or people shouldn’t mindlessly report anything with the word “boost” in it.
posting as a guild or a small group, minus a community isn’t against the rules. people are reporting just out of spite.
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If a ad seems fishy like it’s covering for a boosting community I’m gonna report it. I don’t buy the in guild ads
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If I wanted to reply in kind with over the top rhetoric I could say that defending chat spammers is “disgusting”. 
More so when many many customers have complained about it to the point Blizzard is finally stepping in.
Sure, they could go back to the penalty for chat violations being a full game Suspension.
One famous streamer had his followers falsely report him to trigger Squelch. That coordinated abuse of the report system landed him a Suspension.
I think you know that though. You just don’t like that there is a difference between Squelch and a GM applied Silence.
They really could go back to Suspensions though. Those can double each time and they can go back to perma bans. That is what we had before Silence.
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I’m all for that.
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For some it might be true. Some are actively abusing that - but in those cases it’s often quite obvious and they even get punished for that.
But in most other cases you don’t even know the intents of the people reporting. Sometimes it might be misinformation. Sometimes they might be suspicious that the one they’re reporting is doing something against the rules. False reports are often not related to malicious intents.
Most of the time false reports wouldn’t even be a problem because Blizzard is the one in charge to decide and investigate whether the reports are legit. It’s only a problem because through chat-related reports you can trigger an automated system. And that’s Blizzard fault for implementing such a stupid thing.
So your argument is that people using trade chat to advertise their in-game services for in-game gold is annoying. That’s great that you think that, but that’s literally what the channel was created to do.
The boosting communities advertisements were way over the top, for sure. But that’s not what this discussion is even about at all. It’s about people falsely reporting TOS-abiding players, and those players being automatically given a penalty without any GM interaction.
Do you have anything of value to add regarding the topic of the discussion?
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this
no player should ever have power to affect another player’s account.
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I think the issue is that silence and squelch function nearly the same. I’ve only been squelched I’ve never been fully silenced, but when I was squelched, I wasn’t allowed to use any chat channels during the time period.
And it took a GM a day and a half to remove the squelch, so it just felt like I was silenced anyway.
I understand why they do it – if someone is spamming trade chat or on a heinous tirade, the people have the power to silence that person immediately. The alternative would be waiting for a GM to get to it and silence them.
But I also see people’s frustrations with being squelched for flippant reasons and having to wait for a GM to unsquelch them.
This situation seems tricky to fix.
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The problem isn’t that people are being reported. The problem is that silences go out automatically without review and the person that was silenced receives and automated message stating that it was reviewed.
Pretty much. However the misinformation and lies about how the system works can also be frustrating.
There is a very big difference between a squelch restriction and a permanent black mark on the account that doubles.
People should certainly feel free to express opinions on the system, but first I just ask that they actually understand how it works - what auto squelch is vs a GM applied Silence or Suspension.
If they still want to advocate that auto squelch should not exist, despite it being around over 10 years, that is their right. I think having the ability to mute people until GM review has more positives than negatives overall. Gold spammers, account sellers, people on tirades, etc.
If it turns out that this causes a spate of problems that impact enough folks - they will either up the unique report threshold to trigger the Squelch, or implement more measures to discourage/penalize false reporting.
Foxhole does the same thing. You can get banned from just a handful of reports. Guilds have the ability to ban anyone.
I mean if you’re trying to educate people on this - just first admit that being auto-squelched is very much a falsely applied penalty.
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Yeah, gonna stop you right there:
- If you don’t want to read racist, misogynistic, commentary, turn chat off. That’s a YOU thing not a COMMUNITY thing. You have the power and authority to not read a chat. You have the power and authority to DISAGREE with the author of the chat, and you have the tools necessary to never read another word written by the author of such text as you disagree with. You even have the choice of reporting an individuals or groups for relevant violations of game policy (although in context of this game use of such a tool should be treated with trepidation lest we fall into the habit of reporting that which on its face is no more than idle banter).
