Look.. craigslist proved it works.. so just follow suit.

[aegrimonia]

Craigslist was setup to be easy to manage by whoever set it up (Craig i'd guess).

Instead of having to have teams of people trolling every single ad of the millions to find spam/inappropriate listings..

Craigslist setup a flag option.. flag the listing if it's wrong.. get enough flags and the ad is deleted automatically..

and it works.. very well..

bad ads don't stick around very long at all. usually only a few minutes.

Just GIVE PLAYERS THE POWER TO CONTROL THE BOTS OURSELVES!!!

let us flag the damn botters and spammers.. get enough botters and spammer flags, the account is suspended.

Then you can let the GM's deal with figuring out whether or not to let the account to continue, rather then dealing with getting RID of the bad ones.

the workload will be much lower on the GM's, and we can deal with the spammers ourselves.

we are the ones in the game, we are the ones having to deal with the annoyance of spam and bots, let us be the ones to police them.

There are of course ways it could be abused (guilds targeting a certain player) but there are workarounds for that too.. it has to be a certain number of people in a certain time, and not from the same guilds, etc.

It can be done..

I don't want the developers wasting time making stop-gap solutions to the problem.. any coded solution will be beat by another coded solution by the botters..

bring the human element into the solution and it will be fixed permanently.

[aegrimonia]

You could even have two separate flags.. one for spam, and one for bots..

too many spam flags, you are muted for a certain time.. maybe you can have GM flags too.. where the GM's will flag the accounts they have suspended.. and next time they are banned.
too many bot flags, you are suspended pending GM review.

GM's can decide whether or not to ban a suspended account, or let them continue.

[Nerria]

The only problem is abuse that people will use. There are a lot of immature players out there who will get all there friends to continually flag someone.

Other than that flaw it would be a great idea...

[aegrimonia]

Well, that would just have to be worked out.. and make the flag requirements large.. like 100 flags.. that would have to be worked out.

Flags could easily be set for only one flag for one person for one bot/spammer. Repeated flags would do nothing. a message would come up like they do in the forums when you re-visit a poll that you have voted on:

"You have already flagged this player"

[Deedolith]

Your idea (even if nopt bad) is far slower than insta ban accounts GM do daily when they catch bots.

[Nerria]

Yeah I suppose 100 would be a high number even for punks to amass. It might just work...


Your idea (even if nopt bad) is far slower than insta ban accounts GM do daily when they catch bots.

Yes but the GMs cannot police the chat 24/7 - this would be an aid to stopping the spammers AND help the GMs at the same time.

[Liala]

Good idea, as long as it is made certain that it can't be abused.