Location Info button removed

[EpicNPC]

We have removed the "Location Info" box for all non-moderator members and will be replacing it with a "Country" field on member's profile page that is based on their verified phone number.

Members who do not have a phone number verified will display a "Not Phone Verified" message in this field.

This allows members to more quickly see what country someone is from and to see if they have verified a phone number on Epicnpc. This addon is expected to be added on Monday.

Update: Pro Sellers, Trusted members and Local Forum mods can now again see the "Location Info" button.

 

[kQuantumK]

Should I be worried if I don't have a Location Box ? (I'm a mod.) Or will this be fixed on monday?

 

[stree]

Not the best change, at least for me as seller. It was good to see where are my customers from, 95% of them don't have phone verified, so now I'm not able to get some more useful info

What's behind of this change?

 

[EpicNPC]

Only Global mods have it enabled at this time. We'll have to make an update to include local mods.

- - - Updated - - -
@stree. We made the change for a few reasons.

1) Over the years we received many complaints from members saying they didn't like their ISP information posted. By removing this, I'm sure many of those members will be happy.

2) The country and ISP info was based on the IP address, so if a VPN was used, the info posted wasn't accurate. Very few members reported VPNs to us, which was the main purpose of this tool.

3) Before there was no way to see if someone verified a phone number unless they also had an upgrade. Now you will be able to see if a members has verified a phone number with us.

4) 55% of members that have registered in 2017 have verified a phone number, not 5%, so your claim is incorrect.

 

[Novun]

It is extremely useful for me to see the location of all users. I don't like this change at all... I don't understand why it would bother anyone if the community saw his/her ISP/country.

 

[EpicNPC]

For most users they didn't know how to use it or how the ISP info could be helpful to them. So we found that for the majority of members this tool was not very helpful, but for larger sellers that know what they're doing, I agree the ISP info could be very helpful, so we'll include Pro Sellers in the update for next week.

 

[doomedtofail]

Just to add to this, with the old system many isp's did not display and appear to vpn to non moderator users.

 

[The Integrity]

The location info had it's advantages and should not be removed.

- Many times, the country field also displayed the city or region within the country. This made it possible to uncover multiple accounts easily.
- The hostname parameter often revealed the ISP. This not only helped in uncovering multiple accounts, but it also allowed you to check if it's a VPN. You could use the part of the hostname to find if it's an actual ISP or a confirmed VPN. Not always, but even if it's 30% of the time, it was still very handy.

This allowed members to report multiple accounts and possible VPNs and get those members banned faster.
By removing this option, you are preventing that, which reduces the overall safety on the website.
Even if only 5% of users made reports based on that, it's still good and no reason to remove it. It was extremely handy for me and I hate to see it get removed.

The new country option would not have the said advantages and it would be impossible to uncover multiple accounts or VPN this way.

My suggestion would be to improve the old location info page instead.
1) The location/country parameter should be split into 2 fields. One would be taken from the phone prefix and the other from the IP address. If no phone is added, it should work the same as it does not.
2) If no info is available for the host name or country via IP address, display a message ('We do not have location information for this user') instead of showing nothing, to prevent members from thinking that it's most likely a VPN.

It should look like this:

Phone verified: Yes
Country (phone):
Location (ip):
Hostname:

In case of unverified - same as how it worked until now (just add the phone verification status)

Phone verified: No
Location (ip):
Hostname:

 

[Keiichi]

Banned - dispute - https://www.epicnpc.com/threads/keiichi-owes-me-fees-i-hope-he-is-okay-cool-dude.1433002/

I kinda agree with Novun and The Integrity.

But being aware of the time zone for other members would be nice.​

 

[Sakura]

Not a fan of this. At all.

 

[EpicNPC]

[MENTION=283059]The Integrity[/MENTION] those are good suggestions, but they won't be included in update planned for this week.

Local Mods, Pro Sellers and Trusted members will be able to use the "Location Info" button. We'll update the functionality of this feature in the update after that.

Checking the stats for the Location Info button, it appears only 50 requests/day are made. Considering we have 25k visitors/day, 50 is basically next to nothing and shows that very few members are using this tool. I'm sure at least half of those 50/day are from admins and mods.

Once we start including the phone/country info directly in the profile, it should be useful to a much larger group of members.

 

[Rafflez]

Banned - Failed to resolve - https://www.epicnpc.com/threads/failure-to-payback-loan-and-ignores-my-messages.2090927/

@The Integrity those are good suggestions, but they won't be included in update planned for this week.

Local Mods, Pro Sellers and Trusted members will be able to use the "Location Info" button. We'll update the functionality of this feature in the update after that.

Checking the stats for the Location Info button, it appears only 50 requests/day are made. Considering we have 25k visitors/day, 50 is basically next to nothing and shows that very few members are using this tool. I'm sure at least half of those 50/day are from admins and mods.

Once we start including the phone/country info directly in the profile, it should be useful to a much larger group of members.

i know it's useful especially if newer members to match up with the Skype ip

 

[7Leaf]

This was useful thing. It allowed to see the info for each post made from account and could be helpful as warning if few particular posts/pms were not matching with majority posts of particular account.