User moderation:Secret chat police

Lately I've gotten back onto guild wars and have gotten factions and nightfall within the past week. As I've played I've noticed a growing problem, !all channel spam.

I used to keep the trade channel turned off and it cut way down on the amount of spam I got, but now it's out of control and I don't expect A-net to sit around all day moderating each and every city, so I started thinking.

What if players were inducted into a 'secret police' moderation job without being able to ban other players? I was thinking of making a channel specifically for spammers that is by default off. When a player starts spamming massively the 'secret police' officer would give them a considerate nonthreatening warning. If that player continued the secret police officer would type /mute "offender's name" and they'd be restricted to the spam chat channel, the guild chat channel, the whisper channel, and the team chat channel for a month. They'd also receive instructions via e-mail on how to dispute their muting.

When muted timestamped chatlogs of what that player was sending would be saved to the server for the duration of their muting, if disputed then a 'senior officer' or an A-net person would review what they were doing and either remove the mute, lengthen the mute if the player was being REALLY bad, or if the officer was blatantly abusing powers remove their powers, or depending on the circumstances ban their account.

On recruiting new officers, I think there would have to be three ranks in it, one that could report players to an officer that can mute them, the basic officer with muting powers, and a senior officer that reviews disputes and manages the other officers.

Officers would also have NO distinguishing markings to normal players.

Please critique and help mold this idea, if implemented correctly it could stop spamming without bringing the guild wars developers away from developing the game, or costing them money to hire on extra staff to moderate.

Edit:No, twelve year olds would not be recruited into this, only people that were, at minimum, eighteen years old would be.

uh no. turn off local chat if you dont want to see that bs. personally, i wouldnt 'trust' a 12 year old to send a 'considerate message' and 'mute' someone while 'only spamming'. dont quit your day job.

I think player moderators is a good idea. I know RuneScape has them. I don't know if it has to be exactly like what you said, but I think you're on the right track. ArenaNet could nominate some people that could stop the problem. I don't know if they should be forced to go out of their way to doing it, but they should at least have the power. Also, the people that are selected should be responsible people. Alongside that, they should be limited to muting a number of spammers, 10 maybe, a day. Higher officers should have the power to repeal these mutings. That's my two cents. I hope they help

EDIT- Sapmming is very much an issue. It isn't about just truning off local chat. You shouldn't be forced to do that and lose the oppurtunity to find groups and talk to people in towns. Inducting player moderators would be a great idea. And no, they shouldn't nominate a 12 year old trying to shut people up. The inductees should be sent emails telling them that they have been nominated and can take the job if they accept. This process should be similar to alpha testing invitations. A random 12 year old wouldn't be likely to be chosen, but rather a mature, responsible adult, or at least someone older than 12...

Why even bother? Don't like spam turn off All and use party, or don't try having conversations in trade cities.

All i see coming from this, is one of the "officers" about to quit enters as many peoples names as possible.

Only real way to "solve" the spam issue is since a majority of spam is from trade, for Anet to implement an Auction House/Player Store system. Thus cutting down at least 90% of the spam right there.

Replicant, they put in a trade channel for that. People turned it off because they didn't want to buy anything, thusly they moved to the all channel to spam their wares, as the occasional player buys.

If they don't want young teenage antics then they can set a required age limit of eighteen years old, thus not allowing the age group responsible for the majority of spam (And harassment, but that's a different story) to do anything detrimental to other players.

As with many volunteer organizations Anet could require full address information and credit card info as well as other verifying information to be sure that whoever applies can be held liable for their actions.

Good idea if everyone were adults and knew what they were doing. This is not the case unfortunately.

Not everyone would have the moderation ability, nor would people that would abuse it be selected knowingly. Players that were muted-which is the extent of what these moderators can do-would be automatically notified upon being muted how to file an appeal, when they were muted a five minute chat log of the player and the moderator would be saved to the server automatically. It would be timestamped to the second, to show how frequently the spam was being made.

Also, a three day mute would be available for people trading in the !all channel in major cities where this would be disruptive.