can someone answer this for me??

The SG I'm a member of on Infinity will be having this awesome function, which will also include a prize of a few million Influence to any toon that can succeed. In order for our SG to do this, we had to make toons that not only look alike, but also have similar names.

So, there were about 9 or 10 of us in Atlas last week sometime, and we were hanging out under the statue, talking in 'local chat' to each other. People noticed our look-alike toons, and got a real big kick out of them. However, someone mistakenly thought that 1 of our toons was spamming the local chat (which would only be possible if you typed at a million words per minute). This was NOT the case, but somehow, 1 of my alt toons was put on silence for 24hrs. I checked the log, and my alt toon said MAYBE 4-5 things among what everyone else was saying. Clearly NOT a spam.

I sent in a question to the devs, who told me that the silence-feature is automatic, and all it takes is enough people to click on 'ignore' on any 1 toon, and that person will be silenced. Again, they made a mistake thinking my alt toon was the only one talking in local, when in fact, it was 9-10 toons with similar names all of us talking to each other in local.

I was curious about this, because I constantly get spams from a certain person EVERYDAY who spams EVERYONE telling them that a certain tf is about to start. I've asked this person to please stop spamming me, and they replied that if 1% of the server has a problem with him spamming them, he's not going to stop. I sent in a petition over this, and was told by a dev to 'just ignore him'. I find it ironic that I get told to simply ignore a spammer, yet, when my alt toon is NOT spamming, I get silenced.

Not only did this dev tell me about the auto-silence feature, they also warned that 'me and my friends shouldn't do this again, or face further disciplinary actions'. So, my question is, should I refrain from speaking in local chat to avoid further disciplinary actions? Should I tell my friends/sg members NOT to do this because of the threat I was told from this dev? And, how are we supposed to advertise for our sg function/prize awards if me and my sg are not allowed to broadcast our event??

I have posted these questions to the devs, and they haven't yet replied to me, so I was hoping to maybe get some answers here. The devs themselves saw the chat log, and saw for themselves that my toon was NOT spamming, but that with so many of us having similar names, there was a misunderstanding/mistake someone made, and my alt toon got blamed for it, then threatened not to do it again (despite I get spams all the time from this other person STILL, and get told to 'ignore' them).

Moderately interesting introduction, leading to a thinly veiled rant. Was there a question in there? Sure, there were some rhetorical ones, similar to the classic "How long do I have to put up with this"?

I would like to point out:
1) We only have your say-so about how much text you were sending.
2) Posting on the forums about GM / Moderator actions is prohibited.

Yes, I just wanted to know if I speak in local chat, or the sg I team with speaks in local chat to each other (like we did), how can I/we avoid further disciplinary actions?? I've never heard of someone getting warned (as well as a message for their friends) NOT to speak in local chat. I don't feel it was right or fair that my alt toon was singled out despite the group I was in, and to add to that, I get threatened to not speak in local chat again?
I never knew speaking in local chat was against the UA.

Your ban will more than likely be passed its 24 hour period and no Dev/GM will respond to your letters.

If you're talking to only your sgmates, keep the talk in the sg channel. There are several reason other than spam for getting silenced. It's possible the topic offended people and they put you on ignore.

Again it's only 24 hours, don't sweat it.

It happens. You got silenced without enough research put in to it -- and as it was only 24 hours there's no reason for them to actually look in to the problem.

I understand that there might have been a misunderstanding or whatever (either on the player side or dev-side), however, that's not what's bothering me.

What's bothering me is the threat I got from a dev, saying that he suggested me or my friends not do it again or face further disciplinary actions. Ok, do what again? Talk to each other in local chat about our upcoming sg event? Speaking in local chat entirely? Should I warn my entire sg NOT to speak in local chat about our server event that we'd like people to get involved with?? I'm trying to understand how advertising for a future event in local chat (what I assume is the reason I got silenced for mistakenly) can be risking a disciplinary action in the future? I can see how the devs (and people in the zone) could've made the mistake about our similar names.

Well, when someone is saying something ridiculous, I feel a need to respond. Otherwise people might think it's a reasonable statement. (Well, someone might think so, maybe, if they were kind of simple.) So, when someone says, "I never knew speaking in local chat was against the UA." a truly clueless person might well take it at face value and conclude that the game management is genuinely unreasonable.

I highly doubt it. But you just seemed to be exacerbating the issue, instead of possibly giivng advice, some reasonable information. You just seemed to be like; "Oi, you can't talk about Mods on the forum. And I don't believe you. So I'm going to make you really annoyed."

This post is full of LoLz.