[brenainn]

I'll provide some background for people that aren't familiar with the game. It's an online vehicular combat game where you pilot tanks, planes, helicopters and warships. The vehicles range from pre-WW2 to modern. The game aims for realistic vehicle specifications, like armour thickness, penetration values etc.

For older, actually real vehicles, that information is more easily available. For modern, classified vehicles, and vehicles that were never actually produced, they have to make reasonable assumptions. Sometimes players get upset about these assumptions and how they impact the game balance, and post classified design documents on the forums to argue their points.

[raziel2701]

Wow so this is the "if you want a good answer from the internet post a wrong answer first" but escalated by a ton!!

That's incredible!

[intpx]

Ah yes. Dullingshires law

[oddsockmachine]

I think you mean Cunningham's Law...

[muppetman]

I always knew it as oddsockmachine's law.

[nejsjsjsbsb]

Performance art of many HN exchanges on non-startup/cs topics.

[Two4]

Or maybe Cole's Law

[fennecbutt]

Nah pretty sure it was Darude's law

[jamesfinlayson]

> Dullingshires law

Never heard this and Google is just giving me a bunch of law firms.

[hluska]

It’s part of a cheeky joke. There’s an adage that if you really need to find a correct answer, go online and confidently give the wrong answer. More people will jump on to tell you you’re wrong than would answer the question if you asked.

That’s called Cunningham’s law. The joke (which is actually quite funny) is that GP gave the wrong name for it and proved it.

It wasn’t clear and I understand the confusion but welcome into the joke, my friend. :)

[lsecondario]

Maybe you should find the real name and post it as a reply.

[robotnikman]

Going to hijack the top comment to provide my own observations as a player

As a War Thunder player myself, here is some insights off the top of my head I can provide from the player base point of view, and as someone who has also submitted documentation to the devs to fix historical inaccuracies of some vehicles in the game...

-Players can submit bug reports for vehicles, reporting incorrect characteristics, missing features etc.

-In order to do so, players must research and compile documentation supporting their cases, from at least 2 primary sources. This means those devoted to such a report can spend hours or even days gathering material for their sources, sometimes going as far as digging through the historical archives of companies or countries for information

---

Here's where problems start to arise:

-The bug reports are overseen by a few volunteers who review the bug reports and decide what gets sent to the developers and what does not, who have a track record of arbitrarily choosing what gets passed to the developers for fixing, and what does not. So even a well made bug report with more than enough documents and source materials can be denied, and all the efforts of the reporter are in vain.

-Even if a bug report gets passed to the developers, there is no timeline on when the missing features or inaccuracies of a vehicle will be fixed, and no communication from the developers whatsoever. It may be one month until its fixed, it may be 5 years, it may be never.

-The most heated discussion and reports revolve around modern day vehicles, where source materials may still be classified, or is available but marked as export restricted. The developers are very inconsistent when it comes to which bug fixes the accept or refuse when it comes to modern vehicles. For example, there were multiple reports of the Abrams and Challenger tanks armor being weaker in game than they should be, these reports were declined by the developers despite the multitude of sources. And yet on another occasion, a player submitted a report on the T-90 missing it's spall liners, and they were added by developers with the only source provided being a youtube video.

-The developers recently changed the bug reporting system so that once a bug report is submitted, only the bug report reviewers and the author of the bug report can see the documentation submitted; the lack of transparency leads to lack of trust, some believing some reports which get submitted may be approved and implemented based the personal biases and views of the developers or bug report reviewers

---

So basically you have a playerbase of passionate players who like history and military vehicles, who go out of their way to perform the jobs of a historian to provide the correct information to the developers to correct historical inaccuracies in a game, only for their efforts to be disregarded due to arbitrary decision making of the developers or bug report reviewers, even if the compiled reports follow all guidelines.

[preisschild]

They also hava big bias towards Russian vehicles.

They take wildly inaccurate propaganda numbers and implement them, but nerf the numbers on US vehicles where they exist plenty of actual data from the manufacturer itself in many cases.

See for example 2S38 vs HSTVL & RDF/LT

[snapcaster]

I don't know the game, but wouldn't this make sense as a game balancing aspect? In real life some vehicles might be "strictly better" than others but doesn't make for very interesting gameplay

[CrimsonCape]

If I were to characterize your statement, you would agree that J.R.R. Tolkien should have written the hobbits as massive muscular warriors who can stand against the Uruk-hai as equally competent fighters. The Uruk-hai were "strictly better" weren't they?

[zardo]

You're going to have to do something to buff the hobbits or everyone is going to want to play as Uruk-hai.

[snapcaster]

No, because J.R.R tolkien isn't a game designer? Also even if it was a game you're misusing "strictly better". If their food consumption, costs to equip, costs to train are different even if in a 1v1 combat situation the uruk-hai would win that doesn't translate to strictly better

edit: also, the point of a game is to be fun not to accurately characterize the real world (i.e. how many games have you played where you have to urinate or poop for the character?)

