Curse

mrgoat · Oct 17, 2006, 03:36 AM // 03:36

(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)

Tyggen · Oct 17, 2006, 10:02 AM // 10:02

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

Amity and Truth · Oct 17, 2006, 10:21 AM // 10:21

I suggested something similiar. It was mostly ignored back then, sadly. I'm all for it though.

Besides, human fantasy can only bypass something they know of. They don't know how you've put your filters.

**Marty Silverblade** · Oct 17, 2006, 10:39 AM // 10:39

You would also have to fix 'selling', 'buying', 'purchasing', and so on. If you're whispering a guildie saying 'I was thinking of buying that sephis axe i was offered for 45k'. It would be sent to the trade section. I'd say you would only apply your thingy if it is in local chat.

fachtna · Oct 17, 2006, 02:17 PM // 14:17

all you need do is have an admin person sit in droks or kaineng dist 1 for 30 mins

and instantly ban anyone selling on the wrong tab
and instantly ban anyone spamming multiple messages

if you got two or 3x1 week bans, you would soon mend your ways

it would also sort out a lot of the bot sellers

Tyggen · Oct 17, 2006, 02:57 PM // 14:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amity and Truth

Besides, human fantasy can only bypass something they know of. They don't know how you've put your filters.

Local: WTS Random crap 5k!
"hm.. it was sent to trade?"
*enter + up + enter*
"hm.. it was still sent to trade? I know!"
*enter, change to "W TS"*
That took a whole 5 seconds to figure out, other filters will fail just as quickly

mrgoat · Oct 17, 2006, 05:05 PM // 17:05

I knew I was going to get these comments along the lines of "nah, they'll just bypass your filters". The whole point here is that you make your own filters, or borrow a set from a group of people that put a little time into keeping a set up to date. Of course any filter that doesn't change can eventually get bypassed. This is *client side* and it's to *supress the line*, not "move it to trade chat on the server".

It's not "human imagination" vs. "static filter" it's "human imagination" vs. "human imagination-fueled filter that undergoes frequent updating". Let's try it: I posted one regex that stops all variations of wts. Here: "[Ww]\s*[Tt]\s*[Ss|Bb]\s* matches all variations of wts and wtb, with any number of spaces, zero or more. (It's also far better than the current filter) I thought that up just as fast, maybe faster, than a spammer thought to put in a space. I can think of one to cut out every variation of "selling" and "buying" in about 5 minutes. If a few people just keep track of the popular ways to spam, add patterns to match, and distribute the list, we could probably keep up reasonably well.

I mean, it's easier to implement than an auction house, that's for sure. Go ahead, try it out. To beat my rudimentary filter, you already have to type whole words. You want one to filter "want to sell/want to buy"? Here: "want\s*t[:alpha:]\s*[[$s]el*|bu*y]/i". It matches all variants of "want to sell", including using a $ as an S, any number of l's at the end of sell, using want t sell, want ti sell, want tu sell etc, and removing the u in "buy", and all upper/lowercase variations. I've now spent ten minutes, and covered today's most popular spams.

Get 10-15 people in on this, and spammers'll have to fight very hard to keep spamming anyone who uses it. Or, more specifically, they can spam all they want, we just won't see it. I don't want to eliminate the trade spam, just to make it more profitable to stick it in the trade channel.

Next week we'll cover bayesian filtering.

lyra_song · Oct 17, 2006, 05:14 PM // 17:14

Ah interesting....a client side filter would be VERY COOL!!!

:]

/signed

Amity and Truth · Oct 17, 2006, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyggen

blub

Did you read the thread at all?
You know, the spammers don't even know their spam falls for YOUR PERSONAL Clientside Filter. Everyone might have configured it differently. With the ability of such lists the players themself could update the list just as fast as the spammers invent new way to bypass. And as those lists are clientside, the spammer doesn't know he is blocked.

hyro yamaguchi · Oct 17, 2006, 05:29 PM // 17:29

How will people know what you have in your filter? They won't. And all "variations" I am seeing is W TS or WT S or something like that, not very original.

I think this is a very good idea.

