Since some time ago, there’s a Report function in the chat system. When I use it on RMT marketing bots it says “report generated for player and player added to your ignore list”.
What this report is consisting of? Is it just the specific line I clicked RMB on? X lines before the one I clicked on? X lines before and after the one I clicked on? All lines for X minutes before/after the timestamp of the line I clicked on?
I ask because sometimes I see players in chat who are not bots, but engage in disruptive behavior: spamming links/short lines, abusive language, trolling and so on. Most of the time there’s no one in those channels with OP privileges, so these disruptive people can’t be muted/banned from the channel by other players. Putting them on /ignore doesn’t help much when people who are not you continue to respond to trolling and insults.
Is reporting them the intended method of dealing with it? If so, how to do it best?
Reporting to my knowledge puts in on the radar of the devs. Especially stuff like gold spammers get reported a lot of times so they are easy for the devs to spot and do stuff about.
Can you report disruptive behaviour? Yes. Is a reaction guaranteed? No.
You need to do quite a bit to get booted for good and I really don’t know which metrics get logged if you get banned. IP? Name? Account?
The in game report function, when you right click on a player’s name on whichever they posted, will generate a petition automatically for GMs to review. So while it’s good for gold spammers, it’s a quick way for those whom may be breaking the rules / spamming / etc.
For example,
[Player Name] Player message you want to report.
If you right click on the ‘Player Name’ and click ‘report’ it will auto petition with the exact chat line that you reported, i.e. “Player message you want to report” and you can actually do /petition to check on the status of your automated report if you wish too.
Further example,
%timestamp% [Jingi] Jingi says some stuff.
%timestamp% [Jingi] Jingi says some MEAN STUFF??
%timestamp% [Jingi] Jingi says some other stuff.
And you right click on the player name with the chat line of, “%timestamp% [Jingi] Jingi says some MEAN STUFF??” it will generate a report with that /exact/ chat line in the automated petition and will tell you a GM will review it when they can. So make sure that you report the exact player message that you want GMs to look over / review - and from there if they need to further review they can check the timestamp of the message and review all of the player’s messages they made about that time.
Is this about the person in #Sanctuary who keeps pretending that people are putting them on ignore and calling it fascism just to try to start some kind of political flame war? This happens a lot. Same person, different character each time. I’ve sent a /petition about them, but because it’s a custom chat channel the only real GM response I expect to get is “Ignore them or leave the channel” which is a cop out. I would tag @andyb and ask him what can be done.
I think I darkly remember hearing something about it once…I think it would just create to much of a load for the system. It’s one of those can’t instead of a don’t like to decisions.
Thing is, “bad behavior” is a nebulous term. It depends on the GM who answers the petition, the day of the week, color of the underwear I have on, etc. There is plenty of “bad behavior” that doesn’t get actioned by GMs because it skirts just enough rules that we can be told “leave the custom chat channel and/or ignore them” when these aren’t really meaningful solutions.
I don’t know if this thread is about what the title says it’s about.
But it is. Thanks to kind participants, I now know that bringing spammers/trolls to moderator’s/GM’s attention is one of Report’s intended uses and which lines to use it on for maximized effectiveness. Which is exactly what I wanted to know.
(JK!)