Friendship Moose guy Silenced.

[Raelbo]

Asmongold didn't abuse the system - he exposed Blizzard.

By abusing the system. And wasting a GM's time.

He contrived a situation that would not normally have happened in the game in order to try and make a point. Blizzard responded with a point of their own: Abuse the system and see where that gets you. Seems perfectly fair to me.

Let the system run its course. Don't be an ass and try and break it. And if you do, don't be surprised when you end suffering penalties. As I said some time ago, a system like this needs a few days/weeks at least to stabilise and get to the point where it is working properly. Right now there is just way too much knee-jerk type reaction happening. Give it time then judge.

Lastly, we have no idea how big this problem actually is. 2 cases out of 5 million players is nothing. But with social media it's very easy to make the problem seem a lot bigger than it is. Blizzard will pretty quickly have a good idea of how many false accusations they are getting and will be in an infinitely better position to assess how well this system is working than some guy on MMO-C focussing on a single case study.

[McTurbo]

It's the new talking point of the week. White knighting for Blizzard's poor decisions has never made much sense. The strength lies in saying the same thing in unison.

feel free to look at my past posts. I have both praised and complained about blizzard decisions so no white knighting here. There are flaws with the current system. yet it is still a vast improvement over what we had. no more days of waiting for a GM to catch up to the logs and ban a troll.. now it happens immediately. While the trolls are abusing the system right now. I have faith they wont get away with it for long.

[8bithamster]

Any evidence of that besides one green post from 2011?

Besides, even if the system was there, it just means we were sitting on a bomb without knowing it. It doesn't make the bomb less dangerous. And now everybody knows we are sitting on it.

- - - Updated - - -



No problems with that, I just don't think it will turn out the way you imagine, but you are free in your wishes.

We'll see. Rather have than what people in this topic seem to want. "OMG WE HAS FREE SPEECH SO WE CAN SAY ANYTHANG!" aka.. people who have no clue how the real world works.

[Nurvus]

No the stupidity would be to allow the abusive trolls to continue running rampant through trade channels with anal this and all caps spamming or just general asshatery as they do. I would rather have to clear my name if unjustly silenced than have it wait to silence a troll 5-10 hours later (or days)when the GM's catch up to the que of reports.

we have all screamed for blizzard to do something.. this is it.. and i for one like it.. does it have flaws yes.. can the flaws be fixed and the abusers of the system punished absolutely. the only one's that should hate this system should be the trolls who can no longer run rampant in our global channels.. the rest of us should be more than happy to deal with the transition to a cleaner and better system..

My only complaint is that policy of spam and clarification of penalties for abusing the system needs to be clear, along with a process of clearing a false penalty.

Ignore function. Use it until the report is handled.

There is no justification for "pre-review" punishment other than bad design.

- - - Updated - - -

By abusing the system. And wasting a GM's time.

He contrived a situation that would not normally have happened in the game in order to try and make a point. Blizzard responded with a point of their own: Abuse the system and see where that gets you. Seems perfectly fair to me.

Let the system run its course. Don't be an ass and try and break it. And if you do, don't be surprised when you end suffering penalties. As I said some time ago, a system like this needs a few days/weeks at least to stabilise and get to the point where it is working properly. Right now there is just way too much knee-jerk type reaction happening. Give it time then judge.

Lastly, we have no idea how big this problem actually is. 2 cases out of 5 million players is nothing. But with social media it's very easy to make the problem seem a lot bigger than it is. Blizzard will pretty quickly have a good idea of how many false accusations they are getting and will be in an infinitely better position to assess how well this system is working than some guy on MMO-C focussing on a single case study.

And did the X people that reported Asmongold get punished? They should have - if Blizzard was trying to make a point - because they were part of the abuse.

---
In case anyone is misunderstanding - I'm not against the Silence system.
I am against lack of transparency and double standards.

1 - Make the "report" function auto-ignore the target.
2 - When report ticket is solved, auto-ignore on said target is removed.
3 - Abusers get Silenced and unable to use the report system for a while, and their requests to lift the penalty are automatically ignored to avoid creating more work for the GMs when the goal is the opposite.

To me, this is the obvious way to handle it.

[Raelbo]

People were worried about this system for this exact reason

Yup, so basically a whole bunch of people were anticipating disaster, so at the first sign of what could simply be a few teething issues, we have open hysteria.

People need to learn to calm down and give it time to set in before going off the rails.

[rda]

And did the X people that reported Asmongold get punished? They should have - if Blizzard was trying to make a point - because they were part of the abuse.

That's where the idea of Blizzard having a plan and keeping Asmongold silenced on purpose for some great reason starts cracking a bit, but I am sure someone will come with an excuse for that as well. Ie, someone might venture a theory that those who reported Asmongold have been put on some sort of a watch list and if they keep auto-silencing Asmongold, they will surely get silenced themselves after a certain number of false reports. Surely.

