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Cleaning up Thunder Bluff
An anonymous reader writes "Colleen Hannon at Gamers With Jobs is mad as hell, and she's not going to take it anymore. 'Unless you're playing Neopets, online servers are full of foul-mouthed, racist junk-monkeys. The hate-filled miasma they spatter around them has reached the point where many people who could be on those services won't go, and those who do brave it won't go without a posse and riot gear.' She plays out every side of the argument: why things have gotten as bad as they've become, what publishers have and haven't done about it, and why she thinks things are now at unacceptable levels of incivility. She's calling on us gamers to get together and figure this out, because: 'If we wait for the new sheriff in town to fight this battle for us we might not like the town we're left with.' Is it as bad as she says?"
Seriously - it's the only way to retain any hope for mankind :)
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Back in the day, and still up until now even on this board. We have moderators. They should have chat moderators in games such as wow. Repeat offenders should be banned from chat rather than the whole game. Someone starts lipping off incoherently, they get kicked and if they keep it up banned until further notice. Being banned from general and shout etc would be a server pain. Theres ways around but still ... it might be a start.
Me too. I worry about what the future of video gaming holds for me when I read review after review forgiving a game's insubstantial single-player mode because "online play is what it's all about." What about those of us who play video games (as opposed to sports, board games, etc.) as a way to have a bit of fun without human interaction? It looks like the best I can hope for is that I'll become too busy to play before everything becomes a foul-mouthed back alley wrapped up in a thin MMO tortilla.
If the video game industry wasn't an extended boys locker room where everything goes because there's no parents or teachers around? I worked for six years in the video game industry where such childish behavior was the norm. The supervisors called each other "douche bags". A woman lead tester was fired for calling a tester an "a**hole" for screwing off on her project, never mind that male testers routinely called each other "hos" and "bitches". Maybe it's time for the video game industry to clean up its act.
I think you mean Barrens General.
All too often, it's not quite enough. Ignore would be great if, to use WoW as an example, you could ignore an unlimited number of people AND have it ignore the account as a whole, not just the toon causing the problem. I care less about profanity than I do people spamming channels, but when I /ignore someone...I want them completely ignored.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I implore anyone who uses voicechat to use some kind of push-to-talk button. I don't want to hear you breathing. I don't want to hear you argue with your mom. I basically don't need to hear you unless you saying something you want me to hear.
Not really (its a TS/Vent issue - they don't implement it), but our solution is to just recommend using a push to talk key. Mouse Button 4 for me.
Mod point free since 2001
General rule: if a=b and b=c, then a=c. Therefore: If 'poo' isn't offensive to you, and 'shit' is equivalent to 'poo', then 'shit' should not be offensive to you. There is no inherent property in words which makes them 'bad'. If there is a euphamism or generally accepted substitute for the 'bad word', then it is not really bad. Check your premise, 'offended' people.
http://xkcd.com/386/
...the louder the people will get. If you tell an idiot in chat to hush up, does he? No. Instead he doubles his attacks and focuses them at you. You cannot change this, sorry, it cannot be done. Instead, use the functions and tools in game to ignore people and leave chat channels. I am sure there is some UI thing you can get that will help you block people in chat who curse, yell, whatever.
What a dumb article though. Really, how can anyone believe that they can clean up the chat rooms where people with anonymity reside. It just wont happen. It takes people years of online participation in one community or another to stop using LOL let along stop attacking people.
You can use this as your litmus test though. If "teh" and "pwn" are still in use, nothing has changed and people are still tards online.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
Sorry if you just don't get it, that solution isn't good enough. It's not about naughty words, it's about hate speech. I don't want to see it, I don't want my kids exposed to it -- regardless of whether I (or they) can choose to add someone to an ignore list after the fact.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Uno on Live is a more civilized game? More mature maybe, but more civilized no. As one of the first camera-enabled Live games, and a slower paced (compared to an FPS) game it quickly became a pool of nudity. And unfortunately not the "hot grits" kind, but the "dude, wtf!??!" kind.
1) As others mentioned, leave general chat. This should resolve close to 90% of the problems.
2) Find a game not filled with immature teenagers (or adults, trust me they can be just as dumb) or another server. I played WoW for a LONG time and never had much problem with the discussions on RP servers. I never did play on a straight PvP or general server. I have since moved to Ryzom, and the CSRs are quick to mute or kick off anyone doing this sort of stupidity.
3) For games with voice chat, turn it off. Seriously, I would not make people suffer through hearing my voice, even for helpful communication. Please do not torture us with yours. Of course, it is muted whenever I do play an online FPS, so I guess I am saving my own ears.
4) If people are being offensive, report it to the Moderators (or whatever your game calls them). I do not think an MMO exists where there are not moderators of some form. Most of them are willing to help and will resolve issues like this, if you present the issues in a calm and reasonable manner.