- NO collective entity (to include this community and all communities throughout the world) should EVER have the ability to squelch the ideas and philosophies we hate or we disagree with. Doing this only pushes the hateful or disagreeable idea or philosophy back into the shadows where it can bide its time and then pounce upon a more vulnerable target. In essence by squelching ideas or philosophies with which you disagree now, you are empowering them to manifest in a more ugly and potentially more direct conflict later. Furthermore even bad Ideas sometimes have good spinoffs (The United States would never have put men on the moon had it not been for Werner Von Braun a member of the National German Socialists Workers Party. What sweeter revenge can be obtained than by taking an idea detestable to you, finding the grain of truth embedded therein, and creating something new and beautiful from it. The prettiest rose will be fed the richest and most obnoxious manure.
By all means if you hate certain rhetoric, or fundamentally disagree with a certain philosophy feel free to ignore it and the writer. Or more bravely, acknowledge and then DEBATE that idea or philosophy or rhetoric in the full light of the public eye such that the author has no choice but demure or engage in the debate. This way YOU get to set the terms of the debate. Empower yourself rather than allowing yourself to become a victim to that ugliness. You fight hatred with truth, for hatred cannot tolerate truth used in combat against it. But remember that not everyone will agree with your ideas or philosophes just as not everyone will agree with mine. Learning to accept that and ignoring the churlishness, embracing the fear that comes with it and then going ahead and putting yourself out there anyway because you believe in your ideals and philosophies is the fullest measure of being human.
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We’ve been having folks on our realm if they are a guild group having “reported” followed by it. I clarify in the chat that only thing not allowed is boots communities and that guild groups etc is fine.
It’s not the thing of “do we or don’t we” agree with something it’s a “here are the new rules here is how they are laid out, this is what it is.” type deal but people take one phrase and run with it.
Edit: I’m tired and butchered the first half of my post but you knew what I meant.
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I don’t know that many people know of the escalating penalty system and/or black marks. So on the surface, because both penalties function the same in that they prevent you from speaking in chat channels and grouping, people have just assumed that they’re same.
There are still people that believe you get “automatically” banned from mass reports in this thread. It obviously doesn’t help that every streamer and youtuber likes to perpetuate these myths to their viewers, which is ironic because if it were true, they’d be constantly squelched by anti-streamer players.
I think it would help if Blizzard made all of this more clear. I had to dig through old customer support threads to figure out how it worked myself, which isn’t something most people are willing to do.
I agree with you though that people need to first understand how these systems work before we can meaningfully criticize them.
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Can you share the articles or posts you have that lay out how their system works? I think if its NOT an automated process and people in my guild were being silenced for non-TOS violating trade chat advertisements, that would almost be just as bad
I hate to be the one to tell you (not really), but the ToS you agreed to when you created your account is in direct opposition to you on this one.
people don’t get to run around being racist dirtbags in chat without penalty. I wouldn’t want to play a game where they could.
I’m good with people being silenced for being racist dirtbags.
I’m not good with people being silenced for posting chat messages that fall within the TOS.
what needs to happen here is blizz needs to come down hard on the vindictive karens who are reporting people and getting them silenced/squelched, even when the chat message is not breaking any rules.
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It isn’t though.
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The “squelch” is automated and then is sent to a GM to review to determine if a silence should apply.
The squelch is effectively an automated silence triggered by being reported x number of times. It’s not an official penalty, but the person squelched still suffers the same effects as a silence, regardless if they’re falsely reported. It can take days for a GM to either remove the squelch, or apply an official “silence” that is recorded on the account.
The squelch thing needs to go. There’s so many other ways players can ignore people or posts they don’t want to see. Reporting is being used as a downvote option, just like flagging is on these forums.
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So here’s the definition of a penalty:
“a punishment imposed for breaking a law, rule, or contract.”
Nowhere does it say that the penalty must applied in any way. Getting the ability to chat taken away, is absolutely incurring a penalty. And if you didn’t break a “rule” - then it’s falsely applied.
I don’t understand why this is difficult to understand.
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