[Defaulty]

Yup, so basically a whole bunch of people were anticipating disaster, so at the first sign of what could simply be a few teething issues, we have open hysteria.

People need to learn to calm down and give it time to set in before going off the rails.

They'll eventually get bored and realize that they are just a very small minority of players. They live by the saying, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease first."

[MightyWarrior]

If you think this is a good idea (the silencing) then you must be genuinely retarded.

[Wildberry]

feel free to look at my past posts. I have both praised and complained about blizzard decisions so no white knighting here. There are flaws with the current system. yet it is still a vast improvement over what we had. no more days of waiting for a GM to catch up to the logs and ban a troll.. now it happens immediately. While the trolls are abusing the system right now. I have faith they wont get away with it for long.

People being able to actively abuse other players is a vast improvement over just ignoring people?

Give me a break.

[rda]

In case anyone is misunderstanding - I'm not against the Silence system.
I am against lack of transparency and double standards.

1 - Make the "report" function auto-ignore the target.
2 - When report ticket is solved, auto-ignore on said target is removed.
3 - Abusers get Silenced and unable to use the report system for a while, and their requests to lift the penalty are automatically ignored to avoid creating more work for the GMs when the goal is the opposite.

To me, this is the obvious way to handle it.

You can't get 3, it's unrealistic (too much resources).

1 and 2 will work.

What's important is that there is no auto-silence.

[Raelbo]

And did the X people that reported Asmongold get punished? They should have - if Blizzard was trying to make a point - because they were part of the abuse.

They should have.

In case anyone is misunderstanding - I'm not against the Silence system.
I am against lack of transparency and double standards.

1 - Make the "report" function auto-ignore the target.
2 - When report ticket is solved, auto-ignore on said target is removed.
3 - Abusers get Silenced and unable to use the report system for a while.

To me, this is the obvious way to handle it.

Can't argue with this.

Although regarding the lack of transparency thing, I suspect that this is just a case of broken telephone. It seems that Lore simply didn't properly understand exactly the how the system worked and thus communicated it wrong. And while that is an embarrassing blunder, and mildly annoying to us players, it isn't something that people should be getting mad about.

[Deleted]

I think if this feature ends up removing something some people think is "fun" then maybe it's not as "fun" as they seem to think it is, because a lot of people would have indicated as such by voting to silence the person.

Well both sides have a lot of people who can report each other. In the end nothing ends up being fun.

Let me be clear: When I say cancer I mean in a sense that it objectively harms the game and its participants' experience, not in the casual slang way that a lot of people refer to when it's just something they personally disagree with. It's about people saying things with the intent of causing harm to others.

Yeah, I just don't think the line is easy to draw. There's one man spam and gold sellers which are easy, but a lot more general gray area stuff I feel.

Good riddance, honestly. Anal chat is tiresome and puerile. I can't even remember the last time I read one that even made me smile. I am offended by it not so much by the fact that it uses the word "anal" *gasp* so much as by the fact that the people posting it imply that their audience are stupid enough to find it funny. Maybe with anal chat gone people will actually find something at least marginally witty, meaningful, insightful or intelligent to say instead.

I don't think anal is different from the general copypasta/meme process twitch and general slang follow. In the end which of the memes and spam are funny and which bad? There's no good solution that won't drive people away.
When I used to raid we had a guy copy stupid messages from facebook into raid zone general chat while waiting for encounters. I enjoyed reading them, and be part of the shitposting across many guilds participating.
It's easy to know many also didn't and preferred the chat be empty. Those would rather report it than leave the chat. I think that's a problem with this design because it catches so many non-offensive cases. Like Anal[item] which is really far from being offensive to anyone.

Maybe. Then again this is a mature forum without any profanity rules and I wouldn't talk in the same way in a PG rated game. Anyhow it really depends on the context of what is said. The objective of this feature is to remove abusive players, and simply using the word "idiot" is not abusive in and of itself. For example "I feel like an idiot after that comment" vs "You're an idiot". The human filter making the final call really should know the difference.

Yeah, I just don't think it only compasses the abusive. Really fast it becomes a censor for a lot of normal interaction. Maybe Blizzard will show different, but so far I'm not convinced.

[Jaylock]

https://twitter.com/Zelse007/status/755907002635878401

I guess the GM who investigated didn't like all the friendship. Since no one will be silenced without an investigation, right?

I'm glad it happened. They need to stop just giving out mounts to undeserving people who just want carries to free mounts and gear. He was probably posting some nasty stuff too to get reported.

[Raelbo]

As soon as you have 3, you have a problem.

Why?

The point of this feature is to reduce toxicity in the gaming environment. People who would try abuse this system to victimise other gamers are part of that toxicity. Silencing them can only be a good thing.

In the end they will either grow up and stop being dicks, or they'll throw a hissy fit and leave (in which case, let's be honest, the game is better off without them).

[rda]

Why?

The point of this feature is to reduce toxicity in the gaming environment. People who would try abuse this system to victimise other gamers are part of that toxicity. Silencing them can only be a good thing.