Now, you can almost forget everyone suddenly changing their ways, and unfortunately there isn't much you can do to force them to change. While people can be muted or temporarily banned, you will almost never get permanent removal unless you blatantly violent the EULA. Short of making threats or committing some sort of illegal act, they will probably return. The best you can do is limit exposure using the tools provided by the game. It is not the best solution, but if the people acting like total idiots find out they are without any friends and that no one wants to play with them, perhaps they will finally leave. (Though, that may also be wishful thinking.)
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
i believe this is utterly appropriate at this time.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
You are right.. You have freedom of speech to say anything you want... That doesn't mean you have the right to be heard.... That's the whole issue, isn't it? Just cause you gotta say it doesn't mean I gotta listen....
A witty saying proves nothing. Voltaire (1694-1778)
OMG wher is mankirks wife? I ben looking for hours!
I don't know whether it is cultural or instinctual, but when boys compete, they "trash-talk" eachother. It is the competitive spirit of the game bleeding into language.
Think about a street basketball game and the "yo momma's so fat" jokes. The same thing happens in online FPS games.
Players tend to build up an immunity to such insults, so there is an arms race of conceiving increasingly offensive verbal jabs. It gets worse and worse.
The solution, of course, is to just ignore offensive words altogether. Think "sticks and stones" and get on with the game! Racism in online games is a joke anyway--nobody knows your race so they can't mean it seriously. There is nothing special or magical about taboo words, either. Hearing "swear" words only hurts your feelings because you let them. You have nobody to blame but yourself.
If you can't handle trash talk in competitive games, whether they are on the court or on the net, you can either stop playing or stop giving taboo words power over you.
Alternatively, start a girls league or have referees which enforce a code of good sportsmanship. Pick-up games of basketball and of counter-strike don't have refs, so you will always have boys' competitive spirits showing in the language.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Did anyone play pick up basketball games at their local playground growing up? Racist, sexist, homophobic, profane... you name it! It was called smack talk and some people were incredible at it. This is the modern day equivalent. If you are a 30-year gamer with a job (like me) and you go into a game filled with teenagers... guess what? Smack talk. It's no different than heading to your local basketball court and trying to hang with the teenagers there.
Actually no freedom of speech does not apply to game servers because they are the equivalent of private property, I'm a member of the gaming clan and we have a ZERO tolerance policy on racial terms and most profanity. if you use it your warned, the next time your kicked, and if you comeback and do it again your banned. we ban a lot of people but we gain even more because we run a clean server.
I have my preferences, you have yours. Big fucking deal. If there are a lot of people like me out there, why shouldn't a game company cater to us? It's not like the people like you and the people like me can't both be satisfied.
Seriously, get a clue before you spout off your nonsense. If you ever have kids, you'll learn that parenting is not easy, and that making sure your kids are exposed to the right influences is one of the keys to ensuring that they establish behavior patterns that are healthy for them. Teaching them to be able to handle bad situations and assholes is important, but I want to be able to do that on my own terms. Then again, I *care* how my kids turn out, so the above may not apply to you.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You do NOT have the right to say whatever you want, whereever you want, espcially in someone elses home. OR in this case, on someone elses virtual worlds. It's there's they own it. It is not censorship, it is a rule. No one is making you play thr game, it'sd voluntary. In exchange for agreeing to play by the rules, and usually a fee, you can play.
"Would you like to be locked out of all games your favorite publisher makes for NOT using "profanity"?"
no, bur I wouldn't play, and I wouldn't tell them they can't do it. There house, their rules.
And before you do, don't go off the deep end and compar it to something else. This is a PRIVATE game we are talking about, keep it in context.
"You cannot have the right to express your opinions if you deny that right to others."
Yes tou can, as a matter of fact.
Go to a Casino and express you're opinion the a pit boss is an ass. You will be asked to leave, because they have the right to deny ANYBODY service. Just like the MMORPG you are playing.
""I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." "
Sure, when talking about the GOVERNMENT.
Here's an idea, next time your at someone's house trash talk until they throw you out. Then try to get a legal case against them for censorship. Good fucking luck
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Do you happen to have a reference for that?
It was an employee posting on their forums but unfortunately I don't have a link. The post I'm remembering though, mentioned the problem being SpamSentry's queued-spam reporting. SpamSentry - by default, I think, queues up spams received and alerts you to them hourly. If you batch-report them to a GM at that point, the spammer is long-gone. That is: the character used to generate the spam has been deleted, so your report no longer helps Blizzard because apparently their logs don't correlate the character sending the spam-tells to the account name.
If you send a report the instant the spam is received, there's a chance that a GM will see it in time to do something about it. Based on their customer-service response time though, it seems unlikely.