The Silence Penalty

[Saradain]

Delicate porcelain skinned players unable to figure out how to use the /ignore fuction, Blizzard resorts to heavy handed tactics that are prone to abuse.

More news at 11.

Special report!

Toxic players who use the chat channels to expel their brain diarrhea will be dealt with.

When you reach mature age, you'll realize that victims aren't the ones who should avoid the problem at hand, instead the problem itself will be removed.

[Darsithis]

I Love the new Silence Penalty. I will be reporting people left and right and hopefully get them eternally silenced on my servers that I play on. I will report people for posting any sale of instance runs, any constant spam in trade, any constant guild recruitment spam.

I'm pretty confident that doesn't fall under this. The whole point of the chat channels is to group up, recruit, and made trades/sell runs.

[JoshuaNLG]

It's not an excuse to be an asshat ingame. There's plenty of people who go far beyond the use of the ignore function.

How is this prone to abuse? It states that the reports will be reviewed before action is taken. Anyone who abuses this by spam sending in reports on innocent people will just receive punishment themselves. Seems fine to me.

[Esandarius]

Ignore list has limits and if I remember correctly Ignore only works for people whispering you. You can still end up in their groups, premade groups, or subject to what they say in global chats.

Personally I don't care much about this feature myself because it's hard to piss me off in-game, but I can see it can be useful for people.

Surely this can't be true? I thought ignoring people meant you cannot get matched with them via the looking for group tool. I don't use ignore often, but if I report someone for spamming or for language they are immediately and completely silenced to the point where even their previously submitted messages disappear from instance/general/etc.

[Deleted]

I really, really like the idea behind the new feature. Now, if Blizzard can work out how to prevent abuse, it's definitely a great thing.

Delicate porcelain skinned players unable to figure out how to use the /ignore fuction,

Cracking down on and punishing people who can't behave in a decent way is always the better solution.

[Kardagh]

Ignore list has limits and if I remember correctly Ignore only works for people whispering you. You can still end up in their groups, premade groups, or subject to what they say in global chats.

Personally I don't care much about this feature myself because it's hard to piss me off in-game, but I can see it can be useful for people.

There are addons to expand the ignore list, there are addons that automatically report spam for you in trade chat (note when reported you don't see the spam) Ignore blocks everything in game made by that person.

As for groups, I've never noticed either way but I can't see it being too much of a problem in LFG as it's so random to begin with. The only thing I think that would be an issue is as you said, premade groups. But sometimes you have to deal with annoying people in real life, so what's dealing with someone on ignore for two hours while you raid?

[Lochton]

Loving this one, as long as it isn't automated! So many people to be handled, hope Blizzard's team is ready for that.

[zerocarbs]

Delicate porcelain skinned players unable to figure out how to use the /ignore fuction, Blizzard resorts to heavy handed tactics that are prone to abuse.

I'm sure people can still manage to be assholes without actually breaking the rules. But this policy should help out a lot. I'm not really thin-skinned but some people are just straight up annoying and would probably benefit from being silenced.

[Tryuk]

Heh, can't wait for all the whining threads :P Sounds like a great feature as long as it can't be that abused that badly.

Delicate porcelain skinned players unable to figure out how to use the /ignore fuction, Blizzard resorts to heavy handed tactics that are prone to abuse.

More news at 11.

Delicate assholes don't like being called out for being an asshole.

More news at 11!

[Kardagh]

Highly suspecting there will be some automated element to it, it would be impractical otherwise and highly unlikely for blizzard to devote resources into community PR.

And if there's an automated element it becomes liable to abuse. One way it could be fixed is putting a 3-5 minute cooldown on reports being issued against a player. While this isn't perfect, it might stop a flood of reports being sent out against innocent players.

Delicate assholes don't like being called out for being an asshole.

More news at 11!

And something like that would be reported, and you would be silenced. See how prone it is to abuse?

[Darsithis]

Surely this can't be true? I thought ignoring people meant you cannot get matched with them via the looking for group tool. I don't use ignore often, but if I report someone for spamming or for language they are immediately and completely silenced to the point where even their previously submitted messages disappear from instance/general/etc.