In the end they will either grow up and stop being dicks, or they'll throw a hissy fit and leave (in which case, let's be honest, the game is better off without them).

I misread 3 originally, I thought it was about auto-silencing those who are reported. I corrected my reply since. 3 is not a problem, it's merely unrealistic.

[Nurvus]

You can't get 3, it's unrealistic (too much resources).

The resources used for 3 would be the same used to "prove the reported person innocent".
However the investigation is handled, if reported person is innocent, the GM would already have a very good notion of whether the reported got trolled by those reporting, or if it was just "subjective".
A quick glance at the conversation prior to the reports would be enough to confirm this.
Most likely the only situations where the people reporting would get punished would be those where many people report the same person when there's clearly no reason.

[Ebalina]

I'm glad it happened. They need to stop just giving out mounts to undeserving people who just want carries to free mounts and gear. He was probably posting some nasty stuff too to get reported.

Huur duur tinfoil hat argument nice troll Jaylock.

This whole silencing stuff blizzard is doing is beyond ridicules.
Good old ignore is sufficient enough just add more slots to it.

[rda]

The resources used for 3 would be the same used to "prove the reported person innocent".
However the investigation is handled, if reported person is innocent, simple check on the conversation prior to the reports.
Most likely the only situations where the people reporting would get punished would be those where many people report the same person when there's clearly no reason.

If you do it this way, you will just get tons of false positives, because the chat log you are using to decide whether or not the report has merits is not the chat log that the person who did the report saw.

[Raelbo]

Well both sides have a lot of people who can report each other. In the end nothing ends up being fun.

Your assumption is that things get removed simply because they are reported. If people who abuse the system to report players who are having harmless fun that fits within the rules end up getting silenced themselves, then what you will find is that the good clean fun stays, while the toxic, abusive fun disappears.

Yeah, I just don't think the line is easy to draw. There's one man spam and gold sellers which are easy, but a lot more general gray area stuff I feel.

Things that fall into a genuine grey area should be ignored. The reason that grey areas exist is because it's possible for overly sensitive people to take offense where none was intended. And that's pretty easy to spot. Also, the software should be able to track a person's history. If they have an unusual amount of "grey-area" reports then it's probably a good idea for a GM to have a chat with them about toning it down a little.

I don't think anal is different from the general copypasta/meme process twitch and general slang follow. In the end which of the memes and spam are funny and which bad? There's no good solution that won't drive people away.

The thing about anal spam is that it is technically against the terms of use. People who do it are like adolescents saying swear words to get attention. Which is why it's annoying to the rest of us who don't need to prove to the world that we're no longer children by being edgy and using the word anal in a sentence.

When I used to raid we had a guy copy stupid messages from facebook into raid zone general chat while waiting for encounters. I enjoyed reading them, and be part of the shitposting across many guilds participating.

And this is a classic case of where ignore can suffice. As long as the guy keeps it clean and inoffensive, there is no crime in being annoying. And people who are tired of seeing his chatter can ignore him. That's very different from what this tool is supposed to take of.

It's easy to know many also didn't and preferred the chat be empty. Those would rather report it than leave the chat. I think that's a problem with this design because it catches so many non-offensive cases. Like Anal[item] which is really far from being offensive to anyone.

You keep bringing up anal spam. Honestly it added nothing to the game that cannot be replaced with something much better. Chose another prefix to append to the linked item - a clean prefix and you're golden. But that won't help, because part of the thrill that drive anal spammers is the fact that they think they're being edgy.

Yeah, I just don't think it only compasses the abusive. Really fast it becomes a censor for a lot of normal interaction. Maybe Blizzard will show different, but so far I'm not convinced.

It seems to me that your concern here is that everything that anyone in the game wants censored, including genuinely harmless fun, will be censored. The reality is that actually it will be Blizzard who decide what will be censored which means we can at least hope that some sanity will prevail. Of course there is no guarantee, but do realise that Blizzard's motivations are to make the game more fun for us, not less.

[Deleted]

cut

Yeah, I do feel a lot of the fun will be censored. Swearing, spamming and vulgar/obscene is a very large area. Many who support this also want it to silence the local chatters shitposting who aren't exactly doing any of those. If one gets silenced for a single swear, he won't try his luck chatting again. In the end it's up to Blizzard where to draw the line.

So far the support forums seem to have only 3 cases. Inappropriate group name, anal and one I can't remember. The support forums barely have anything about this. Very few here or elsewhere report to be silenced yet. Maybe they disabled it, or it's not as active as it seems to be. I mentioned the anal a lot because it's the only confirmed one.

There's just not many good experiences with censoring in other games. League of Legends/dota it's very easy get punished for playing in a non-orthodox way. Currently people also mention this system being trialled with Heroes of the Storm, and chat in it being very dead now. Like being silenced for commenting on someone's talent choice. Who knows whether it's true though.