[preisschild]

Matches are so made that you will only fight vehicles with a similar strength. Each vehicle has its own rating and a a slight (dis)advantage is tolerated to more easily find a match.

Problem is, nerfed vehicles like the HSTV-L have a higher rating than OP stuff like the 2S38, even though the HSTV-L is worse than it actually should be IRL.

The higher BR a vehicle has the more capable vehicles it has to fight.

[Tarq0n]

Apparently the game divides the various vehicles into tiers based on their performance. Within a match, only vehicles from a certain "band" of performance may be played, meaning either those vehicles are similar in power or have playerbases that manages a similar output.

[Philadelphia]

So these people are sending classified specs on American military vehicles to people who just happen to have a bias toward Russian vehicles?

[preisschild]

Most of it is more or less easily already leaked information that someone found on the internet and posted it on the WT bug tracker.

[itronitron]

Sounds like this could inspire a simple test as to whether someone should have access to classified information, which would also positively indicate their more mature than a twelve year old.

[rincebrain]

At least once, someone has reported online that they were asked if their friend played War Thunder when they were doing an interview to explore their friend's getting a clearance, so...

[sandworm101]

There are also lots of people creating fake classified documents, and people in posession of "classified" stuff that has long ago been declassified. Those two groups, imho, outnumber all the people who leak actual info by 10x.

(Remember too that having a clearance and having access are different things. Only a rare few have unfettered access to download/print/email to/from classified systems. Lots of gamers work at/for the NSA. That doesnt mean they can all browse the f35 flight manual over lunch.)

[rtkwe]

There's a lot less security around that data than you'd think, there was the very recent saga of Jack Teixeira in the Air National Guard who was smuggling out tons of classified data to impress his friends on Discord just by taking documents out or sneaking his phone in to take pictures. There's a LOT of people with access to the data and it's partially on the honor system and the threat of massive jail time when you're caught to keep people from doing this all the time.

[wnevets]

> The game aims for realistic vehicle specifications, like armour thickness, penetration values etc.

Yet the gameplay is very arcadey and not very realistic.

[Tiberium]

Are you playing arcade or realistic battles? There's a huge difference between the two. And there are also simulator battles.

[schainks]

Wow what a honeypot. Bet every government military loves this game to reverse engineer equipment.

[praptak]

"Don't ask questions, post some blatantly wrong answers on the internet. You'll have angry PhDs running to explain how you are wrong!"

[Philpax]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#%22Cunningham'...

[spondyl]

Anthony Bourdain supposedly found the best restaurants by using this trick

> Get online and write something along the lines of, “hey guys, I just had the absolute best chicken rice at [restaurant x] in Singapore, no questions asked, hands down, everything else pales in comparison,” then sit back and enjoy the show as the internet foodie elite each jump into the fray to defend their own picks to the death. You’ll get a much bigger response, more passionate praise, and it’ll probably end up being a little fun to boot.

https://au.lifehacker.com/news/58784/find-the-best-food-in-a...

[unsupp0rted]

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/nerd_sniping.png

[fragmede]

356!

https://xkcd.com/356/

if you link to the image directly, then you'll never learn the numbers. 356 is nerd sniping, 927 is standards, lucky 10,000 is 1053, load bearing is 2347, bobby tables is 327, research team is 1425...

[reverendsteveii]

I've been a dedicated geek and a firm believer that there's always an xkcd for every situation for quite a while but I don't think I'm at a place where I'm referring to comics by their number. Being said, I could imagine a comic about just this particular topic with cueball doing something that could be considered a reference then quietly giggling to himself while muttering "219" or w/e is the number of the appropriate comic.

[xsmasher]

A man goes to prison and the first night while he's laying in bed contemplating his situation, he hears someone yell out, "44!" Followed by laughter from the other prisoners.

He thought that was pretty odd, then he heard someone else yell out, "72!" Followed by even more laughter.

"What's going on?" he asked his cellmate.

"Well, we've all heard every joke so many times, we've given them each a number to make it easier."

"Oh," he says, "can I try?"

"Sure, go ahead."

So, he yells out "102!" and the place is dead quiet save for a few groans. Confused, he looks at his cellmate who is just shaking his head.

"Hey, what happened?"

"Well, some people can tell a joke, some people can't."

[yllautcaj]

I've always liked the version where the new guy says "103", and the prisoners go wild with laughter, slapping their knees and howling.

He asks "which one did I tell?"

His cellmate wipes a tear from his eye and says "none of us have heard that one before!"

[fragmede]

> I don't think I'm at a place where I'm referring to comics by their number.

not with that attitude! 927 comes up often enough, and it's memorable because 3^2*100 + 3^3 , or Yoda's age - 900 + the 27 club of musicians who killed themselves so start there...

[reverendsteveii]

>it's memorable because 3^2*100 + 3^3 , or Yoda's age - 900 + the 27 club of musicians who killed themselves so start there...

992