Add Police NPCs/Mods to capital cities to observe chat and abuse.

Now bare with me here, I know this is going to have a ring of "Big Brother" to it. But the idea is it will help curb, or reduce abuse of the chat and game in general.

The basic idea being that we have a "bobby NPC" or "Mod Bobby"...


...now you would have one in each capital city through all 3 campaigns. They would walk around and basically observe chat logs and behaviour.

It could either be an NPC which a mod can choose to inhabit and control and observe through, or it could be a purely Mod controlled char.

Either way, you wouldnt be able to initiate conversations with it (i.e via Whispers). If they chose to speak to you, they could in the typical pink Mod text. But it would only be to tell to stop doing something or risk being banned.

It might occassionaly say something typically cockney, to keep in with Anets sense of humour. (Im from Newcastle, so dont ask me what your average Cockney says!)

I now this would add an aspect of "Anets watching you" to the game, but what stronger deterrant could you add to the game?

Its well known the best way to prevent people from breaking the rules or the law, is to have an obvious police/mod pressence. Who is going to spam the chat window, or say something inappropriate if they know a mod is, or could be, watching?

At the minute, we probably have mods who occassionally pop into outposts and cities and watch whats going on. But because we dont know their mods, they dont have any impact.

It would be alot more effective, if you saw a policeman character walking around and the spammers thought "damn....ok stop spamming now!!" It would even be a protective effort towards other risks ingame, like pedophiles chatting up young children, or people harrassing other players.

The fact is, Anet already watches everything we do. They collect data all the time on how we use your chars and what we say ingame, to try and catch botters and im sure mods spie on us all the time.

Would it really be so much worse to have an obvious administration pressence made clear in the form of a policemen or policewomen char?

The only issue I see is Anet would either have to employ new staff to man these characters 24/7, or they would have to pull staff away from other projects to do it.

But I think the benefits outweight the costs personally.

Plus if you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

I know alot of people are going to be anti "Big Brother" and think this is extreme, but can you honestly think of a better deterant to scare off spamming and abuse?

[NOTE]

The bottom line is that asking for a mod to be constantly present in all capital cities, to catch people spamming or being offensive. Whether they be glammed up inside a policeman character, to hide their identity or not, would be Anet's choice.

But if people know a mod is there and watching, who can stick an instant ban on you. They will stop spamming and being abusive.

lol you cant be serius if they put this i want commandos that will help you with missions,minimarkets(no they dont sell minipets),mcdonalds,vodafone,and many others


now seriusly i dont think if they put a policeman(man i cant stop laughing)
they gonna solve the problem

mods...again? Can you say abuse?

if you dont like naughty words either turn your parental control on,or in the case of other such abuse,grow a skin.this is teh intarnetz yar?

Naughty words aren't as much of a problem as people's disgusting demeanors are.

Lions Arch
Kaineng Center
Kamadan

Each with multiple districts, and each on all servers..... that would be a LOT of people employed to babysit. Not to mention there are other cities that would need it just as much.

Ascalon
Augury Rock
Droknars Forge
Senji's Corner
Cavalon
House Zu Heltzer
Sunspear Sanctuary
Kodash Bazaar
Bone Palace

And people will always find a new place to spam. I often laugh when I enter a quiet little town like Maguuma Stade and see a total of 4 people in the city, and one person is spamming WTS Bone 10g each!

If anything, it would have to be a computer controlled system, but I doubt that could be done fairly and effectively. There is already a spam deterent which tells you you have been posting too much. There are ways around it, but not much, it slows people down some at least.

I also bet anyone hired to do this job would fall asleep, and not get the job done 100% of the time. Sitting there watching for someone to spam endlessly would be rather boring, and most of the spammers are real people who just don't know how to sell things. Finding bots by watching spamming isn't the best way to do it.

If this is a vote, I vote nay.

Too prone to abuse.

