Curse

hyro yamaguchi · Oct 19, 2006, 01:12 PM // 13:12

Xiao, don't you think that general chat serves other purposes than buying/selling?

Talking to other people is one of the best parts of an mmorpg IMO, but where could ou have a talk with people? Most places are too quiet, and the busy places get an overload of spam.

mrgoat · Oct 19, 2006, 02:16 PM // 14:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by xiao1985

/unsigned

untick local/trade ftw

Then how would one... talk to people in town?

Glospey · Oct 20, 2006, 01:56 AM // 01:56

Oh, I know the answer!!! PICK ME!!! PICK ME!!!!

YOu wouldn't!! :-D No chatting allowed. Only spammers get to use channels!!! Didn't you know? All this talk about having ACTUAL conversations! All this time we've had it all wrong. The gaming community was never founded so that people could play games with other people. We're just supposed to stare at our screens and play with ourselves.

freekedoutfish · Oct 20, 2006, 07:44 AM // 07:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrgoat

(I searched for this and found nothing. Is search broke again?)

So. We have a very, very weak filter on the all-chat that moves lines containing WTS to the trade chat. We have no forthcoming auction house. What we do have, is a terrible spam problem choking out general chat with wts and wtb spam in many, many districts. I don't know about you, but I personally, would like to have general chat back.

So, we've got basic pattern matching in place already. The chat system appears to be stolen largely from IRC anyway. Here's my idea:

Let users write lists of regular expressions (basic ones even, no backreferences or anything) to filter spam from at least the all chat. Ideally, there's no reason not to allow the use of the same code for each chat channel, but you'd need different lists of regexes for each. It could be done client-side, with just a config file filled with regexes, one per line, arranged by channel. When a line comes in chat, your machine, the client, can run it by a list of regexes and just supress the on-screen output if it matches. (One other thing: Let users turn it off, or just run a blank spam file for possible preformance reasons. I don't know what language GW is written in, or how efficient it is at string processing)

The whole thing would be done on the client end, incurring no extra load on the servers, and it could, effectively push spam back to the trade channel, if it gets used that way. It could also act as your own personal profanity filter, if you want to use it that way.

For instance:
----begin config----
[general]
[Ww]\s*[Tt]\s*[Ss]\s*
---end config----

Would supress any line in general chat with W or w, followed by 0 or more spaces, followed by T or t with 0 or more spaces, followed by S or s with 0 or more spaces. Already a huge improvement over the current "filter", as it would match WTS, wts, WtS, W ts, W T S, W TS, W T S, w t s, etc.

Surely there's at least a couple more people out there who're familiar with regexes. It only takes, like, 10 (number not cryptographically random

) of us to put in a little continuing work to put out a block file for others to use. If Anet won't do anything about it, just let us do it. Surely people will still try to spam, but if we just keep up with their evasion techniques for a little while, it'll be more profitable to move back to trade chat for... you know, .... trading.

Worst case, spammers have to at least be literate, writing stuff like "Good Sirs! I desire to trade away this magnificent sword of purest crystal, forged in the fires of the HoH chest itself! Fifteen glorious points per cent, Up fifty! One hundred k plus four score globs of ectoplasmic goo are all I ask!"

And if they'll do that, I say the entertainment is enough.

For more information on regular expressions see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regex , or your friendly neighborhood geek.

Anyway... Comments? Thoughts? Point out why this idea is fundamentally flawed? (Aside from asking anet to re-implement a regex matching function, I'm presuming that since it's been done dozens of times, and they freakin' wrote guild wars, that they've got the talent at least)

When they banned WTS in local chat, they started using W T S and W.T.S. and every other alternative combination.

It wont stop it because they will find others.

It would mean users are constantly having to re-add to their filters and it would get tedious and just annoy them.

Plus that kind of coding might be a bit technical for alot of people.

Coverticus · Oct 20, 2006, 01:01 PM // 13:01

Client side filtering sounds a good idea, as long as you are au fait enough with how to set filtering up (or ANet gave GW an intuitive GUI for it). Though saying that, you have to be careful with what you set up as you could inadventatly block legitimate conversations which could be quite interesting.

