Server List Heavily Biased by Geospatial Data

[phvcky]

Ok, so this took me some time to figure out and it's a real PITA for any server administrator.

I was wondering why my server would just never show up in the server list, unless I enter its name in the server name filter. I did not understand, why the server list would rather display about 60 absolutely empty servers instead of showing all well-frequented servers.

Well, now I know. Take a look at this picture and try to find something interesting.

Every server listed there either is located in the region "Baden-Württemberg" or has no region assigned to it. Note that I don't have any regional filters active and don't live in Baden-Württemberg. In alphabetical order Baden-Württemberg is the first region. My server is located in Bayern, tough luck!

For some reason the server list only shows servers with no region or the first region. I have no idea why this would be intended behaviour so this must be a bug and I am really upset by it.

Here's what I would expect: The server list should show the servers with the most clients of all regions unless I set a regional filter myself.

I hope that this gets fixed quickly, since it really is skewing the competition and can be heavily abused by TS server contractors.

Thanks for listening. I needed a place to vent.
Sorry, if I was a bit to emotional.

[Air SeaTac]

It's well documented that the 100 servers shown are entirely random choices

[numma_cway]

They should add the word "random" (maybe accompanied by "matching your criteria") to the bottom line.

[phvcky]

I doubt that they are entirely random. I have been getting consistent results for weeks. I have never even once seen a server from my region (NRW) when I had no filter active.

Let's pretend this behaviour is by design; even so, this is a totally illogical choice in my opinion.

numma_cway, you're from Germany too. I would love to know which regions you're getting. Could you do a quick screen cap, please?

[numma_cway]

Only BW and none.

[phvcky]

Thanks for verifying.

[ScP]

I can confirm this... but i actually never noticed it before as I'm always filtering for servers with a few users connected. You should be able to find your server here tho:

https://www.planetteamspeak.com/serverlist/

[phvcky]

While we're at it: This whole region filter thing is total BS in my opinion. In 99,9999% of the cases you'll host your server on a dedicated server, which is located in a data center that is often not in the same region as the administrator and most of the users.

The region filtering has about no value. It may make sense in large countries like the US, but not in the rather small EU countries.

[numma_cway]

I think that might be useful only for Russia, as it is large enough to actually feel the latency of a server at the other end of the country. For all other countries, it is useless, as even the difference between home server and datacenter (and its connection's quality) is by far greater than the ping between one and the other end of the country.

[Bluscream]

I agree. The serverlist is another thing that needs definitly to be improved. There should be a filter option for server versions and a filter checkbox like "Show only compatible servers" that compares the virtualserver minmal build variable to the actual used client build. Also the whole serverlist thing should be included in the mobile clients.

[phvcky]

Three months passed. Any updates yet?

This is getting as ridiculous as all the other bug reports.

[Tomas]

3mo? You are not around long enough.
My guess it that dev force was put on TS Sync app. I'm just afraid what will come out....

[phvcky]

Another three months have passed.

This shit is a joke.