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 Forum index » Meta » Various & Sundry
[Mini-PM Lesson] Careful what you leave online...
Moderators: Giskard, imbri, ndemeter
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QBKooky
Decorated


Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 281

 		 [Mini-PM Lesson] Careful what you leave online...
A story of my own amateur-PM oversight
Hi everyone (yes I'm still alive and keeping up with the ARGNetcast, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, just real life, starting college, etc = busy-ness).

ANYWAYS, here's my story: A couple years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I had this amazing idea to run a local ARG to take place just in my high school. It would've been great, because everyone being in the same real-life location could have made for some great events / scavenger hunts / etc.

So I got up a pretty substantial amount of my main website, which included a couple beginning puzzles and then a sign-up. My plan was to do a "stealth launch" (dropping scraps of paper with the web address around school, etc) and wait slowly for people to find the website and solve the puzzles. Of course, (a) it took much longer for people to get the idea then I thought it might, and (b) in a school of 1000 people, there wasn't a huge base of people who were into this kind of thing. I think I got maybe one sign-up.

So the end of the school year rolled around, I abandoned the idea (it never got past pre-game) and graduated from high school.

Fast forward a year or two, and here's me, trying to organize my life, and realizing that I should take down my pre-game website in case I ever wanted to use the doman name for something else. I google it to make sure it wasn't recorded in archive.org or in google's cache (which it was) and what do I find? Several blog posts and forum threads from parts of the internet I hadn't even heard of, written by people who had stumbled across my defunct pre-game website, solved the puzzles, and were generally really intruiged and enthused about the idea.

... *FACEPALM* Confused

Of course, looking back, it might've been smarter to attempt a small game online rather than limiting myself to the bounds of my own high school... but regardless.

So! The moral of the story is, be careful what you leave online, because even though you may think something is dead, I guarantee, google will find it somehow, and if google has found it, so will other people.

That's the end of my story. Have a good one, guys. Razz Smile
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A clue!

PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 6:09 pm
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Rekidk
Entrenched


Joined: 19 Dec 2006
Posts: 992
Location: Indiana, USA

 		But the stuff you want people to find? They'll never find it. XD

Well, I hope that you run an ARG soon--it sounds like that would've been fun. Smile
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iTube - iTweet - iNetwork

PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 8:49 pm
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rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

 		Hi QBKooky! Let us know when you are around NYC for a visit, or maybe home for the summer.


Great story too.
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I love this site for being free, in every sense of the word~Spacebass

Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

PostPosted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 8:22 am
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Everything's Magic
Unfettered


Joined: 28 Aug 2007
Posts: 491
Location: Michigan

 		Haha, that was a great story man. I'm starting an ARG up now and when it's all over I'm going to put notices on all the IG sites just in case.

PostPosted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 9:52 pm
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SirQuady
Unfettered


Joined: 15 Jan 2006
Posts: 576

 		Starting an ARG intended for the internet? or for a specific group, like QBKooky did?
_________________
There once was a [person] from [place]
Whose [body part] was [special case].
When [event] would occur,
It would cause [him or her]
To violate [law of time/space].

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 12:43 am
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notgordian
Unfictologist


Joined: 23 Nov 2006
Posts: 1383
Location: Philly

 		As another aspect of the same problem, be careful which pages you let get web-crawled for DURING your game. During the Court TV ARG/promo Save My Husband, some of the files got cached by either Google cache, the Wayback Machine, or both -- I've forgotten which. At any rate, they were files they didn't want available to the public. You can take action to have the pages removed, but it takes time.

FOR REMOVING STUFF FROM THE GOOGLE CACHE
Use the robots.txt file or metatag
This takes time: it won't go away until the next time your site gets crawled.

Google also has a removal request page, although I don't have any experience with it.

FOR REMOVING STUFF FROM ARCHIVE.ORG
Same: use the robots.txt tag. If for some crazy reason you want it removed from the Wayback Machine but not others, put the following text in the robots.txt file
Code:
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /


PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:18 am
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Everything's Magic
Unfettered


Joined: 28 Aug 2007
Posts: 491
Location: Michigan
SirQuady wrote:
Starting an ARG intended for the internet? or for a specific group, like QBKooky did?


It's intended for a certain group, but anyone can join.

Basically, I'm writing a story at a site I'm actually banned from (long story) called KH-Vids Royale, based off the book Battle Royale. In Battle Royale, a random class of 9th graders is chosen each year and put on a deserted island. They get random weapons and have to kill each other until only one is left. KH-Vids Royale is the same thing, but with members from the website. I thought it'd be fun to try an ARG to flesh out some of the storyline that doesn't occur on the island.

It's open to anyone willing to read the story, which is up to chapter 6 now. New chapters come out every Monday and Thursday.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 4:31 pm
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notgordian
Unfictologist


Joined: 23 Nov 2006
Posts: 1383
Location: Philly

 		Battle Royale...now that was a messed up series. Never managed to get a hold of the book, although I saw both movies and read the manga. I can see a storyline like that working fairly well, possibly encorporating Mafia-like gameplay (although I guess if you're doing off-island development that wouldn't work very well)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(game) (The Mafia game)

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:23 pm
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SirQuady
Unfettered


Joined: 15 Jan 2006
Posts: 576
Everything's Magic wrote:
In Battle Royale, a random class of 9th graders is chosen each year and put on a deserted island. They get random weapons and have to kill each other until only one is left.


Oh, so it's Lord of the Flies. Very Happy Wink Mr. Green Jetpack
_________________
There once was a [person] from [place]
Whose [body part] was [special case].
When [event] would occur,
It would cause [him or her]
To violate [law of time/space].

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:36 pm
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Everything's Magic
Unfettered


Joined: 28 Aug 2007
Posts: 491
Location: Michigan

 		lol Yeah.

Basically the ARG explains why it was KH-Vids that got chosen to participate in this, and who the group Jumping Rooftops is. I'm using all free sites though, since I can't afford real ones.

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:44 pm
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SirQuady
Unfettered


Joined: 15 Jan 2006
Posts: 576

 		Sweet! Good luck! If you need any help, just let me know.
_________________
There once was a [person] from [place]
Whose [body part] was [special case].
When [event] would occur,
It would cause [him or her]
To violate [law of time/space].

PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:54 pm
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