The Silence Penalty

[Saradain]

You realize that /ignore is already in the game right? And you have the ability to report a player already.

And this system just changes the same, already existing system slightly. You're not more likely to get punished, if you act civil.

For example, should we abolish the police and just give everyone a gun, by this same logic of "just" ignoring a rude player, letting him/her to continue being an asshat...Instead of you know, removing the problem?

[Donald Hellscream]

You realize that /ignore is already in the game right? And you have the ability to report a player already.

Yeah but there are limitations, this on the other hand could deter people from being subhuman filth in the first place.

Me ignoring the person is not stopping said person from saying the exact same thing to someone else.

[Almaric]

Well, yeah, the system is basically the same as it is now. Just the person gets silenced instead of outright banned.

So, I'm not sure what the uproar over it is about. It's more a change of punishment than anything else. None of the chat policies have changed.

And this system just changes the same, already existing system slightly. You're not more likely to get punished, if you act civil.

For example, should we abolish the police and just give everyone a gun, by this same logic of "just" ignoring a rude player, letting him/her to continue being an asshat...Instead of you know, removing the problem?

So what's the point of the system? All it brings is basically less punishment to the offender. Currently when they get reported and are found guilty, they get a ban and are unable to play for the duration, after this system goes live all they get is a "silence" penalty that still allows them to play but with some restrictions. Kinda stupid.

Yeah but there are limitations, this on the other hand could deter people from being subhuman filth in the first place.

Subhuman filth? Who even uses this kind of language to describe anyone, i mean besides Trump and nazis.

[Saradain]

So what's the point of the system? All it brings is basically less punishment to the offender. Currently when they get reported and are found guilty, they get a ban and are unable to play for the duration, after this system goes live all they get is a "silence" penalty that still allows them to play but with some restrictions. Kinda stupid.

Because it seems more sensible to silence a player who keeps calling you a shit player who should feel bad, instead of banning.

Ban seems to be the harshest penalty around, so save it for more serious cases. Silence just makes sure that if you keep being a foul mouthed player, you're gonna lose the talking rights until you can behave like an adult.

I mean how much shit can you give to a player before you get a ban? These days you might get a warning after a while, but with silence around, you need less asshattery to get some justice.

[nonameelf]

So what's the point of the system? All it brings is basically less punishment to the offender. Currently when they get reported and are found guilty, they get a ban and are unable to play for the duration, after this system goes live all they get is a "silence" penalty that still allows them to play but with some restrictions. Kinda stupid.

When you're banned for a chat violation it's usually a 3 hour ban and that's it. If it's really bad or you're a chronic offender you might get slapped with a 24 hour ban.

With the silence system it starts at 24 hours and doubles for every violation afterward.

Is it less severe? Maybe. But it'll certainly keep people out of chat longer.

[Almaric]

I mean how much shit can you give to a player before you get a ban? These days you might get a warning after a while, but with silence around, you need less asshattery to get some justice.

Less than you think, and tbh i don't see 24h silence as any kind of justice, just minor inconvenience. Ban is more of a deterrent, again in my opinion, it actually removes playtime from your account, you can miss a raid etc. Silence on the other hand does pretty much nothing.

When you're banned for a chat violation it's usually a 3 hour ban and that's it. If it's really bad or you're a chronic offender you might get slapped with a 24 hour ban.

With the silence system it starts at 24 hours and doubles for every violation afterward.

Is it less severe? Maybe. But it'll certainly keep people out of chat longer.

Sure, it's 3 hour ban the first time, then it gets longer.

[Saradain]

Less than you think, and tbh i don't see 24h silence as any kind of justice, just minor inconvenience. Ban is more of a deterrent, again in my opinion, it actually removes playtime from your account, you can miss a raid etc. Silence on the other hand does pretty much nothing.

24 hour silence that gets doubled for the next offense, then again doubled...I could see few guys from my realm piling it up all the way to 1 month of silence in no time Sure, ban is still more of a punishment, but who says bans won't happen? Silence is just the medium-size penalty, bans still exist for the absolute trash.

I'd guess the silence works as a red flag for your account as well, to prevent you from further offense by restricting those in-game actions that most use for the said behaviour, while GMs investigate your account for further need of punishment. It's not gonna be a major change, just additional medium penalty for the worst offenders, hopefully also, as a bonus, freeing Trade Chat from all the politics, religion and other undesired discussions that do not belong to that chat (or in entire game's public channels given Code of Conduct forbids it).

[Donald Hellscream]

So what's the point of the system? All it brings is basically less punishment to the offender. Currently when they get reported and are found guilty, they get a ban and are unable to play for the duration, after this system goes live all they get is a "silence" penalty that still allows them to play but with some restrictions. Kinda stupid.



Subhuman filth? Who even uses this kind of language to describe anyone, i mean besides Trump and nazis.

Okay fine I will just call them degenerates then, because thats what they are if they continuously harass people, even if it is just words in a video game it only serves to make the community even worse than it is if you have those people running around without a muzzle.

[Mekkle]

Good lord it feels like some people either didn't read or just straight up ignored half the blue post.

[Spinster]

I don't find his argument--that you somehow get tougher by being exposed to asshats--particularly praiseworthy either. Being constantly subjected to bullying might very well make you tougher; but it doesn't meant that we should let the bully's have their way. I like that Blizzard wants to enforce standards.

