disable ability to mass message
 

i think it would be useful to have a staff ability to stop a player's ability to mass message. servers such as UN would definitely profit from this - they wouldn't have to continually jail players and enforce ludicrous "crackdowns" on masses - they could just disable certain player's ability to mass message for a variable amount of time, or permanently if need be. i dislike it when ignorant little kids can spam up mass messages about how subjectively awesome one server is against another, throwing about personal insults and what-have, forcing staff to step in making their own mass messages (which go through my filter unless i have them on ignore) and jailing individuals, which leads to a lot of players hating on staff when it's really the only way to control the problem

I like this idea.

I approve. It would be nice to just punish players who abuse masses by cutting off their access rather than throwing them in jail/banning them. Especially for minor things/warnings.

It's already possible, through scripting. It was actually done on Valikorlia a few years ago. However, you should be aware that people pay for this privilege. I believe a PWA said, back when Valikorlia did it, that it was against the rules to disable masses without the person being jailed. It was a while ago, so I don't really remember. But I'm pretty sure Bell was the PWA that dealt with it, at the time.

I really don't see why there's a problem with jailing people. They're going to hate on staff no matter how you punish them.

I gotta say... so what!(to the PWA). I can do worse with a ban, which can pretty much disable their ability to play on my server... or even a simple jail is worse, and they're worried about punishment being that I've disabled someones ability to mass? Wow.

Well, the way "mass bans" were delivered weren't exactly fair. This was when our NAT (de facto manager) was some 30-year-old loser named Aren. Like I said, it was a while ago, and I can't remember the details of the conversation I had with the PWA.

But, really, I don't see any reason why this would need to be implemented. Jails and bans do the job just fine. Troublemakers are going to hate staff no matter what.

It's not about not having people hate staff, but offering varying levels of punishment. Sometimes a mass does not warrant jailing, but it was just bad enough to give them a small timeout from masses.

no, they only just get the job done, they don't actually solve the problem

if someone is jailed or banned, they usually know that they have gone over line and have broken some rule. masses are quite different, because most servers do not specify rules regarding masses other than the "don't spam, don't curse" type things that are obvious to every server - i doubt most people read rules regarding masses anyways since it can be subject to difference across servers. when someone gets jailed over a mass message it is quite differently received than if someone gets jailed, usually quite negatively

there are also instances where jailing a person only fuels their might in making more mass messages, or instances where a person really shouldn't be jailed but they shouldn't continue to mass message. while it's true that jailing can be a simple method of punishment for mass messages or stopping people from massing, it would be a lot nicer and much more well received if you could just stop the masses of that player. once you enforce a jail for one person's mass, than you have to enforce it for everyone, and a server full of arguing players can lead to a lot of jail time for a large population of the server

Oh, so you want to go easy on them, because they backlash when you jail them? :) You don't negotiate with terrorists, bud. What server are you on anyways? I've never been on UN and seen huge arguments about masses.

Anyways, do you really think it's going to matter how you punish them? Why would people be mad about somebody being jailed for massing, and not be mad about somebody having their masses disabled? After all, if you enforce mass disabling for one person, you have to enforce it for everyone. Different punishment, same outcome, except this one will likely annoy people even more.

But hey, that's your prerogative. What happens on UN need not happen on Valikorlia.

not necessary in my opinion.

it's not taking it easy on them, it's removing a certain privilege players have when they abuse it. when you jail someone you take all their rights away, and that isn't always the correct response (albeit the only one) and while true that it shouldn't matter what they say, wouldn't you want to be able to solve the problem in more ways than one, with a varying degree of punishment?

usually in mass message flaming and the like, it's only one or two people that are really causing the ruckus. if you disable masses on those troublemakers, then you don't have to stop the entire discussion for everyone who can mass message appropriately. why should we have to jail people for getting a little out of hand on mass messages? i'm sure on a RP server it's different, because people have to watch and (hopefully) think about what they say so that it comes out correctly, they have a persona to keep up and if they want to continue to RP they'll have to get along with at least some people - on a classic server, it's just personalities of the normal players coming out, so there is more of a tendency for good, loyal players to get out of hand with personal insults and topics of discussion not fit for the children who play this game (although i think that argument doesn't have a lot of weight to it as it could easily be fixed so that people could mass about whatever they wanted, but that's another thread entirely). sure you can tell them to PM each other, or that jailings will occur if they don't stop, but that's just the problem: threatening to jail people for mass messages usually doesn't stop people from mass messaging. if anything it makes them more angry and they mass message more. you'd have no problem with these player's if you could just stop them from massing altogether

I don't even see what the problem is with mass messages, if you don't like what someone is saying use the ignore option and quit crying about it. I don't even see why people are getting jailed for it no matter how vulgar the messages are as long as they are giving out malicious links.

I'm not sure how vulgar you mean, but there are things as harrassment.

There is also an option to ignore the person. I'll walk you through the steps if you're really not smart enough to figure it out yourself.

i don't see where your animosity is coming from, but ignoring the person doesn't remove the problem of their mass messages. it's just like jailing - it only just gets the job done, it doesn't actually solve the problem

if you are going to try and make a free speech argument for mass messages, you are on the wrong forum to do so - they don't take kindly to people who try to have free speech