Blizzard,

Q u o t e:
This rule is not enforced by Blizzard
This rule is not adhered to by all users

I personally will tell people in trade chat, that they should not spam, and that I am reporting them. Almost 100% of the time, if they get a reply to my whisper in before I've reported them and they're auto-ignored, they mock me and tell me to go ahead, "nothing is going to happen." It's extremely disappointing, but also extremely true.

First, I should advise you not to contact players whom you are reporting. It's one thing to make a polite request to stop a specific chat behavior. Informing another player of your intention to report them generally only invites further harassment. It is better to report, /ignore if appropriate, and move on with your play.

I also want to make it absolutely clear that we do enforce our harassment policies, including those regarding spam. On the other hand, our definition of what constitutes spam may differ from the expectations of some players. Ultimately, we have to make assessments in each case, and make a determination based on the content and impact of a particular scenario.

If you should happen to faced with true spam (the same or similar message 'spammed' into chat channels repeatedly in a brief period of time), or a malicious advertisement like gold spam, then the Report Spam tool is the best option. If the player in question is engaging in another form of harassment, it might be more appropriate to submit a standard petition including the name and realm of the offending character and an excerpt of the violation or an explanation of the situation.

I hope that helps clarify the situation, but if you have further questions, I'll be happy to elaborate if I can.

Q u o t e:

The whole idea here is that the new channel is controlled and moderated by an outsourced company… or it is locked out with parental controls and ignored by Blizz completely.

It gives the hooligans a place to romp, and it removes it from the rest of the game. It would certainly reduce the amount of offensive material in the regular (trade and LFG) channels, and might even reduce it enough to make those regular channels manageable.

Let them discuss anything they want in the new channel, but make it clear that the other channels are there for their intended purposes.

As I mentioned in my original post.. it is not the most perfect solution. But it would work.

If you wish, you can suggest such a plan via a constructive post on our Suggestions forum. For now, our approach to harassment and inappropriate language is, by necessity, reactive rather than proactive. We wish to reach our players and provide top notch support as swiftly as we can, and from a resources perspective alone, it would be untenable to attempt to service every public channel in World of Warcraft with patrolling staff who would be doing nothing else.

We recognize the import of this issue though, and feedback never falls on deaf ears.

Q u o t e:
What is the proper way to report spam via a petition? I have petitioned for other things before and it has taken a long time to get a GM response. I know that you guys get swamped, but if this is the method you're speaking of using to report individuals, that can't be worth the time it takes to create a petition. One petition can contain maybe a few players' offenses, but a few players reprehended over many hours or even days is extremely ineffective (unfortunately) given the actual amount of spam I seem to face.

You're quite welcome!

I believe that I may not have been clear, and I apologize for that. I mean that Report Spam is an appropriate method of reporting 'true spam', whereas an in-game petition would be the appropriate choice for other forms of harassment.

Perhaps I can help shed some light on the situation. Can I ask what kind of scenarios you are using the 'report spam' option in? Also, we will never reveal the actions taken against another player's account, but it's entirely possible that this policy is being enforced - but it may not be immediately obvious to a casual observer. We do not drop the banhammer for every offense (though particularly egregious offenses may merit immediate permanent suspension), and there is a 'penalty volcano' which ramps up with repeated infractions.

Here's a link to the relevant section of our policies:

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=20221

Q u o t e:
Malkorix,

I use the report spam function almost exclusively for when players use a macro multiple times in a row, with no breaks between the posts. I do not use it for macros that are very large, but are still a set of unique information. As long as it's not the same thing over and over and over again, then I won't report it/ After rereading that ToS quote I posted though, this is also considered spam, right?

It might, but that depends on a large number of factors =/. I'm unable to definitely state whether a given set of macros, spammed a specific number of times, is or is not definitely spam.

It's best to use your own best judgement, and when we investigate, we'll use ours. Either way, if you feel as though someone is 'spamming' a channel, then using the Report Spam option is a good way to go. The Report Spam option also carries the advantage of temporarily ignoring all characters on the offending account and eliminated that source of chat until you relog.