The Silence Penalty

[Deleted]

Since silences get investigated, Blizzard will be easily able to recognize this abuse and penalize those who participated.

You finally post something I can agree with.
Apocalypse incoming.

[Eliessa]

What's happening on social media? Some asshole trolls harassing people and getting banned for it? What the people whining about this shit don't realize is that this stuff has already been around. Nobody will care about this system after a week.

Ignorance is bliss after all, it seems. Good for you.

[Stuffs]

This is just reminding me of that multiboxer that mass reported some guy for gibbing him in Ashran.

Nice idea, I just have 0 faith blizzard will manage to pull this off effectively.

[rda]

Since silences get investigated, Blizzard will be easily able to recognize this abuse and penalize those who participated.

No. This is impossible in terms of resources. You have to spend hours on every potential case of abuse and in the end you just come up empty because after some time the abuse looks like this:

Innocent victim: Hi, guys.
Innocent victim banned.

What happened? Some guild / raid had fun and one of them said in voice chat "quick, ban this guy, LOL".

This isn't the only trick by far, there is no end to them. I know because I was in guilds that did... ahem... world PVP (I am blushing now).

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So if you organize an extraordinary effort to abuse the system there's a temporary silence. Devastating stuff. In a few weeks everyone will be over this change and nobody will care.

There's no extraordinary effort whatsoever, it takes seconds. See above, for example.

[Lodreh]

Does this mean I can finally turn tradechat back on and see trades? No more anal jokes, political agenda (redundant I know), people just talking to fill space... my God... it will be glorious.

[Pann]

No. This is impossible in terms of resources. You have to spend hours on every potential case of abuse and in the end you just come up empty because after some time the abuse looks like this:

Innocent victim: Hi, guys.
Innocent victim banned.

What happened? Some guild / raid had fun and one of them said in voice chat "quick, ban this guy, LOL".

This isn't the only trick by far, there is no end to them. I know because I was in guilds that did... ahem... world PVP (I am blushing now).

Why would an investigation take hours? The report is sent for review, the GM reviews what the player said, if what the player said breaks the rules the player is silenced if they did not no further action is taken. I see no reason why this should take more than a few minutes.

In the case of people being maliciously reported it should not take long to see that this is the case and take action on those abusing the system.

[JustRob]

They don't just have to investigate silenced people, they have to investigate every single report and decide whether someone should be silenced or not. No way that's happening. I'm just gonna shut up as much as I can in trade until we have numbers on how quickly people get silenced.

[Karlz0rz]

I like the new system.
Hopefully they will punish the people that abuse it with bans etc.

[Gohzerlock]

They don't just have to investigate silenced people, they have to investigate every single report and decide whether someone should be silenced or not. No way that's happening. I'm just gonna shut up as much as I can in trade until we have numbers on how quickly people get silenced.

What an amazing use of resources, investigating every single person who's accused of being loud on the internet. GG blizz

[Paula Deen]

All the evidence that the system is broken beyond repair and needs to be corrected to what it was supposed to be and we still have people defending it.

As someone who has played, and still plays, since Vanilla. Open your eyes you god damn drones.

[Avengelyne KT]

They've muted players in the past, is this really so new?

[Tackhisis]

I'm not surprised. Blizzard has been scummy over years by automatically banning trial accounts for "abuse of game economics". I can only guess how many new players they had turned out that way.

[manypillars]

So since silence is auto on report and then upheld or removed when the report gets through the investigation queue what compensation is made to a player whose silence was found to not be justified? If they queue is long the player might have eaten 24 hours or more of punishment which was not deserved, as judged by a GM upon investigation after the punishment was meted out fully. At the least they need to roll back the punishment volcano and apologise if that isn't in place already.

Granted, after seeing the upheld silence from HoTS where it was considered a justified silence for mildly criticizing character choice and talents, I don't expect that any silence punishment will ever be found unjustified.

[Eleccybubb]

So this system been abused yet?

[rda]

Why would an investigation take hours? The report is sent for review, the GM reviews what the player said, if what the player said breaks the rules the player is silenced if they did not no further action is taken. I see no reason why this should take more than a few minutes.

In the case of people being maliciously reported it should not take long to see that this is the case and take action on those abusing the system.

Checking whether the silence is warranted means checking just the log of the guy who was banned, that takes minutes, yes.

