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I'm requesting a secure HTTPS connection for PC Gaming Wiki. Like HTML5, HTTPS in becoming a new web standard. I understand that HTTPS is more expensive than plain HTTP, but maybe you can achieve this with the help of my support on Patreon.

 

As always, use HTTPS Everywhere browser add-on to force encrypted connection when available.

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I don't honestly see the point in this...

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We hate when evil governments spy us, regardless of whether we are trading drugs or fixing PC games

What?.. This information is publicly available, what are you even talking about. Just because a website is using HTTPs that doesn't mean that it's automatically secure from, whatever you guys are thinking about.

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I shouldn't respond to this topic without first consulting Soeb, but I've done stupider things without pissing him off too much :P

 

Soeb would be in charge of moving PCGamingWiki over to HTTPS, which is not an easy task if you haven't planned for it since the beginning (which we haven't). Plenty of large companies with paid employees have written at length about the struggles of moving over to HTTPS, so I don't expect we'll be able to do it without at least some friction. I've personally been nagging Soeb to add HTTPS to the wiki for a couple months, but there are a few things blocking us from moving over to it.

 

The biggest problems with supporting HTTPS at present:

  • We can't afford to become SSL certified right now, this will change at some point this year when Let's Encrypt becomes available, but probably not until then. There are some fairly cheap certification authorities available, but they're all sketchy and may not certify HTTPS compatibility properly.
  • We cannot include third party scripts if they don't support HTTPS themselves. As far as I know, we only use AdSense for ads, which supports HTTPS, and Soeb and I have decided to remove the social buttons in the header so those won't be a problem either. MediaWiki supports HTTPS pretty well, so hopefully that won't be a problem either. I'm sure there will be something I'm not thinking of that will cause problems when we do transition to HTTPS, because there always is.
  • IPBoard. Not sure if our forums/blog software will cause problems with HTTPS, but it definitely could.

 

So yes, it will happen (hopefully this year), but not for another few months. I use HTTPS Everywhere myself, and I'm one of the more passionate people you'll meet regarding government surveillance.

 

Thank you for your support via Patreon, and thank you for your concerns, you are definitely not alone in having them.

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What?.. All these informations are publicly available, what are you even talking about. Just because a website is using HTTPs that doesn't mean that it's automatically secure from, whatever you guys are thinking about.

The problem is for citizens of countries like Russia or (to a much lesser extent) Australia, where they censor some video games. We document modifications for disabling that censorship, and ostensibly using our site could be breaking the law, regardless of how stupid that law is. I realize that governments tracking your video game habits isn't particularly concerning for the vast majority of users, but what is important for all users is preventing security vulnerabilities from revealing information, e.g. passwords, through "man-in-the-middle" and related attacks. HTTPS would hopefully help to prevent that from occurring.

 

Also, it helps with SEO :P

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The problem is for citizens of countries like Russia or (to a much lesser extent) Australia, where they censor some video games. We document modifications for disabling that censorship, and ostensibly using our site could be breaking the law, regardless of how stupid that law is. I realize that governments tracking your video game habits isn't particularly concerning for the vast majority of users, but what is important for all users is preventing security vulnerabilities from revealing information, e.g. passwords, through "man-in-the-middle" and related attacks. HTTPS would hopefully help to prevent that from occurring.

 

Also, it helps with SEO :P

Ah, that sounds a bit more reasonable than "hurr durr the guvurnement wants our games", or something like that.

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The problem is for citizens of countries like Russia or (to a much lesser extent) Australia, where they censor some video games.

Umm, is this a joke? Russia isn't the most free country in the world regarding video game censorship, but it's definitely far from the top of the least free ones right now. As far as I know only Modern Warfare 2 has been censored and only Manhunt has been banned here in 2012 after an incident of mass murder. Meanwhile Germany censors all games that have serious gore or Nazi references and Australian gamers have it even worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games#Russia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games#Germany

I doubt the situation won't change for worse here in this regard, but your statement is not true at all considering the actual state of things. And yes, 1C stopped retail manufacturing of Company of Heroes 2 after the public backlash, but I'm pretty sure Sega hasn't even censored the Steam version.

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Umm, is this a joke? Russia isn't the most free country in the world regarding video game censorship, but it's definitely far from the top of the least free ones right now. As far as I know only Modern Warfare 2 has been censored and only Manhunt has been banned here in 2012 after an incident of mass murder. Meanwhile Germany censors all games that have serious gore or Nazi references and Australian gamers have it even worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games#Russia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games#Germany

I doubt the situation won't change for worse here in this regard, but your statement is not true at all considering the actual state of things. And yes, 1C stopped retail manufacturing of Company of Heroes 2 after the public backlash, but I'm pretty sure Sega hasn't even censored the Steam version.

Perhaps I've been drinking too much American Kool-Aid, but Russia isn't exactly the most responsible with regards to censorship. However, I was indeed mistaken in saying they censored video games more than Australia.

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Perhaps I've been drinking too much American Kool-Aid, but Russia isn't exactly the most responsible with regards to censorship. However, I was indeed mistaken in saying they censored video games more than Australia.

Yeah, this is a pretty deceitful recent trend in Russian law, but I don't think it will affect video games very soon. Also as shameless and suspicious the data storage law is, it might create some sort of effective opposition to NSA in the IT sphere, which is a good thing considering how dominant it is now.

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