Chat? No! Just ads? Yes!

[Allynne]

LOL at afk checks for trade spam, but it may at least help a bit. Yes, you can turn off world chat or ignore people, but that isn't a very good way to deal with it imo. I do think that at least banning the 24/7 afk spamming is a good idea.

[Dain Firehelm]

A constructive discussion! I like that!

Reading all the replies an idea came to my mind. Any form of lucrative activity is forbidden to be done afk right? So wouldn't advertising something in world chat count as a lucrative activity, and therefore should be prohibited as well? A simple way to make an afk check on these persons would be to have a pm sent by a GM to someone who is advertising exactly every 30 minutes, and then the same rules for regular afk checks would apply. This said, i also understand that that would add to all the other tasks the game administrators already have, resulting in an excesive ammount of work for them. The plans mentioned by +C look like a more definitive answer.

And above all, the ads are annoying, but c'mon, not THAT annoying at least not to the extent that we can't be patient for the administrators' plans to be carried out.

Thanks for ur time fellow excelsorians.

cheers!

[timthree]

I will be thrilled when +C's planned separate channel happens. World chat for... well... chat. I also want to thank the OP for bringing this up.

[patrix]

Thanks +C and +N for looking into this issue. I think stopping ads being run on a macro would help enormously and restricting to 1 per hour would be excellent + the spacing of 20 lines of non ad chat.

I do not want to put any of these players on ignore as they often contribute usefully and humorously to chat conversations.

The players who are advertising this way know who they are and could easily self monitor and change their advertising behaviour, then the GM's would not have to do much monitoring at all.

Thanks all for contributing to this discussion

Michi

[Annachie]

I agree with +C, I think the ads should be once per hour, at least 20 lines apart, and attended only. It'd be nice also to restrict advertising the same vendor shop/event/champ/whatever as someone else did. So if someone else advertised that same thing already, you shouldn't. But, that's a bit more of a pain to keep track of.

What about an add Crier.
Basically, people who want to run an add submit to a nominated mod/account/forum, then a mod adds it a specialized town crier.
That town crier then calls out the adds every hourish. Oh, and charge for the privileged of course
A specialized version of the town crier custom messages. Leave the town crier for event adds, guild recruitment, birthdays, and mod messages. Much like it is now.

Then ban repetitive adds from the WC. ( I don't mind the one off "I found a cool thing, who wants to but it?")

Then just follow have the rule of 6 for champ adds. (Re-advertise after you've added 6 red candles)

[Allynne]

I like the ad crier idea as well. Why should people be able to spam world chat for free when people have to pay for the privilege of vendors in MC/TC or for world teleporters to vendor houses? I'm not saying that the spam is unbearable (at least most of the time), but it does become intrusive at times and certainly spoils game immersion for me at least.

Looking forward to +C's promised changes.

[+Nyx]

The crier idea is interesting, but we're looking for solutions that don't require scripting. If +C is going to pause work on his portal upgrades, further delaying the scripting needs for the facets and the next round of t-map updates, he might as well just spend that time adding in the trade channel. Which he said he doesn't want to do at this time, but someday.

As a bandaid to hold us all over until +C does have time to add a trade channel, I think that the changes he suggested would more than suffice.

Also, kudos everyone on actual productive discussion

[Pariah]

I generally only run ads when I am at the keyboard. However, I disagree with upping the lines or making the lines the mandatory delineation. The reason being, how would I know how many lines have passed? I would have to check the portal and count the lines from my last advertisement. Thus, you are making the portal mandatory (not a fan of this idea) if you would like to run an ad. Most of the ads seen in the screenshot are simply taking the lowest common denominator approach (every 30 mins=2 ads per hour). When people are less active in chat, this won't be ten lines apart. The same would be true if it was 1 ad per hour with the same requirement. I'm not sure why we should change rules when people simply aren't active and engaging in chat and you have the ability to turn it off? I saw a long "rhymes with hissing" contest about rules and references to drinking on WC the other day. It was annoying to me. Does that mean we should ban all discussion and debate on rules in WC? I think your expectations on being entertained, enlightened, etc. from a global population is a bit like searching for a doubloon in a landfill. There is that rare occurrence that defies explanation, but when was the last time you had an edifying experience with WC? What was the topic? How did it end? What were your contributions? WC is essentially giving everyone in a large crowd a megaphone, a few ads within the rules are about the least concerning thing I see there on a regular basis (perhaps this is just me).

