The Silence Penalty

[rda]

A nice little gimmick: when the system silences you at the request of your beloved WoW friends, it also disconnects you - that's how they install the filter at the lowest level possible.

Yeah, that will surely not get abused. Nothing like people in AV / IoC / another large PVP area removing people from the other side given a chance. Same for raids, same triply so for "fun" mass "world PVP", etc.

[Gentlepenguin]

So what if it's automated? The people "testing" this out abused the system and they suffer and eat that silence penalty on their account. In fact, they should add a strike or silence penalty to the false reporting accounts too. People that make themselves targets or intentionally break the rules then try to play the victim card are pathetic.

[Deleted]

Is the silence penalty also prohibiting you from sending in-game mail between your own characters?
On my realm it seems to be working fine; all the WTS BOOST WTS CARRY WTS CURVE spam magically went away. Trade Chat full of players again, not 97% bots advertising their services.

However, this system is prone to abuse as shown above. It's a new system, I'm certain that they will improve it later.
When reviewing the punishment, they need to look upon guild tag and perhaps the account (multiboxing). If X reports is all that's needed to ruin the game for a player then it'll do more bad than good!

[judgementofantonidas]

Imagine World of Warcraft is a movie theater. You pay for admission. There is someone behind you yelling obscenities and screaming. How quickly would that business die if the theater owners did nothing, just shrugged their shoulders and and "whoops freedom herp derp".

Imagine World of Warcraft is a battle ground. You are assigned a mission. There is a senior leader behind you shouting commands. How quickly would the war be lost if the care bears rolled in and chastised him for his language every time you fuck up?

[rda]

Imagine World of Warcraft is a battle ground. You are assigned a mission. There is a senior leader behind you shouting commands. How quickly would the war be lost if the care bears rolled in and chastised him for his language every time you fuck up?

A fun addition: change "the care bears" to "the other side" and "for his language" to "just because".

[nekobaka]

I noticed some defending the automatic silence as part of the prior existing system. The difference is though that the prior system had a fixed time unlike now that requires a moderator review until the silence is either further enforced or lifted. Also, personally I have noticed gold spammers going on for hours due to not hitting the threshold to auto silence them. In general not enough players in prior practice care to silence gold spammers or even "anal" spammers and yet a a group with the intent to abuse the system can hit the threshold.

Says a lot about the system and the reliability of the communities behavior. Cant even get AFKers kicked from LFR. Some are hoping that abusers will get punished. Personal experience is best hope is abusers get muted. Going by history the moderators do not lift a single finger. Already got a player in beta telling disabled players to quit the game along with other harassment. Blizzard has a long history of ignoring toxicity even when they claim to have a stance against it. Even the Overwatch forums are filled with some fairly hateful language.

I hope I am wrong and Blizzard as a whole takes a strong stance against such negative behavior against other customers.

[Normie]

How I got SILENCED for Saying I Loved WoW



What I see in this video is a guy orchestrating a bunch of false reports and clogging up the system.

Dude needs to get a life is his main problem.

Maybe he should go work in software QA, where picking at the edges of scabs and shining flashlights into corners is actually appreciated.

[Shakou]

So what if it's automated? The people "testing" this out abused the system and they suffer and eat that silence penalty on their account. In fact, they should add a strike or silence penalty to the false reporting accounts too. People that make themselves targets or intentionally break the rules then try to play the victim card are pathetic.

You are such a troll.

[JustRob]

Dude needs to get a life is his main problem.

Maybe he should go work in software QA, where picking at the edges of scabs and shining flashlights into corners is actually appreciated.

Are you jealous because he has many fans while nobody knows who the fuck you are?

[Low Hanging Fruit]

He did a great job to expose the lies of a corporation and the gigantic FAIL of its systems. I think he wins life the internet and anything else he puts his hands on. What he managed to do with this video should not be possible period. He took one for the community. Kudos to him.

Can't agree more.

It appears the system isn't based on investigation. It is automation. But only the "build up" effect of it going from 24 hours to 48 hours to 96 hours is really investigated. It is simply designed to shut you up as fast as possible it seems. It will be abused. Only way I can think to prevent it is if the people reporting people and the investigation proves it to be a false flag than the people reporting it get slapped with the penalty.

[Davemetalhead]

Can someone explain the difference between the automatic squelch that happened after reports last week, and the automatic silence that happens now? The actual mechanical differences.

Surely if whats-his-face had done the sames thing last week, had his legion of followers report him, he would have been squelched then too, yes? So what would have been the difference?

Not being antagonistic - I actually want to know what the differences are.

[Osmeric]

Are these automatic silences cumulative and increasing, or are they just a fixed temporary silence until the reports can be manually evaluated?

[Sylvaeres]

How I got SILENCED for Saying I Loved WoW



What I see in this video is a guy orchestrating a bunch of false reports and clogging up the system.





Guy orchestrates false reports and his punishment doesn't get overturned. Working as intended?


*------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*

World of Warcraft offers many opportunities to engage with other players in a variety of ways and to help support positive experiences in these engagements we wanted to inform you of a new silence penalty we will be implementing with the pre-expansion patch for Legion. Depending on the type of report, players who are found to be abusive in chat or engage in inappropriate chat behaviors may be silenced from engaging in certain ways within the game.