Of course, if ANet decided to give us poor people the Auction House we have been after for so long now, you would find that quite a large percentage of WTB/WTS would drop off the chats.

mrgoat · Oct 20, 2006, 04:41 PM // 16:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by freekedoutfish

When they banned WTS in local chat, they started using W T S and W.T.S. and every other alternative combination.

It wont stop it because they will find others.

It would mean users are constantly having to re-add to their filters and it would get tedious and just annoy them.

Plus that kind of coding might be a bit technical for alot of people.

There's no solution to spam that doesn't require continued adaptation. Spammers adapt, therefore, the solution must adapt with them. Arenanet obviously doesn't have the resources to plant a person on spam control technology, since even automatic-adaptive systems need input on what is "spam" and what isn't "spam" from somewhere.

I guess there's a possibility that having to tune your filterset once in a while, or download an updated one from somewhere, could be more annoying than spam, yes. In that case, I reccomend you just deal with the spam. And you're right, this wouldn't stop it completely, but it would make a real big dent.

And the best part: They get no notification whatsoever that any particular person didn't hear them spam. There's NO feedback on wether their evasion techniques are effective, or if there's just no one buying their crap.

Sir Mad · Oct 20, 2006, 08:15 PM // 20:15

Quote:

It doesn't matter, if the buyers/sellers want to advertise in local they'll bypass the system no matter how many filters you put in place.

Human fantasy > chat filtering

The thing is this system would be a local system, aka: the WTSers would not know their WTS line is filtered for players A, B, and C (and at the same time they would see it on the local chat normally).

/signed

Aundora Rayne · Apr 09, 2007, 07:40 AM // 07:40

OK I have read all of the above post and the people disagreeing with this post have absolutely no grasp of this concept or are being very ignorant. This is an absolutely fantastic idea and should most definately be encorporated into the game. It would be very simple to set up/use/maintain and it would be very effective at removing spam.

For people who aren't in the know, this is how it could work:

You have just seen hundreds of people writing W T S in all chat, you dont want to hear this so you do the following:

1. Open a small window from the menu.
2. You type "W T S" into the text box.
3. You tick which channels to filter from a tick box selection: all[ ], guild[ ], alliance[ ] (as many as you want)

Now what happens
Before you get any message you computer checks that "W T S" isnt in it, if it is it simply doesn't display it. The seller has NO IDEA, the text doesnt move channel, it is simply not displayed on your screen.

Things to understand:

1. No-one can see what you filter - therefore they cannot "get around" your filter. THEY DO NOT EVEN KNOW THEY ARE FILTERED.
2. If you do not want to use this feature - you do not have to (but I am sure you would want to!)
3. It doesnt just have to be WTS you block, how about your own profanity filter?
4. There would also be an edit mode, a list of all the current filtered words - just select one to edit or delete - simple!

Absolutely 100% /signed,
Fantastic idea.

I see absolutely no reason why anyone working for anet with the power to include this would have hesitations, and I hope to see it in game soon!

Lydz · Apr 09, 2007, 09:09 AM // 09:09

Hmm...it sounds like this is a very long way around to something that could be solved using one of the following methods:

1. Implement an auction house. It's probably the single most requested feature yet we don't have one

2. Place GMs in game who hand out warnings or ban people (since spamming is against the EULA)

3. Allow people to link items to chat (such as weapons), but only allow this to happen in trade chat. Considering most of these spammers are too lazy to wait their turn to paste their message into chat again, I think they will be too lazy to manually type everything out in local chat once this system is in place

I'm also worried that your requested system could slow down low-end users, especially when entering Kaineng Centre or another trade hub

It's nice to see that so many people are against spamming though!

MithranArkanere · Apr 09, 2007, 02:20 PM // 14:20

There is no greater despise than not to appreciate.

This is, so far, the best way I know.

You read a WTS in a channel you don't like? You add a filter for that.
After some time, the spammers would really notice thay don't sell a single think, because eveyone would ignore their selling rants.