Linking Dead Sites

It is now easily possible to link dead sites with your old score.

In case you unlinked a site accidentally, or have other proofs of a score, i can "hardlink" them now.

Happy Challenging!
gizmore

Bumping this ancient topic and adding a poll.

A debate has recently sparked in This thread: http://www.wechall.net/forum-t679/Comments_on_RedTigers_Hackit.html
The argument is that newcomers to wechall cannot gain points on sites which are no longer around, giving them an unfair disadvantage.
Hertz made a great point that users should not be penalized for the fact that they were lucky enough to be around when the sites were linked.
I disgree and will copy my post from the above thread here:

I know I should be one defending the argument against as if hackquest is taken away from wechall, my score will drop significantly, but honestly I believe dead sites should be removed. There is usually a sense of 'well what if they come back?' In my opinion, IF they come back with the database in tact, they can rejoin the wechall network and users can relink - their progress wont be lost. On the other hand IF they come back with a fresh database and no user accounts then why should the users keep their wechall score? Have then restart same as a new user would and re-earn their right to be there.
I say flush away the dead sites also.

Let us know what you think and place your vote.
sabretooth

Dunno the score doesn't matter much to me maybe keep them but lower the score like 10% should be ok.

Sorry but i disagree. As per the creators of wechall

Quote from Inferno

It allows the users to get a complete overview of a users challenge history on every site he signed up for.

Quote from Gizmore

The goal is to make a global ranking for challengers.

As i can see the sites that candidate for removal are the ones in the graveyard, only 5. From them only hackquest seems to give any "serious" number of points to those who completed a cerain percent.
To my understanding a person (in the average and common case) can gain only ~20000-30000 points from all the dead sites but given the number of points available in all active sites and the points of #1 ranked there are more than plenty of ways for a "newcomer" to cover this gain and also keep the history of older users intact.

Quote from criple_ripper

As i can see the sites that candidate for removal are the ones in the graveyard, only 5.

There are more. For instance, astalavista (i'm tired of waiting the opening of the new version) or listbrain (seems to work, but all the links in the challenges are dead).

Given the email I just received, Astalavista, as challenges website, is dead (a "cloud-based security scanner" ? WTF ?).

@gizmore can you relink the sites that I unlinked please? It is too easy to click that unlink button.

Then i need the sitenames and your onsitename / nicks

I have a counterpoint regarding removing dead sites. While I agree that the new system disadvantages newbies, removing all dead sites would disadvantage older players. Now, I myself am a "newbie" and I think I am unfortunately disadvantaged by the loss of some old sites (i.e. ThisIsLegal, HaxTor, and CSTutoringCenter all look like I might have been able to make progress on them, but that's of course just speculation). The reason I say I'm a "newbie" is that pretty much none of the sites I have scores on are down. Out of all the sites I have linked, 3 are down: LOST-Chall and Yashira, on which I had pretty low scores, and DefendTheWeb, on which I had completed every challenge.

Now, if we want a preview of what a ranking without dead sites would look like, we could look at the Active Sites ranking. On that ranking, I am number 15, right behind Caesum. However, had Defend the Web NOT been taken down, I would actually be ahead of Caesum, because the difference in our scores on Defend the Web was large enough that it would make up for the gap between us on the other active sites. This happens because in effect when you remove a dead site, that is equivalent to assuming that every newbie could complete every challenge on it. Is that not an unfair assumption? In fact, the fact that I can even come close to passing Caesum on active sites demonstrates that it is an unfair ranking, because I am not better than Caesum! If you look at just about every site that was popular when Caesum was active (bright-shadows, rankk, Revolution Elite, HTS, etc.), Caesum beats me by a long shot. So obviously, Caesum should have a way higher score than I do. So why are we so close on active sites? Because many of Caesum's difficult achievements are on dead sites, while Caesum didn't have access to a lot of new sites because Caesum's last activity was in 2019! Since then, many sites have joined that allowed me to rank up quite a lot of points (i.e. pwn.college, HTW, etc.) that Caesum never had access to!

The point is, while the current ranking is unfair to new players, removing all dead sites would be unfair to old players. We need to seek a different solution.

I want to stress that, if anything, I should be biased in favour of adopting active sites. It would move me from #39 to #15. It would make further progress for me much easier. However, while I do believe that a change needs to happen, removing all dead sites is pretty clearly unfair. I don't really know what the solution to this problem is, my best idea so far is to subtract the average score on a dead site from the user's score, so that what is measured is how unusual their performance was, rather than how many points they got. I have not researched this idea however, so it is likely terrible.

Anyways, sorry for the long message, just wanted to share my thoughts.

Based on my activity history I was linked to each of these dead sites at one time or another:
- hackburger
- EnigmaGroup
- Astalavista
- CodeShell.kr
- MiBs Challenges
- TheBlackSheep
- µContest
- NOE.systems
- wargame.kr
- CanHackMe
- CTFS.ME
- Hacker Gateway
- Disavowed.net
- listbrain.tk
- RoseCode
- Valhalla
- Security Traps
- Stereotyped Challenges
- Tasteless
- Happy-Security
- thebackupbox
- hax.tor.hu
- Challengeland
- Defend the Web
- LOST-Chall
- SolveMe
- wixxerd.com
- Yoire
- Yashira

I was also linked to these "live" sites but am unable to relink due to API issues:
- pwnable.kr
- Root-Me

I don't care about my ranking relative to others, but I would be nice to have a historical record of how far I did progress on these sites. My username on all of these sites should be kismet (I hope).