ok let’s just be realistic here and look at what the pro-btag crowd want:
they want to make sure that someone they are talking to on the forums is not someone else’s alt.
so what happens if we let them see the person’s btag? they can only know that person has a different bnet account than another person - there is no way for them to be certain that one person does not have two bnet accounts and is posting from both of them.
so will the pro-btag crowd be happy with just that? no, very likely not because people could still just make a new bnet account or change their btag and the pro-btag crowd would not be able to tell people they are the same person.
so btags really won’t help these issues that you are describing here.
I am all team btag but if there is a compromise to be made then having a cooldown on character changes would help. And make it easier for people to link their characters if they talking about something that deals with the class, races, or just transmog that character is wearing.
You know, I’m pretty sure they are mentally deficient enough to believe a friend request is offensive. If someone wanted to troll somebody, you don’t send them a friend request. You send them 500,000 gray rocks in individual mail messages one at a time.
but the reality is that you cannot be certain that two posters are definitively two different people simply because they have different btags, so adding btags to the forums do not help sock puppetting or any of the other issues you want btags to solve.
spend $10 buy a new btag change.
start a new bnet account.
these are very quick and easy ways for someone to change their btag, so what will you ask for when you realize that btags don’t solve your issues?
What you’re bringing up isn’t even really something I’ve even claimed is a problem.
In fact, at this point, my main issue is how you cherry pick what you respond to while ignoring points that poke holes in your argument because those points make you uncomfortable.
You are free to do that all you want, but doing that while claiming you want an actual discussion is disingenuous. It also makes having a productive discussion impossible.
I disliked the sort of popularity thing downvotes had, and downvotes could hide posts too but it is a lesser evil than flags being used as ‘downvotes’. Not sure it would fix that problem even if it came back, since people have been using it that way.
Also btags is a bit different, and in some ways gives people more anonymity (in game) if it didn’t show your character - but people still want character names shown for lots of reasons like RP, transmog, to speak on a topic related to those characters.
If forums only saw btag, you wouldn’t know someone from the forums unless you added each other in game. That and knowing them from all the other Blizzard forums, and yes it allows people to send a friend request no matter the server they play on but they can straight whisper you (If same faction) in game at any time. Which is why some opt to use ‘throwaway’ characters they don’t play to avoid it. The solution to all the problems isn’t a simple one. Each one has it’s drawbacks, but some have less drawbacks than others and more personal protection.
Ignoring the fact that their solution is to make it harder to tell posters apart because there can be 500 “Night Elf Hunters” or just 1 spamming some gibberish as if they were different people.
So, between people getting free pass to impersonate or mislead discussions more than they already can by using alts? Bad idea. Requiring them to spend an extra $15 bucks a month to do it? That’s a costly trolling habit, but considering Blizzard knows what your legal name is and what accounts are linked to it, if one Btag gets banned, all of the ones under the same legal name should be too, meaning abuse would be even less likely.
Must be new to how Doobly acts. They’ve done this across multiple topics all the time. It is why most tend to ignore them.
No system is perfect to be honest, and there will always be some flaws to anything. But I do wish to see a system that works a little bit better than the current system, and if there is any flaws to it, work on it to improve upon it.
it just seems to me that if the forums do get btags, then the pro-btag crowd would not be happy because people can just change their btags and make new accounts - so essentially it really doesn’t stop sock puppetting at all.
so in my opinion, there is no reason to create a huge overhaul of the forums just so that we can have btags when btags don’t even solve the problem that the pro-btag crowd wants to solve.
do account wide ignores solve this? no because people can just post from different accounts.
so what would actually make the pro-btag crowd happy? seems like nothing.
Put BattleTags on the forums with an option to display only your BattleTag. Add a way to block BattleTag invites.
There. An actual increase in security. But Nelfas will never agree to it because what they really want is to remove or reduce accountability for their actions.
Hm. So you’ve written yourself into a circular fallacy there because by that logic, you will never be happy. Especially since you don’t even understand the arguments.
“Oh, account-wide ignore won’t stop people from making new accounts?” No say it isn’t so! But if someone is spending an extra $15 a month just to be ignored again, it’s still more effective than ignoring every single one of their alts on each account.
The current iteration of the forums doesn’t solve sock puppeting either.
There will never be a 100% catch all solution to sock puppeting… there will systems that will hinder its enablement if Blizzard changes how things are currently.
To add:
I apologize for coming back much later. I had to do chores.
say it isn’t so! But if someone is spending an extra $15 a month just to be ignored again, it’s still more effective than ignoring every single one of their alts on each account.