But as Marty points out, you should be able to do this for each channel seperately. So that guild/alliance/trade/whisper won't be changed. (offcourse the idea would be pointless if banning WTS and WTB would affect the trade channel as well).

Oh and by the way....ban everyone? Lol silly boy/girl

mrgoat · Oct 17, 2006, 05:39 PM // 17:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amity and Truth

Did you read the thread at all?
You know, the spammers don't even know their spam falls for YOUR PERSONAL Clientside Filter. Everyone might have configured it differently. With the ability of such lists the players themself could update the list just as fast as the spammers invent new way to bypass. And as those lists are clientside, the spammer doesn't know he is blocked.

Actually, I was also thinking that those of us who know regexes by heart already can provide and update lists that those without the time/knowledge/inclination/skill can use, and the spammers would have access to those, like everyone else. They wouldn't know who's using them, or if they had made their own alterations though. They could probably find ways to beat the public list of filters, but it'll become increasingly difficult, and take away time that they could just be spamming the trade channel.

mrgoat · Oct 17, 2006, 05:46 PM // 17:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by hyro yamaguchi

How will people know what you have in your filter? They won't. And all "variations" I am seeing is W TS or WT S or something like that, not very original.

I think this is a very good idea.

But as Marty points out, you should be able to do this for each channel seperately. So that guild/alliance/trade/whisper won't be changed. (offcourse the idea would be pointless if banning WTS and WTB would affect the trade channel as well).

Yeah, by channel is the best way. My whisper, team, guild and alliance config's would probably be empty, but some people might, for instance, want to use this as a custom profanity filter for, say, pugging. "f.*g\s*monk\s*heal\s*.*wtf/i" for instance would match a lot of variations on "f*--g monk, heal me WTF!!"

Franco · Oct 17, 2006, 06:24 PM // 18:24

Just disable chat, what do you mean Spam? I find guildwars a very anti-social game in towns, In guilds and alliance yes, there is always chat going on, but in towns no one talks to each other, the W.T.S and W.T.B actually help other people know there's life out there

mrgoat · Oct 17, 2006, 06:38 PM // 18:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Franco

Just disable chat, what do you mean Spam? I find guildwars a very anti-social game in towns, In guilds and alliance yes, there is always chat going on, but in towns no one talks to each other, the W.T.S and W.T.B actually help other people know there's life out there

Spam: People using the general chat to hawk their wares. That's what I mean. What did you think I meant? It's not like we have many people trying to sell us viagra in Droks D1.

I don't want to turn the general chat *off*, I want it *back*. GW could be more social in towns, if anyone could get a conversation in between this crystalline sword and that req 8 fellblade.

lyra_song · Oct 17, 2006, 08:40 PM // 20:40

I think another great possibility with this idea is for BUYERS.

Filter for a specific item!!!

im starting to like this idea a lot more ^^;

mrgoat · Oct 18, 2006, 06:41 PM // 18:41

Bump.

hyro yamaguchi · Oct 18, 2006, 07:27 PM // 19:27

So.....looks like a solid idea to me....when will Anet implant it?

mrgoat · Oct 18, 2006, 09:35 PM // 21:35

Dunno. Haven't heard word yet on wether or not the dev team is interested. I would figure if they decided to do something like this, it'd a good ways after nightfall's release.

Glospey · Oct 19, 2006, 12:05 AM // 00:05

I'm all for this implementation. Politely asking people to use a different channel has little to no effect. Insulting the lot of them usually provokes a response from spammers and other players (return insults and support, respectively). This would be most beneficial as those who don't know how to turn "trade" on (which is usually the spammers argument) won't have to use filters so they're happy and those of us who want people to use the appropriate channel will be happy as we'll only see it there. The only downside that I see to this is my own principal that some others have taken up: I adamently refuse to do business (buying or selling) with anyone using the main chat. If I'm filtering, how will I know they're not just double-spamming. Of course, if enough people refuse to deal with these punks for using main chat, that could be an alternative by itself

On a similar note, when is ANet going to give Guild Recruitment it's own channel? They're the other third of mainchat spams.

xiao1985 · Oct 19, 2006, 05:36 AM // 05:36

/unsigned

untick local/trade ftw