Suppose you then find that the silence wasn't warranted, and clear it. Good. Now, let's say, you want to check whether or not there was abuse. Well, for that you have to check logs of those people who silenced the guy, there's (way) more than one. You check each log and try to decipher why the heck they decided to silence. Suppose there *is* an abuse and there is no reason - precisely because there is no reason, you spend a lot of time trying to connect the dots which can not connect. And in the end all you have is that there *seems* to be no reason *in the chat*. That's a very shaky reason to ban a group. Maybe you - as a GM - didn't quite get it, in the end, maybe it was some misspelling that the silenced guy had which triggered the reaction. Or maybe it was some other guy who was offensive and one of the group felt offended and asked others to help him silence the offender but got the name wrong. Or maybe the silenced guy did something bad in the game instead of having said something and the group silenced him for that - yes, that's against the rules, but what, are you going to silence / ban / warn the entire group? Ie, what if he was making some body moves that the group considered offensive? So, they thought silence is an appropriate punishment or maybe a preventive measure. Nah, you can't punish them back, too much is unknown and subject to interpretation.

This is just a non-starter.

As I said, they can't even find the time to investigate reported wintraders - after people send them names and dates and games and everything else. There is no way they can investigate potential abuses of the silence feature. They won't even try.

[rda]

So this system been abused yet?

Yes, see Asmongold (got silenced a minute after he said that he loves WoW).

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They've muted players in the past, is this really so new?

It's new in that part of the system is an automatic silence by players request (until a GM comes to investigate) - that part is broken and can't be unbroken, it can only be removed, and after it is removed the system might as well not exist.

[manypillars]

Actually people are getting silenced a lot faster than that and I don't think there is any investigation unless they appeal the measure in which case if they re found not-guilty there is no compensation just a reset of the silence meter.

Seriously this system will harm an otherwise extremely promising expansion ahead.

Yeah, this is worrying. Especially when coupled with the sheer glee and eagerness to start laying the silence on everyone which blossomed both here and on the official forums.

I genuinely try to be pleasant to be around and when I have a hard time with that use generic greeting macros for feign pleasantness or don't talk at all. It is concerning that if I'm friendly, encouraging, and maybe a bit off color that can land me an auto silence from someone who is not having the best of days (or is just one of those people who thinks party members should be seen and not heard) with no investigation unless I appeal. And no compensation for an undeserved silence or a paper thin justification.

[rda]

Yeah, this is worrying. Especially when coupled with the sheer glee and eagerness to start laying the silence on everyone which blossomed both here and on the official forums.

I genuinely try to be pleasant to be around and when I have a hard time with that use generic greeting macros for feign pleasantness or don't talk at all. It is concerning that if I'm friendly, encouraging, and maybe a bit off color that can land me an auto silence from someone who is not having the best of days (or is just one of those people who thinks party members should be seen and not heard) with no investigation unless I appeal. And no compensation for an undeserved silence or a paper thin justification.

By the way, systems like this - player-sanctioned silence / ban / whatever - is not new to WoW, it appeared in other games.

In many, many, many places it was abused in guild-vs-guild battles and the likes. It normally gets turned off or toned down after some scandal.

[Eleccybubb]

So basically people getting silenced already. Bullshit it goes to a GM for review. And no I haven't been silenced yet.

[Pann]

Checking whether the silence is warranted means checking just the log of the guy who was banned, that takes minutes, yes.

Suppose you then find that the silence wasn't warranted, and clear it. Good. Now, let's say, you want to check whether or not there was abuse. Well, for that you have to check logs of those people who silenced the guy, there's (way) more than one. You check each log and try to decipher why the heck they decided to silence. Suppose there *is* an abuse and there is no reason - precisely because there is no reason, you spend a lot of time trying to connect the dots which can not connect. And in the end all you have is that there *seems* to be no reason *in the chat*. That's a very shaky reason to ban a group. Maybe you - as a GM - didn't quite get it, in the end, maybe it was some misspelling that the silenced guy had which triggered the reaction. Or maybe it was some other guy who was offensive and one of the group felt offended and asked others to help him silence the offender but got the name wrong. Or maybe the silenced guy did something bad in the game instead of having said something and the group silenced him for that - yes, that's against the rules, but what, are you going to silence / ban / warn the entire group? Ie, what if he was making some body moves that the group considered offensive? So, they thought silence is an appropriate punishment or maybe a preventive measure. Nah, you can't punish them back, too much is unknown and subject to interpretation.

This is just a non-starter.

As I said, they can't even find the time to investigate reported wintraders - after people send them names and dates and games and everything else. There is no way they can investigate potential abuses of the silence feature. They won't even try.

You're over complicating things. There is no need to investigate every case where no action is taken for abuse. The people abusing the system will be doing so multiple times they only need investigate when a player(s) reaches a certain amount of reports that result in no further action.