Trade chat profanity - Blue Tracker

#0 - March 11, 2010, 11:05 p.m.

Trade chat on my server (Muradin) is getting ridiculous. As I try to sell or buy items in trade I have to put up with sorting through the non stop stream of profanity, racism and sexism that trade chat has become.

I am an adult and I can more then handle (and dish out) the profanity. But the racist comments I cannot. I have reported dozens of people for making racist comments in trade chat and I always see them back online the next day or the day after just to report them yet again. Same thing with the sexist comments. Yeah when you call the girls in game the C word I am going to report you.

One player in particular comes to mind, [expletive deleted]. This punk kid will sit there in trade chat spamming non stop racist comments for hours on end in order to get a 24-48 hour ban so that he can catch up on schoolwork. That is exactly what he tells people in his guild and on his guilds ventilo.

By my understanding after getting in trouble for this type of thing once or twice should a player not be banned permanently?

Another player by the name of [expletive deleted] will spam trade chat with non stop emo comments about hurting herself. People start egging her on and then she starts spamming F this F that for the next 2-3 hours. I wish I was exaggerating.

In the AM another player named [expletive deleted] likes to do the same thing, I personally think its the same person.

Yeah, I can put these people on my ignore list, I realize that. But I have filled my ignore list and have started clicking on report spam to ignore people temporarily until I relog. Seriously, we shouldn't have to resort to downloading mods to expand the ignore list in order to deal with this issue.

I seriously doubt this is an issue on just my server as well.

Would it be so hard to have a few GMs a day rotate sitting in trade chats on various servers handing on temp bans and warnings to the trash that abuses the chat channels like this? Or maybe finally hand out some permanent bans on people that spam racism and sexism? Maybe even adhere to your own ToS? WoW is to the point that it has over 10 million subscribers. Is the 15 dollars a months from the bad eggs really that important that you will continue to allow them to destroy the quality of life in game for other people?

I would really like to know though. Is that 15 dollars a month more important to blizzard then banning people?

Vrakthris

#8 - March 12, 2010, 12:02 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I did not say around the clock. But realistically with the amount of money blizzard is making, hiring a few dozen extra GMs is practically a non issue.

Realistically, Shawck, the amount of money this company makes is irrelevant to the issue at hand. It is simply not logistically feasible to actively monitor multiple channels across 200+ realms. Our policies have always been reactive in nature and when reported correctly and consistently these issues are addressed appropriately.

Consistency it generally the best strategy to help curb the overall behavior you are witnessing. If you see someone violating our harassment policies by using inappropriate language, report it. Even if you see someone else shout "Reported!", report it yourself because odds are the person who shouted "reported" didn't actually report it.

Making the public threat without following through is a dangerous practice because if someone who violates our Terms of Use thinks they have been reported but they never even receive a warning they believe that nothing was done or their behavior is permitted. Others who see the person again continuing to violate the Terms of Use believe that nothing is done as well so why should they even try to report it?

If you report a violation it will be addressed appropriately. Our goal is to educate our players that such behavior is not permitted so we will give a number of chances based on the severity of the violation. How this works can be found in the link below.

Penalty Volcano
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20221

Q u o t e:

BTW I have a ticket thats been pending for over 48 hours in game right now. ;)

Actually, your petition has been open for 9 hours and 55 minutes. ;)

Please continue to report any violations that you find it is very effective when done correctly and consistently. Your realm is your much like your neighborhood, if you don't speak up when someone is breaking a rule who will? If you do speak up (report) and your neighbors join you it will go a long way to clean up your neighborhood.

I am sorry for what frustration these issues have caused you, Shawck, keep at it. If you would like to see any changes to our policies you are welcome to post in the Suggestion forum where your feedback can be reviewed.

Vrakthris

#15 - March 12, 2010, 4:36 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Also Mr GM guy, not sure if your looking at the right ticket but it was made on Wednesday morning about 9ish o'clock. So both of our times are inaccurate although the 48 hour mark is coming up shortly. ;)

I'm looking at your latest petition, Shawck. If you need exact times it was submitted on 3/11 at 13:53:42 GMT. It is currently 3/12 at 4:30:35 which equals around 14 hours 37 minutes.

Q u o t e:

You hit the issue perfectly. Why should I waste 3/4 of my gaming time policing what a Blizzard employee should be policing, I would much rather DL an infinite ignore list mod.

As with any neighborhood that you allow to become a little run down, Shawck, it takes work to get it back on track. If you had crime in your neighborhood your local authorities would try to help where they could but unless you call them about particular issues they simply can't sit on every street corning hoping to get lucky. It's a waste of man hours.

Q u o t e:

Maybe offer some kinda of incentive to people for reporting accurate ToS violations? Every accurate report earns you points towards free game time. DEAL!

For reporting accurate ToU violations you can potentially earn, a much better gaming environment!

Honestly, you can take my advice or not but what you are asking for, active monitoring, is not currently how things are done. If you would like to see something like that introduced post in the appropriate forum.