Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? You police bad words? Well, Trade is for trading goods, not ideologies. I am sick of seeing them arguing over anything under the sun, other than WoW lore. How is this not a violation of ToS when “bad words” are?
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Have you reported it? Because the GMs ain’t psychic.
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Yes, I have.
Just a note, they don’t actively police any of the chats. The manpower needed to do that would be insane.
Report the people you believe need to be reported. Enough of your realm-mates agree with you, they’ll probably get a squelch and be silenced until it’s reviewed. With luck, they’ll be silenced for a while even after the review.
Unfortunately, this happens every time a major event takes place. Personally, I just leave public chats until things die down again.
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I’m sorry, Draconian, but the channel categories are simply suggestions and not something that we restrict based on subject. As long as the chat otherwise abides by policy, they are allowed to have it.
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How odd, there was a blue post from a while back (august 3, 2019) that explains that players can find such things actionable, and may report them as such. Now that post has been removed. Had it bookmarked even:
WoW policies for talking in Trade - World of Warcraft Forums
Why would blues remove such a source of information on the subject?
It wasn’t really “removed”, the old forums were archived about a year after we switched to this.
I’d be interested in the body of that post and who posted it though. As that doesn’t line up with our policies.
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This was from august of 2019, the link I cited above.
I should have access to any old posts on these forums, even if they were deleted. I’ll have to look into that more. Thanks.
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I can’t find the original post, apparently, a deleted thread will even be purged for those with moderator access after some time. No idea why it would have been deleted since we would normally just close a thread if it started to get off-topic or unruly.
What I have been able to gather from the posts I did read around/about it is that it was specifically discussing spam. Someone seems to copy/pasted some of the post, which reading it, sounds like me… so let me quote that here…
So once more, to be clear, speaking about non-Trade subjects in the Trade channel does not violate our chat policies .
With that said, and to reiterate what the GM told you, each chat channel is designed for the purpose of the title of the channel. So Trade Chat taking place in the Trade channel is the suggested use of that channel. If you are discussing other subjects in the channel, other players on your realm can consider those unwanted messages as spam. They may report it as such and therefore the penalties associated with spam may be applied to the person reported.
So considering the author of the quoted post is me, I can absolutely reaffirm that it did not say that chat must adhere to the category of the channel.
While chat taking place in a channel that is contrary to the channel’s category is not against policy, we do allow realms a certain amount of leeway to make determinations on what they may consider spam. If reported, a person may be squelched. In many cases that will be overturned upon review, but it is possible that we will uphold the action based on the content of the chat. It depends on the situation.
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I had to turn off trade chat. It’s turned into a democrat vs republican chat and a looter/rioter vs non looter/rioter chat. I go in there only for a couple mins at a time if I am looking for something in particular. It would drive me crazy trying to report every post (I am on a pretty busy server)… But I do get it, I play the game to get away from that jazz so I just turn it off. Some cannot turn it off because they sell stuff on there, so I would just say give it a few weeks and it should be back to normal 
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Been here a decade. Can affirm I have never seen Vrakthris state anything to the contrary.
Please report anything untoward or generating for you discomfort though. The channels are social spaces and as a social space, the community at large has a hand in determining what belongs. Trolls and spams do get actioned.
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Vrakthris,
Just to clarify in post 10 of this thread - when you discuss the moderation of chat channels (Trade chat specifically) is the moderation and any action taken consistent across all server types? Someone in another thread is advising that RP servers have different rules that apply.
Thanks!
I wouldn’t necessarily say different. They have additional rules, when it comes to naming and some behavior, but they otherwise have all of the same rules other realms have.
I would say that the community on an RP realm has a greater interest in determining what kind of chat they may consider to run contrary to their ideals since they most often want to keep Out of Character (OOC) chat to a minimum.
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Thanks for the response.
Trade chat has never been an in-character channel though. The old support article mentioned /say and some other channels but not Trade. Is there an updated page for RP servers as I could not find anything but the reporting a character name article?
There is another thread and I’m sure it won’t be the last about discussions taking place in Trade chat. I specifically wanted to know if moderation based on RCR was different for RP realms when it comes to off-topic chat in Trade. What I’m seeing is that with this possible spam that it is treated the same on all servers.
Thanks again for the quick reply!
I don’t believe there are additional articles, no. I wasn’t referring specifically to Trade with the OOC chat, but to chat in general.
No, it wouldn’t be treated differently.
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This is why I am taking a break from the game
Trade chat is toxic, and I always shut it off, as soon soon as I enter anywhere that has the channel. It draws the idiots out, and they do and say the vilest and nastiest things, and I personally feel that since I am paying to play this game, this is MY TIME, and I shouldn’t have to put up with this. Since Blizzard can’t seem to figure out what lots of social media platforms have done already, just go into the settings, and unclick the #2 box. All of your problems will be solved, and those trips into town will become so much more pleasant.
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And you don’t. There are ways to help you deal with such things. Anything that is inappropriate and violates the rules, simply right-click and report. That will place the offending account on a temporary ignore for the remainder of your session on that character.
There’s also the ignore feature if there’s someone who constantly bothers you personally or who posts in chat and perhaps doesn’t violate any rules, but you no longer wish to see their messages.
You can also turn off chat channels. Either individually or all of them if you wish. You can even turn on the mature language filter if you don’t wish to report it, but still don’t want to see it.
There are also addons that you can download to help manage the messages you see in chat.
If you have additional suggestions to improve on the tools in place, the in-game suggestion feature is a great place to provide those too 
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Lol, yeah, I was being sarcastic about the functions, options, and to the OP. That’s why I said to just unclick the #2 in settings, and enjoy the silence 
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