would no longer have your username attached to it, and it never will have your username attached to it again.

That's as far as the policy goes, though. Unfortunately, we can't prevent people from associating you with your hack in public chat or outside the site.
i dont think that, i think that people that want to remove their resources from smwc is only to make them more exclusive or because they dont feel comfortable on the website and prefere don't keep the resources anymore on smwc. I think that there is very very few people that only want to remove a resource because dissociate themselves from their submissions, that doesn't fix the problem of people that want to remove resources from smwc, only fix minor problems like shy people that don't want recognition or people that is harassed for others user for an specific resource cofcofmaxodexandrudraportcofcof

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SMWC has no interest whatsoever in removing resources to make them more exclusive, or for any reason other than for not following the rules of the section.

Submitting anything to any of SMWC's sections grants us an irrevocable license to host and distribute it. If you want to have your submission removed, you must provide a compelling reason (to us) as to why. "I don't like the site anymore" and "I only want this to be available somewhere else" are not compelling reasons.
I have been sending my SMW hack but they keep getting a corruption error, why?
Now that this is in place, will it be possible to upload submissions anonymously in the first place? Perhaps even a method to submit content without an account?
Well I'm new at trying to my SMW hack to people.
Originally posted by Torchkas
Now that this is in place, will it be possible to upload submissions anonymously in the first place? Perhaps even a method to submit content without an account?

I have a great deal of interest in both parts of this.

Just look above you...
If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
I kinda doubt the "without account" part. Allowing unregistered users to submit stuff would take accountability away from them, as well as make it possible for banned users to submit stuff (which kinda goes against the site's policy, as far as I'm aware). It would also more easily lead to a flood of submissions and make it harder for staff to moderate stuff.

Anonymous submissions, on the other hand, could be a reasonable idea as long as the users still have to be registered and as long as staff can still see their names (in case they're submitting something that goes against the rules).
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
How about a SHA512'd and salted output with an IP address input to create a unique but still anonymous identifier visible to staff with which abusers can still be restricted with? If this were in play, the account portion becomes redundant as even an IP ban on a user on top of their account would take the same steps to effectively evade.

Just look above you...
If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
Maybe with the help of a special Bot smwc account, registered users can submit anonymous content to the sections? So the bot is the "account" that submit the resources instead (and then it gets properly anonymized by admins), assisted by the submitter (similar to how Staff Feedback works).

It would require to code this feature, though.
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Originally posted by Counterfeit
How about a SHA512'd and salted output with an IP address input to create a unique but still anonymous identifier visible to staff with which abusers can still be restricted with?


I think the problem here is that IP addresses don't really work well as identifiers for people, for the exact same reasons that IP bans themselves are only semi-effective (I guess IPv6 might improve that, but only to some degree, and I think the majority of people are still stuck using IPv4 mostly).

Basically, to get around an IP ban, you just have to switch your location. In many cases, you even just have to restart your router, because a lot of internet providers nowadays use dynamic IP addresses and assign a new one to you every time you connect. And then there's also the problem that IP addresses really only identify locations, not people. While there's a strong likelihood the two are connected, it can't be guranteed, and by banning a certain IP range, for example, you might end up banning some random college out there rather than a specific person you wanted to ban.

Granted, an account system doesn't solve most of these problems. You can still just create multiple accounts to fake being another person (as I said, IP bans are only semi-effective at preventing reregistration). But at the very least the point can be made that when the same account does multiple things, these things were most likely all done by the same person. For that reason I think accounts still have a slight edge over IP addresses as identifiers.

I guess an alternative to using IP addresses could be using an E-Mail address, which might be a slightly stronger identifier, but since registration also only really requires an E-Mail address, I don't know if there was a huge benefit to that.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!