Clarification Requested for In-Game Squelch/Account Silence

[Vrakthris]

@Humanbeak-drenden

Specifically, the following implies that multiple reports will lead to a Silence at a minimum; it’s written very plainly as “if you’re reported multiple times, you’re getting silenced”, not “if we get multiple reports, we’re going to review it for ourselves first and you may get silenced if we find wrongdoing”:

That article refers to squelches, silences, and silence appeals through multiple games so the language is a bit generalized for that reason. The account squelch is unique to WoW.

@Humanbeak-drenden

The next two portions seem to imply that automation is used. The first one indicates there’s a rolling period where reports are counted:

Abusive chat reports will fall off after a predetermined amount of time.

And the following quote indicates that the account will be penalized when a threshold is reached (and since this article is for Account Silences, it’s reasonable to presume the penalty is a Silence at a minimum):

The number of abusive chat reports necessary to penalize your account remains the same, regardless of past penalties.

These refer to two different aspects of these systems.

As many are aware it can take several reports in WoW for a player to be squelched. So, say the number of reports needed for a character to be squelched is 10 (not the actual number). You’d need to receive all 10 reports within the specific timeframe for the account to be squelched. If you received only 5, it is possible for those 5 reports to “timeout” before you received another 5 to hit that squelch threshold.

This is similar to other behaviors and in other games. For example, in Overwatch, a single report doesn’t necessarily result in a report and/penalty. Multiple reports are usually required in those instances.

The second statement you quoted is basically just a note that the threshold needed to be hit for squelching or to generate other reports for review remain the same regardless of if you have been penalized before or not.

@Humanbeak-drenden

After all, for example, if a GM sees nine reports for someone being toxic, but the threshold for penalties to be applied is ten reports, would they throw their hands up and say “sorry, we only got nine reports” and do nothing? That doesn’t seem likely, so the mention of thresholds and rolling counters muddies the waters here.

When it comes to a reporting threshold, a Game Master wouldn’t see the 9 reports if the requirement was 10 to generate a report. There wouldn’t be a reason for them to be looking at the account until attention was called to it.

@Humanbeak-drenden

Finally, searching for “squelch” in the support section doesn’t yield any results for WoW, but only results for how to manually ignore a user in Overwatch and Diablo, which aren’t particularly helpful.

As I believe the system is unique to WoW, and there is very little difference functionally speaking between a squelch and a silence, only silence is used.

@Humanbeak-drenden

There are reports in GD of those selling boosting services (not part of a community) being targeted. In particular, one player stated they received a 1-week silence (again, not a squelch, but a silence) within an hour of posting a boosting ad and was unaware of any squelches being applied. The player did state the email contained a message saying the silence was not automated (hopeful this holds true), and the silence was quickly overturned on appeal.

If you are referring to the first person in that thread that made the claim then it does look like a squelch, which was overturned upon review. I don’t see any mention of “automated” in the response. I’m guessing there may be others, but I didn’t review it to look for additional examples.

@Humanbeak-drenden

Whether squelching has been recently changed/removed and whether full-blown Silences are indeed not automated, in spite of the wording of the support article that implies a threshold exists for number of reports in which penalties are applied?

I’m not aware of any recent changes to the system, but thresholds have always been a part of these systems. It’s what applies squelches and/or generates reports for our staff to review.

@Humanbeak-drenden

Whether a single player report is enough to have a message reviewed? Again, the article talks about account penalties in the context of a threshold being reached first (“number of abusive chat reports necessary to penalize your account”)

Yes, a single report may result in a review/penalty. Much depends on the content of the reported chat, but we also have implemented systems over the years that use machine learning and other systems that help us to more quickly identify toxic behavior.

Stealing a bit of a post from Kalviery:

@Kalviery

On the topic of “automation”: We’ve held GDC talks, and BlizzCon panels, there’s even a Heroes of the Storm post (linking to an article here because the post was on the old forums). We use machine learning across our games social channels to identify chat violations in player reports (someone still has to right-click and report it) allowing them to be actioned more quickly.

@Humanbeak-drenden

If squelching is still in the game, are players supposed to be notified that they’ve been squelched? If so, is that through email, in-game notification, etc.?

They should receive an in-game notification when attempting to send a message that lets them know.

@Humanbeak-drenden

Considering this support article doesn’t seem to target WoW specifically, how applicable is this support article (supposed to be) to WoW itself? Is only part of it applicable, its entirety, etc.? This could be part of the confusion us players are having.

As I mentioned, that article is for all of our games. The squelch system is unique to WoW so it doesn’t specifically mention it there.