Player Discussion on How to Resolve Unsolicited Advertisements in the Forums

Any trial account that posts the same thing more then twice should be banned and have all its posts temp deleted until a moderator can review them.

I agree on Lisars suggestion.
If we do not let actual player trial accounts be able to post or put more hinderence to them...
No.. please do not let that happen.

Maybe a stronger filter.

Filters never work.

I agree that trial accounts have no need to post except maybe in the "Player Questions" forum. If they're limited to one forum, it should be far easier to moderate. But really, trial accounts have no need to post. Most people on paid accounts don't post, and yet still manage to play the game. Asking questions in-game usually gets you an answer anyway.

Only thought about this for the stronger filter...
Lets just say a hypothetical inf seller company called annoyinginfseller with www and com. This company is already on the blacklist of ncsoft, so they add the following names to their filter.
So ]www. annoyinginfseller. com (made in space so it would not be a properlink, which would not have gone anywhere anyway)
w w w . a n n o y i n g i....
w.w.w.a.n.n.o.y...
w_w_w_A_n_n...
w-w-w-a...
w*w*w*a*n....
... any kind of dot thingamingy that you can put between the address while still seeing the address.
That was sort of what i meant with stronger filter.
Seeing your words memphis well I guess filters are a no-go and the sheer size this filter will get...
sooo:

Saw a better suggestion by another player.
If we are to pose more restrictions on trial accounts, then let them only be able to post in one or two places. Like player questions.
and.. give assistant mod status to several players in that forum only. With special orders.. any inf seller commercial ... kill it.

That way new players can ask their question in a forum and we will restrict the spam from coming into the rest of the forum. And most likely a quick deletion of any of said unwanted spam.
Said mods would not be able to say ban an account, but sort of mute the account maybe? Such a muting would be announced to the devs and they can do the appropriate deletion, ban.. what they do.

Here's a really far out there solution. Don't click on any of the threads.

It's worked wonders for me and it hasn't taken any effort because they aren't even trying to hide them. So far it has been as hard as not clicking on banner ads on pretty much every website in existence.

I'm not saying it's cool they are flooding these forums, but going all forum-nazi on them is pretty stupid. Just report the thread and move on, nothing more is required of you. Do that and you have done your good deed to protect this game for yet another day. Also you only need to report it once and only to the forum moderators. People like Posi, don't need to be told about it.

I really don't think it requires any additional solution than already exists. Report, delete, life goes on.

Or, as someone upthread mentioned, give players mod rights and see how quickly the ****-storm happens lol.

I hate to say "I told you so," but back when everyone was clamoring for removing or gimping the e-mail system because of spam, one of the points I made was that if the e-mail system were nerfed enough, the spammers would move on to more annoying means of spamming people. In Issue 16, they changed the e-mail system so that you have the option to block e-mail from everyone except your friends and/or supergroup mates.

Whether you think this was a good or a bad idea, one of the side effects of shutting down this avenue of spam is that the spammers are going to resort to new, more annoying ways of spamming people. Seriously, did anyone think they would just give up?

Honestly, if I were a spammer, I can think of many different ways of spamming that are much more annoying, and I've seen some of them in use already. Posting messages here on the forums is one of but many. I hate to say it, but we're never going to be rid of spam completely unless you shut down all communications between players entirely. (Or get rid of the Invention System; there was no spam before Issue 9. But that's another interesting discussion for another day.) Frankly, I don't understand why it's such a big deal. It's not like we've never seen spam before. Just ignore it, or report it if you're motivated enough, and get on with your life. On the good side, at least spam in City of Heroes has always been relatively low-volume compared to e-mail in general and in other games.

What's kind of depressing is that I'll bet it's working pretty well. I'd bet that there are some weak-a** people who saw the post, went to the site, and thought, "Hmm, that's not a bad price," and generated sales. These people are stupid. For one thing, they either don't understand that these companies are run by criminal enterprises, or they're so naive as to think that they're "honorable thieves" that would never do anything as shady as stealing the credit card number they're using to buy the product to, oh, I dunno, maybe pay for more accounts to use to spam people!!? For another, by supporting the spammers, they are in a very direct and profitable way saying, "Hey, this advertising may be annoying, but it really works!" So if spamming is rewarded, guess where the spamming company is going to be reinvesting some of their money?

True story: Whenever a telemarketer calls me, I tell them that even if I desperately wanted their product and they were offering it to me for a killer price, I'm not going to buy it over the phone. They almost always ask me why I would do that. I tell them because that would be rewarding their company for making unsolicited telephone calls to my house, which would in turn lead to more unsolicited telephone calls to my house, and I want to send a clear message that advertising by unsolicited telephone calls to my house does not work. (I also ask them for the name of the company they work for and tell them to remove my telephone number from their calling list, of course.)

What if there was a system that did something along the lines of 'genericize' the post/thread if it's been reported a few times? Although it still leaves a thread called 'Thread Awaiting Moderation' or something, it hides the advert until a mod can come along and approve or delete it. I don't imagine it would take very long for five people to report a RMT advert.

On the note of Paragon Studios selling inf, I would be one of the people who wouldn't likely be a subscriber for much longer.

1. Get more mods.

2. Make sure those Mods will mod.

3. Success!


And I've decided that after I've PMed every red name I saw on last night about "that thread", and got a reply that it looked like a Mod had taken care of it, and then it still being here today....I'm going to keep that thread front and center, since they don't seem to be able to find it as easily as I can.