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I'd like to remark for anyone not already familiar with the game in question that ... * Redactle Unlimited is a big improvement on original-Redactle * Redactl

by gjm11 4y ago

I'd like to remark for anyone not already familiar with the game in question that ... * Redactle Unlimited is a big improvement on original-Redactle * Redactle is (at least for those who like such things) a terrific game, and you should totally go to redactle-unlimited.com and take a look * as berjin says, the creator of original-Redactle hasn't been heard from in ages and shows every sign of having completely abandoned the game, so Redactle Unlimited isn't an unethical name-grab (It looks as if redactle-unlimited.com is #2 on Google and the main clone site is #1; on DuckDuckGo it's the other way around, so well done DDG.)

gjm11 4y ago
I see this got downvoted. I vigorously endorse everyone's right to downvote things they think are bad, but I'm baffled as to what is supposed to be bad about the above, and if I've done something bad without knowing it I'd like to find out what. If whoever downvoted it happens to be around and willing to explain, your chances of making me not do whatever-you-didn't-like in the future are much better if you do so; your downvote unfortunately literally can't do that since I don't know what it's for. (Top hypotheses: 1. too much thread drift; 2. suspicion that I'm some sort of a shill for Redactle Unlimited; 3. actually it wasn't meant to be a downvote at all and it's just because the up/down arrows are easy to misclick on mobile devices. For what it's worth, it doesn't feel to me like an unreasonable amount of thread drift, I have no connection to RU other than enjoying playing it, and I entirely agree that the arrows are fiddly on mobile.)
- jlokier 4y ago
  I'll add a fourth guess for why. You know that "Redactle Unlimited is a big improvement on original-Redactle" shows support for the author of this article, whose game is Redactle Unlimited. But to someone not paying close enough attention, it's easy to think original-Redactl is the author's game. Then that line can be misread as supporting the copycat over the author, which would be unkind in context. I misread it that way, until I scrolled back to check which one was the author's game.
  - gjm11 4y ago
    Ooooh, that's an interesting thought. You could be right. So, for the avoidance of doubt: The original original was redactle.com. The creator of that seems to have abandoned it not long after its creation, and to have taken no further interest in it. The thing we are talking about is redactle-unlimited.com. This was made by berjin. It gives suitable credit to redactle.com. It provides a notably better playing experience than original redactle.com does. I do not consider it a copycat in any culpable sense. And then there are the copycats of Redactle Unlimited, most notably redactleunlimited.com. That one, so far as I can tell, has simply taken berjin's code and filed off the serial numbers. It offers no improvement over redactle-unlimited.com. It does not give credit to any of its predecessors. It is definitely a copycat in every sense.
jrmg 4y ago
Redactle Unlimited (launched in July) looks like it launched about three months after Redactle (launched in April), and is using the name of the original one in its name. I’m not sure what I feel about this if the original really is abandoned (is something ‘abandoned’ if it is working fine and just hasn’t been updated in eight months?) - but it definitely feels a little rich that the Redactle Unlimited author is complaining about copycats.
- gjm11 4y ago
  Well, there were people saying that Redactle seemed to have been abandoned in the Redactle subreddit before Redactle Unlimited was created. (I think.) In other words, although it's hard to know anyone's intent with confidence, it seems like when berjin made RU he had reason to believe that he wasn't stealing the thunder of someone who was still actively involved with Redactle. And Redactle Unlimited credited original-Redactle explicitly from its first creation, according to archive.org's Wayback Machine. So it's not trying to pretend to be "the real thing" in any sense in which something else is the real real thing. All of which makes it seem ethically-OK to me. It's also relevant that the point of Redactle Unlimited was to offer a feature original-Redactle didn't, namely the ability to play more than one game per day. By making Redactle Unlimited, berjin made Redactle players' lives a little bit better. Whereas, e.g., redactleunlimited.com credits neither original-Redactle nor original-RedactleUnlimited whose code I believe it has copied, nor does it offer any usability improvements or extra features over original-RedactleUnlimited. In other words, it's purely parasitic -- it doesn't on net make anyone's life better other than that of the person who "made" it -- and it's playing a zero-sum game, gaining whatever success it does at the expense of something that went before it, whose identity it's trying to create confusion with.
- berjin 4y ago
  I see where you're coming from but 1) When I say abandoned the original redactle.com has had it's problems. There have been several days where the original was down because the hosting bill was not paid. Some fans tracked down the hosting company and paid it. Also the certificate was expired for months. Some days it loads a disambiguation wiki page instead of a real article. The dev hasn't been seen on social media since April. 2) Everything I did in redactle-unlimited is from scratch and with significant improvements like multi-player and lemma. The copycats are actually using others' content by either pulling en eBaum's world and embedding the sites or in one case cloning the source code, replacing the logo and domain and claiming to be the "official redactle unlimited" on reddit. 3) I'm hardly the only person to have re-created a Wordle or web game from scratch.