First to OP then below a question anyone

"'ello 'ello 'ello whats all this then" would be a typical thing to say

Also the AI in some ChatBot's is amazing so the copper could pickup on phrases that shouldn't be being said and people that swear missing leeters or adding '.' or '_' should be bannable as they may not use the filter or be offended but 'filter dodging' should be bannable if repeated.

Question : I have had people start whispering me with all sorts of things and most i ignore but there are a set few things that i feel strongly about and i react with things i maybe shouldn't of said BUT spelt correctly. Now for the question. When they pm you annoy you and you react and they say " i'm reporting you" should i worry? I didn't try dodge filter in anyway but life always seems to screw someone like me over instead of the person provoking me. and after reading the Q&A forum (or tech support) alot of claimingly/seemingly inocent players seem to get banned.

Anet the real things you need to ban lay below

heres a better idea:

make a new command called /abuse ! Every time you use this command the chot log is recorded and sent in for review.

this would only work in a perfect scenario. However, how do you propose we get these mods in place? Make them paid Anet employees? It's obvious they are already horribly understaffed. Make them volunteers? Abuse, arbitrary behavior, not adhering to their own rules, making up rules, having a bad day, etc etc.
Until Anet starts behaving as a professional company (being timely, listening to the customer base, having a community relations rep who doesn't constantly get pissy and offer ultimatums), I would only see them messing this up, too.
I agree it is needed, but with the state GW and Anet are in, I don't see it being done right.

As long as you pay their bills...

actually the best way to prevent people form breaking the rules or the law are to enforce them and let people know that they're being enforced. if spammers started seeing that other spammers were getting banned, they probably would stop themselves.

and how would you program an AI that could detect what is ok or not? what happens if you have someone who's just a faster typer having a conversation with someone else? might seem like spam to a computer program.

i've always thought the best way to get rid of spam if Anet really wants to would be to just have their mods pop in at random times and silence and/or ban spammers.

I think it'd be good to have moderators ban people for spamming consistently, but players should not know who/where they are.

/not signed - as the others have said, far too prone to abuse. Even the suggested /abuse command would get abused all to hell just as /bug did.

This is completely too constricting.

Reminds me of WoW and their absurd naming policy, i.e. "We're sorry but since Sacred Cow contains religious overtones, we have changed your name until you come up with something else."

I read an article about how this guy just messed with Blizzard and created relatively inoffensive names that Blizzard deemed inappropriate, finally coaxing them into letting him keep the name "Beer Goggles" for one of his characters.

Beer goggles deemed offensive as a name?

Now, I like GW. It's very easy to pick up and play, no monthly fees, they make sure to add fun little events now and again along with Christmas, summer festivals, and Halloween and they don't care what your name is as long as it doesn't have curse words or some kind of offensive tone to a race or people.

Now if we had police NPCs, naming policies would soon follow, and then you'd have the Anet police knocking at your front door to take you away into the GW Reorientation Camp.

Let's keep 1984 away from GW. We get enough of that bull in the real world.

Well that was basically the idea. I just glammed it up a bit! The police would be Mods!!

Well it was obviously trying for a laugh, aswell as trying to make a suggestion :P!

But I just think a mod presence should be known in capital cities, so people know if they get out of line someone is watching!

All Capital Cities huh? Because Henge of Denravi really needs police to control that constant riot...

Why must people have Anet hold their hand while they play this game? Seriously you can't handle spam? Oh poor baby there are too many words on the screen for you to read? WAAA WAAA WAAAAAH!!!

All I see when I read posts like Wilian's is: "I got away with spamming for too long and will cry out as immaturely as possible because I can't really justify breaking the rules."

I can imagine you as one of those people that stands around in Lion's Arch D1and tells people to stop spamming or you will report them. Get a life.

First of all, I never spam in this game.

Secondly, learn to ignore or shut chat channels off if you can't take the heat.

Who's the real immature people here? The people that spam or the people that cry about it on these forums?