The Silence Penalty
Following the Legion pre-expansion, any player who is reported multiple times under the Spam or Abusive Chat categories will, after investigation, receive an account-wide silence penalty. While this penalty is active, the silenced player will find that their ability to chat with others is greatly limited.

Silenced Players Are Unable to:
Talk in Instance Chat (Raid, Party, and Battlegrounds)
Talk in global channels that are auto joined (such as General or Trade)
Create Calendar Invites/Events
Send in-game mail
Send Party Invitations
Send War Game Invitations
Send Invitations to Duel
Update a Premade Group Listing
Create a New List for a Premade Group

Silenced Players Are Able to:
Whisper to friends (both WoW friends and Battle.net Friends)
Reply to Whispers from Non-friends
Party/Raid Chat (with Invited Players)
Create Parties and Raids
Talk in Global Channels that have a moderator
Share Quests
Sign up for a pre-made group

The first time a player is silenced, their chat will be restricted for 24 hours. This duration will double for each silence penalty received after the first, and there is no maximum. This means that players who receive multiple silence penalties may find themselves unable to chat for a very, very long time.

Silenced players will be receiving a notification when attempting to send a message to a channel in which they have been restricted.The first time a player is silenced, their chat will be restricted for 24 hours. This duration will double for each silence penalty received after the first, and there is no maximum. This means that players who receive multiple silence penalties may find themselves unable to chat for a very, very long time.

By using the in-game report tool to identify players who may be engaging in inappropriate interactions within the various channels, you’ll be helping create the type of community we all want to take part in.

Source

From the wording it seems this will be implemented in 7.0. I love this new policy and I like that the penalty will be perpetually increased. I hope they don't back down on any of it. This has been needed for a long time.

You clearly don't realize that this was done to show how much of a failure this silence penalty nonsense is, right? He got reported for saying "I Love Wow".

[rda]

Surely if whats-his-face had done the sames thing last week, had his legion of followers report him, he would have been squelched then too, yes? So what would have been the difference?

It's unclear.

There is a green post from 2011 talking about auto-squelching if there is a certain number of reports in a certain time period, but it's unclear (a) whether this worked all the way between 2011 and 2016, or, say, was turned off in 2012, (b) what the parameters were and how they changed from the moment of that green post till now - ie, did the number of votes required to silence / squelch stay the same or did it change.

What seems to be the case - but uncertain - is that at the time of the green post in 2011 the automatic silence was a fixed 3 (?) hours, and with the new system it is however long it takes for the GM to review your case, and if the silence is upheld, the penalty is growing exponentially.

The more important difference is that it even if the auto-squelch was working prior to the update, nobody knew about it, and now everybody know about the new system - which changes everything.

- - - Updated - - -

Are these automatic silences cumulative and increasing, or are they just a fixed temporary silence until the reports can be manually evaluated?

Automatic silences are temporary, but not fixed - they work until a GM arrives. Non-automatic silences handed by GMs grow exponentially.

[Osmeric]

Automatic silences are temporary, but not fixed - they work until a GM arrives. Non-automatic silences handed by GMs grow exponentially.

Cool. So in fact it's a lie that the new silence system is automatic. You get a silence when reported (by enough people), but that's not a New Silence.

[manypillars]

Cool. So in fact it's a lie that the new silence system is automatic. You get a silence when reported (by enough people), but that's not a New Silence.

If it lasts until it comes up in the review queue you might be looking at a very long silence.

[rda]

Cool. So in fact it's a lie that the new silence system is automatic. You get a silence when reported (by enough people), but that's not a New Silence.

You get a silence automatically, then you sit silenced until a GM "investigates" and decides whether to uphold or remove the silence.

I am not seeing a lie, there is an automatic component (and it's that component that is the reason the system is prone to abuse). If someone said that automatic silences themselves compound - then yes, that's not true, but there's plenty of damage without that.

[Roadblock]

Cool. So in fact it's a lie that the new silence system is automatic. You get a silence when reported (by enough people), but that's not a New Silence.

That's total bullshit.
The automated mail both high profile players got minutes after the automated silence, referenced the full 24hrs period (for a first offense) and linked to the "new silence" support item.

They were silenced under the new system automatically with a possibility of getting it reviewed AFTER the fact and overturned.

Which is the exact opposite of what multiple Blue posts and the official blog post said in the period leading to the pre-patch.

[Osmeric]

You get a silence automatically, then you sit silenced until a GM "investigates" and decides whether to uphold or remove the silence.

I am not seeing a lie, there is an automatic component (and it's that component that is the reason the system is prone to abuse). If someone said that automatic silences compound - then yes, that's not true, but there's plenty of damage without that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't that automatic component exist before? It was applied to robospammers.

The new system does not have any new penalties that are applied automatically, as you just told me. So people are complaining about something that was already in the game.

[Davemetalhead]

You clearly don't realize that this was done to show how much of a failure this silence penalty nonsense is, right? He got reported for saying "I Love Wow".

He didn't get "reported for saying "I Love Wow"" - he got squelched because he had a certain amount of people report him in a very short time-frame. he could have just out a full stop in chat and got his followers to report - the result would have been the same. It's an automatic squelch until investigated, then a silence is given if upheld. It had zero to do with what he wrote.