by gjm11 4y ago

gjm11 4y ago

I see this got downvoted. I vigorously endorse everyone's right to downvote things they think are bad, but I'm baffled as to what is supposed to be bad about the above, and if I've done something bad without knowing it I'd like to find out what. If whoever downvoted it happens to be around and willing to explain, your chances of making me not do whatever-you-didn't-like in the future are much better if you do so; your downvote unfortunately literally can't do that since I don't know what it's for. (Top hypotheses: 1. too much thread drift; 2. suspicion that I'm some sort of a shill for Redactle Unlimited; 3. actually it wasn't meant to be a downvote at all and it's just because the up/down arrows are easy to misclick on mobile devices. For what it's worth, it doesn't feel to me like an unreasonable amount of thread drift, I have no connection to RU other than enjoying playing it, and I entirely agree that the arrows are fiddly on mobile.)

jlokier 4y ago
I'll add a fourth guess for why. You know that "Redactle Unlimited is a big improvement on original-Redactle" shows support for the author of this article, whose game is Redactle Unlimited. But to someone not paying close enough attention, it's easy to think original-Redactl is the author's game. Then that line can be misread as supporting the copycat over the author, which would be unkind in context. I misread it that way, until I scrolled back to check which one was the author's game.
- gjm11 4y ago
  Ooooh, that's an interesting thought. You could be right. So, for the avoidance of doubt: The original original was redactle.com. The creator of that seems to have abandoned it not long after its creation, and to have taken no further interest in it. The thing we are talking about is redactle-unlimited.com. This was made by berjin. It gives suitable credit to redactle.com. It provides a notably better playing experience than original redactle.com does. I do not consider it a copycat in any culpable sense. And then there are the copycats of Redactle Unlimited, most notably redactleunlimited.com. That one, so far as I can tell, has simply taken berjin's code and filed off the serial numbers. It offers no improvement over redactle-unlimited.com. It does not give credit to any of its predecessors. It is definitely a copycat in every sense.

jrmg 4y ago

Redactle Unlimited (launched in July) looks like it launched about three months after Redactle (launched in April), and is using the name of the original one in its name. I’m not sure what I feel about this if the original really is abandoned (is something ‘abandoned’ if it is working fine and just hasn’t been updated in eight months?) - but it definitely feels a little rich that the Redactle Unlimited author is complaining about copycats.

gjm11 4y ago
Well, there were people saying that Redactle seemed to have been abandoned in the Redactle subreddit before Redactle Unlimited was created. (I think.) In other words, although it's hard to know anyone's intent with confidence, it seems like when berjin made RU he had reason to believe that he wasn't stealing the thunder of someone who was still actively involved with Redactle. And Redactle Unlimited credited original-Redactle explicitly from its first creation, according to archive.org's Wayback Machine. So it's not trying to pretend to be "the real thing" in any sense in which something else is the real real thing. All of which makes it seem ethically-OK to me. It's also relevant that the point of Redactle Unlimited was to offer a feature original-Redactle didn't, namely the ability to play more than one game per day. By making Redactle Unlimited, berjin made Redactle players' lives a little bit better. Whereas, e.g., redactleunlimited.com credits neither original-Redactle nor original-RedactleUnlimited whose code I believe it has copied, nor does it offer any usability improvements or extra features over original-RedactleUnlimited. In other words, it's purely parasitic -- it doesn't on net make anyone's life better other than that of the person who "made" it -- and it's playing a zero-sum game, gaining whatever success it does at the expense of something that went before it, whose identity it's trying to create confusion with.
berjin 4y ago
I see where you're coming from but 1) When I say abandoned the original redactle.com has had it's problems. There have been several days where the original was down because the hosting bill was not paid. Some fans tracked down the hosting company and paid it. Also the certificate was expired for months. Some days it loads a disambiguation wiki page instead of a real article. The dev hasn't been seen on social media since April. 2) Everything I did in redactle-unlimited is from scratch and with significant improvements like multi-player and lemma. The copycats are actually using others' content by either pulling en eBaum's world and embedding the sites or in one case cloning the source code, replacing the logo and domain and claiming to be the "official redactle unlimited" on reddit. 3) I'm hardly the only person to have re-created a Wordle or web game from scratch.