I don't know for sure if it works for LFD or LFR. It might, but I am confident it wouldn't stop you from ending up in a premade group that has that person in it through the group finder or chat channels (if that person isn't the lead, of course).

There are addons to expand the ignore list, there are addons that automatically report spam for you in trade chat (note when reported you don't see the spam) Ignore blocks everything in game made by that person.

As for groups, I've never noticed either way but I can't see it being too much of a problem in LFG as it's so random to begin with. The only thing I think that would be an issue is as you said, premade groups. But sometimes you have to deal with annoying people in real life, so what's dealing with someone on ignore for two hours while you raid?

Yeah but expecting everyone to install the addon is a bit much; I don't even have it. Never knew one existed.

*shrug* Like I said, I can't really care much about this myself. I try to be a really nice guy in my groups and be talkative but if people get douchy I just tune them out and finish.

[Nzete]

A single guild recruitment message in tradechat is advertising. Sending it out again 5 minutes later isn't spam either. Someone hitting their recruitment macro like it is their frostbolt button is spam. Spam tends to require repetition.

[Jaylock]

I'm pretty confident that doesn't fall under this. The whole point of the chat channels is to group up, recruit, and made trades/sell runs.

Repeatedly spamming the trade channel should not be allowed imo. Spam it once every 30 minutes? Fine. But every time you can post again? No.

[Supercool]

Highly suspecting there will be some automated element to it, it would be impractical otherwise and highly unlikely for blizzard to devote resources into community PR.

The automation comes in the form of a certain threshold of reports that have to be made before they'll even take a look. If you report a random person for a random thing they said, nobody at Blizz will have to bother with it. If 10 or 20 different people report someone, or whatever the number is, it'll alert the GMs to investigate.

[Morros]

Does this mean I can't link Thunderfury in trade anymore?

[Fang7986]

Delicate porcelain skinned players unable to figure out how to use the /ignore fuction, Blizzard resorts to heavy handed tactics that are prone to abuse.

More news at 11.

if ignore caused the entire account to be ignored so the player couldn't just make a new level 1 toon to get around it I'd agree with you.

[Kardagh]

Yeah but expecting everyone to install the addon is a bit much; I don't even have it. Never knew one existed.

I mean I understand that not everyone would be aware of said addons but if the level of perceived abuse or harassment is that high you need to improve your ignore list or you can't tolerate the inane daily spam of trade channel that much you need to use an auto report tool I'd be questioning the person at least.

There's abuse and harassment and simply having a thin skin that needs thickening up. My worry is really two fold

1) the feature will be abused by trolls to try get people who do nothing wrong into being silenced.

2) those with thin skin will use it at the first sign of any sort of social interaction not deemed perfect for their comfort zone.

Combine the two and you have a system that isn't going to achieve what Blizzard wants and will be inundated with petty and/or baseless reports.

if ignore caused the entire account to be ignored so the player couldn't just make a new level 1 toon to get around it I'd agree with you.

Since Warlords of Draenor Ignore DOES ignore an account. I've noticed it myself by accident when I ignored some random low level alt who was badmouthing and later on his main couldn't whisper me.

[Lochton]

Repeatedly spamming the trade channel should not be allowed imo. Spam it once every 30 minutes? Fine. But every time you can post again? No.

Every 5-10 mins isn't spamming either..

[Fang7986]

Does this mean I can't link Thunderfury in trade anymore?

Hopefully yes

[SupBrah]

The automation comes in the form of a certain threshold of reports that have to be made before they'll even take a look. If you report a random person for a random thing they said, nobody at Blizz will have to bother with it. If 10 or 20 different people report someone, or whatever the number is, it'll alert the GMs to investigate.

No it'll be fully automated and require an appeal to get an actual investigation. Blizzard literally said the same exact thing for HotS when this was first implemented, only to have it end up fully automated.

Want to appeal a wrongful 24 silencing? Then wait over 24 hours for your appeal ticket to be seen. Until then, you're SOL