All of that being said, I like having a separate trade channel. In my experience, these tend to be more active than global chat overall and could improve some other aspects of the economy as well.

[fixxer1963]

I would say that the existing rules need to be enforced before new rules are made. There are a handful of people that constantly break the rules or skirt them, despite numerous "warnings". The problem is, the warnings never come to anything. And these people know it is not likely ever to come to anything.
They brag about how they donate, and infer they have nothing to worry about because of it. And since they continue to break the rules without repercussions, other people can only assume that donating buys that right.
Maybe that gets more people to donate, thus more money for the owner of the shard, more money to run the shard. But at what cost? The degradation of world chat IMO.

[lestatzero]

I agree with +C, I think the ads should be once per hour, at least 20 lines apart, and attended only. It'd be nice also to restrict advertising the same vendor shop/event/champ/whatever as someone else did. So if someone else advertised that same thing already, you shouldn't. But, that's a bit more of a pain to keep track of.

How about restricting the advertising to the forums ... They have become an integral part of the shards regular activities anyway... You already have rules in place to not bump more than 1 time in 24 hours ... So you would not have to add anything Just make some rule changes ... Otherwise what +Coli suggested sounds great as well but forcing it to the forums will address multiple people selling the same thing...

I don't understand the Automated advertisement scripts much anyway because if they are afk... You send the person a PM and guess what, you have to wait.... Not knowing if they are there or not ... forcing a no unattended advertising rule would be a good one to cut down on the spam, and to know if they are advertising then they are at the computer...

And as far as advertising champ being up ... I say don't .... If someone wants to do a champ they should go looking for it rathher than wait for someone else to do the work of checking for them. Keep advertising of things like that to [guild .... if your not in a guild ... join one

Just my 2 gp

[Melkor]

The big ads on repeat are a little annoying but all in all I Personally don't find WC to be an issue as is. I also don't believe for one second that donating buys you any privilege to break rules. I highly doubt that the staff even see a list of who donates.

Just my 2 cents for what it's worth.

[Dementika]

Another issue i have with the handful of players using those automated adds, other than what is already mentionned before, is the fact that they Often don't even have the items they advertise. They update their message only every couple of days, sometime even week, leading to false advertising

For example, when i was trying to get a cheap BOD a month ago, 2 of the auto ads seller had them in their message, supposedly in their shop, when going there it wasnt available, when i sent them a pm, BOTH of them had similar answer : '' sorry it's been sold i haven't had time to update the message ''

Was it sold already ? Did they never have it and just wanted to create shop traffic ? Whatever the answer may be its extremely annoying and sadly there doesnt seem to be any rules enforced against false advertising like that.

I can completely understand when one person make an announcement and 5 minute later its sold, thats normal, but when you advertise an item 24-48 times a day that you don't even have, there should be consequences.

[culichi]

the spam doesn't bother me at all but I can see how it does bother some now that more people have jumped on the bandwagon. trade is a big part of the game for me so I really look forward to the trade channel happening.

[+Colibri]

A constructive topic indeed This reminds me of one particular success in US congress, you've probably all heard the joke how nothing gets done there, but one time there was a bill to restrict telemarketers and it passed in record time with great support.

Anyway, we've just discussed this briefly and decided to make a small change: now 60 minutes in between ads, and 12 lines. As well as max 12 times in a shard day.
I've read the potential issue of having to count the lines before it's safe to post, making it more work and having to use the portal, I hope it won't be an issue but we'll keep that in mind. Basically, if it happens to happen once or twice that you're just 10 lines apart it might not even be noticed. And hopefully the chat is active enough in all times of the day to not make this much of an issue.

Btw - anti-afk measure, although it would be good to have, would be hard to enforce. If you announce something, and we come by a minute later, it's basically impossible for us to prove that you were really afk at the time of the message. Might have posted it and walked away from the computer right after. The X-lines apart rule is in a way an anti-afk measure as well, though, I'm sure there will be a script out there pretty soon that ensures that an announcement is properly delayed

More info on the codex rule : http://www.uoex.net/codex rule 2.F
And I invite you all to take the extra minute and see the detailed explanation.

[Prisma]

You know what I find waaaay more annoying than spam? The constant questions from people who could try reading the wiki, or using Google, or just play around until they figure it out. I'm not saying asking questions is a bad thing but I keep seeing the same names over and over and over...

I need a Hammer of Read the Wiki to smash people with.

</rant>