Now the person who said that blizzard doesn't enforce general chat certainly has a point. I would do deeply love Dars patrolling general forums and ban-hammering people; it's what they need, community forum monitors. In fact, that's why I just don't go there anymore. The mods here keep things from getting (wildly) out of control and I approve of that.

I think you can have freedom of speech without being an absolute ass.

Would also add that I have very, very few people on my ignore list but I have absolutely used the Report button on many occasions. I might need to communicate with some asshat someday and I hate putting them on ignore. But I do report them all the time.

Do we really want every person to be tougher? When you develop a callous on your fingertip it keeps it from being injured by guitar strings, sure, but you also lose a great deal of sensitivity in that fingertip. While nobody gets through life without some mental scars and callouses, do we really want to live in a world without sensitive people? Because those are the people who write the best books and movies and plays and music. The people who manage to avoid getting hardened are the ones whose ability to understand others isn't dulled. I think we desperately need people who are sensitive to STAY that way. Humanity is made to be diverse, and we should each play to our strengths.

I think the most corrosive thing men have ever done to themselves is to recite the old lie about how men need to be tough and need to not cry and they should all be manly men like their grandfathers. What a load. Be who you are. A lot of our ancestors were raging alcoholics, so I'm thinking the way they did things isn't a model to aspire to.

[quras]

Account wide ignore doesn't stop that player from harassing someone else and then another and another and another and so on. This new penalty stops these people cold and makes their actions have very real and tangible consequences.

Actually, if /ignore was account wide it would do just that for the people that are offended and nothing to the people who are not.

If chat bothers you, /ignore (account wide of course) would solve your problem on a case by case bases no matter how trivial or harsh the so called offense might be. Leave it up to the gamers with a system thats already in place and gamers know.

A new silence feature wasn't really needed especially one that you have to wait on for it to possibly take affect.. Just an adjustment to the one already there would have been more appropriate and /ignore would work right away in any chat.

Seems odd to take this approach after preaching just use /ignore for so long.

You realize that /ignore is already in the game right? And you have the ability to report a player already. I'm not saying the system is "bad", I'm saying it's redundant.

BINGO. Let the individual player decide what should and should not be silenced.

/ignore just needed some tweaking.

[SL1200]

Goodbye and good riddance to the Anal(link) spam.

[Morae]

I wonder how long the extended ban each time is going to last. Lets say I hurt someones feelings in a dungeon once legion releases by saying he doesn't know how to kill the boss and he and his friends wipe all the time and does not listen to explantion of boss mechanics. Then this guy and his friends get me 24h silence.

I could assume this could happen a few times a week. There are lot of guild groups in dungeons.

I could see silence penalty to stack quite quickly. Lets assume I haven't actually done anything wrong. I'm just getting false reported. Will I be always getting those really long silences for practically nothing? Lets assume that I get bored and stop playing. Later next expansion (lets assume it happens) a month ban when I yet again try to explain someone dungeon mechanics? Then two months for explaining why someone wiped on a raid boss in lfr (for example).

If it is the same system as HotS has, it will only count the number of reports and once certain amount is passed a silence penalty will be slapped on my account. It will eventually stack over a long period of time. That is, yet again, unless blizz actually investigates each report... which isn't really possible.

[Deja Thoris]

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.

Life will be glorious.

Blizzard has yet again done it again!

I love the silence penalty too. Especially now that is been applied to you here and now on these forums.

[Niwes]

undecided about that thing.

but finally blizz starts to realize that they have a responsibility for what community you have, defined by the tools you give (and also the tools you dont give) to a community ingame. better late than never.

- - - Updated - - -

Goodbye and good riddance to the Anal(link) spam.

it had his time. more than enough

[TheSerialSniper]

IIRC some addons like DBM use un moderated chat channels to communicate with other users of the same addons to work properly. Would be interesting if people getting silenced would also have the side affects of some of their addons no longer working or not working 100%.

[judgementofantonidas]

sounds like an excellent way for trolls to step up their game and start finding ways to silence people they do not like.

[Niwes]

10 bucks says they're trade trolls that spam thunderfury and think they're clever. The system won't affect the vast majority of players. Some think it's to cater to SJW's. i'm really surprised we didn't have a system like this in classic, TBC days. Those that say "classic was more mature" Is viewing it from rose tinted glasses. The community has always sucks.

in terms of trade spam like sell runs etc. you are maybe right. but toxic behaviour in vanilla vs today ? no way.

played on 3 big realms whole vanilla, and ppl were waaaaay more untoxic. and thats purely logic, bc vanilla had its own regulation-mechanic, since back then there wasnt realm-hopping, XR, and so on, and the server community was that mechanic. if you get known, no one took you with you anymore.

ofc there were a few typical assholes, constantly pissing around. but since they slowly get sorted out, they faded away at some point. and so there was never that big amount of them. not like today, when anonymity, great masses, fast-n-pace gaming and so on, make it that easy to be an asshole.

[DarthMonk79]

Could it possibly go back to the Vanilla/Early TBC days of trade chat actually mostly being trade, game questions, guild recruitment and game relevant stuff. That would be great!!!!

[Kulthar]

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.

arrogant pricks who think free speech means they can say whatever they like, whenever they like, where ever they like and not have to suffer any consequences... also at 11.