Hi! Thanks for your comments. I am Srijan (one of the authors of the work).
I agree with some of the risks that the paper entails, e.g., how to attack "better". But at the same time, we suggest how to diffuse those attacks as well :)
We specifically didn't name any subreddits to avoid identifying "suitable [subreddits] to fight against" (e.g., those that have been attacked a lot in the past, or have been unsuccessful in defending themselves). Same for the most (successfully) attacking subreddits. It would just encourage them.
Re colonization during neutral events: we see in Figure 7 that neutral events lead to "immigration" instead of colonization, i.e., there is no decrease in activity of the existing members, while there an increase for the "attacking" members. It would be interesting to see how productive these neutral exchanges are in the future.
Re using the map to identify bans: we haven't looked into that, but it sounds interesting!
Indeed it is interesting question of how to encourage and improve coordination and good information flow between groups. It is an open research area on how that can happen!
Dev - The game is really creative and addictive! I am a Ph.D. student and I would like to use the game as a platform for research. Do you plan on making the logs available any time? Would you be interested in this direction?
The game is really creative and addictive! I am a Ph.D. student and I would like to use the game as a platform for research. Do you plan on making the logs available any time?
BTW here's our previous research on sockpuppets that you may find interesting: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2127107-sock-puppet-acc...