Blocked Players and Blizzard Reply Feature

[DevTeam] [Zeke]: I love that I get emailed when someone reports spam on the boards, but I can't do anything about it.
[DevTeam] [Nachonut]: lol i got you
[DevTeam] [Astaldo]: How about "hide email address from public checked" and it's still visible in all my posts...
[DevTeam] [Astaldo]: I'd delete my account on this site, but by the time I realized the problem half the spambots on the planet had it already
[Developer] [Pazza]: Astaldo if you log out and view your profile with a refresh you'll see that your email is hidden.
[Developer] [Pazza]: Your user level on the forums permit you to see emails even though they are marked hidden.
[DevTeam] [Astaldo]: Ah.. thanks for the clarification and apologies for "crying wolf" in that case :
[DevTeam] [Kaidenn]: PAZZA! i miss you.
[DevTeam] [Nachonut]: Lol, it's funny how it takes spam message reports to get me to come back
[DevTeam] [sylvanaar]: Check out the beta tester forum. Need alpha testers and feedback so I can come up with a maintenance plan.
[Developer] [Pazza]: loaded some new spam prevention modules... lets see if this stops the bastards.
[DevTeam] [Maziel]: Thought I'd check in and say Howdy Doody from Australia
[DevTeam] [Maziel]: Yeah the spam from shoes salesmen was becoming insane
[Guest] [Delakando]: What ever happened to the ability to track friend's location by wim? Other then just showing their general zone location.
Zeke pokes his head around the corner.
[DevTeam] [Zeke]: Anybody home?
[Guest] [Theillur]: I would like to know if it is just me.
[Guest] [Theillur]: http://www.wimaddon.com/forums/index.php/topic,1796.0.html
[Guest] [Nev]: I'm here
[Guest] [Nev]: I don't think anyone else is though
[Guest] [tomasio]: great site [url=http://freeonlinemusicvideos.net].[/url] [url=http://freepeopleclothing.org].[/url]
[Guest] [Theillur]: Nev it is not working for Zeke as well.
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: im here
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: ...
lothaer yawns sleepily.
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: sooooooooooooooooo
[Guest] [j3ff]: Hello. It is very quiet. I would love a response to my thread directly below your "Been very quiet" thread!
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: Check out my new post in the Skins forum
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: Posted a new download in the skins forum check it out
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: Zeke, Maziel, Pazza, Nachonut, sylvanaar, Kaidenn, Astaldo where are you?
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: It would be a real shame if WIM was left to die.
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: i think these forums are dead, Sylvanaar dosnt post on them as he only bug fixes when possible. WIMs future isnt very bright
[Guest] [justgiz]: Yea, its rather sad.
[Guest] [silvercola]: I wish it had skype
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: noy possible for a addon to do.
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: ...........
[Guest] [elzershark]: where is the download file?
lothaer beckons everyone over to you.
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: has anyone been able to take WIM to the beta yet?
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: PTR*
[DevTeam] [Maziel]: *sticks head up and looks around*
lothaer cries.
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: who the hell flagged my post as spam?
[Guest] [primalforce]: Hey guys
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: hello Primalforce.
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: PAZZA COME BACK!!!
[DevTeam] [Nachonut]: Ahhh memories
[Guest] [Ignis]: wtb update
[DevTeam] [lothaer]: soooo.....
Pazza starts to complain... Kinda reminds you of Sloans dont it?

[Draemon]

Love your mod Pazza, excellent work.

I'm having an issue with the Reply feature (standard Blizzard key-binding "r") and blocked players (not Blizzard "Ignore", using WIM's filter'd and blocked feature (gold spammers)).  Your mod is blocking them perfectly and I have never recieved any Gold spam advertisments in whispers, although I have an issue when I press my default "Reply" button (default "r") where it does come up with their name as the recipient of my latest whisper.  Which does get rather annoying having to re-type the sentence again to the appropriate recipient.  Is there any possible way of suppressing the gold spammer from my Reply feature aswell? (It does pop up with a chat window when auto-replying).

Another issue I've had is with the standard Blizzard "repeat text" feature (default Alt+Up arrow) when trying to sell things in Trade and also messaging people at the same time.  I press Alt+Up and it takes me to the Chat window of the previous person I whispered.  Is there a way of completely separating the WIM chat window from the standard Chat window so that when I do use Alt+Up it will only review the last message sent to the default chat window?

Thanks in advance, please let me know if you need me to re-word some of this in a more understandable way.

[Maziel]

Ah, so after the Gold Spammer is supressed by your filter on WIM, blocked, when you reply to a whisper with 'r' the gold spammers name that was blocked shows up?

[edit]
Is the above correct?

Also, how do you have your WIM set-up? Do you suppress the message pops to the mini map icon, or do you have them auto pop up? (just trying to get my WIM set up to what you have to best test for this)
[/edit]

Interesting. I think the upcoming new WIM 2.1 SpamBlocker plug-in will deal with this issue but will test it when I get a Gold Spam, just to make sure. If it's still buggy I'll let Pazza know immediately as many use the 'r' function to reply to whispers.

Also heard rumours that the new WoW 2.1 patch is going to be focusing on Gold Spammers too, wether that is true or not, who knows. It's Blizzard, 9 out of 10 times they do nothing but this 1 time they might actually do something we want? lol.

[Draemon]

Ah, so after the Gold Spammer is supressed by your filter on WIM, blocked, when you reply to a whisper with 'r' the gold spammers name that was blocked shows up?

Exactly right.

Interesting. I think the upcoming new WIM 2.1 SpamBlocker plug-in will deal with this issue but will test it when I get a Gold Spam, just to make sure. If it's still buggy I'll let Pazza know immediately as many use the 'r' function to reply to whispers.

Also heard rumours that the new WoW 2.1 patch is going to be focusing on Gold Spammers too, wether that is true or not, who knows. It's Blizzard, 9 out of 10 times they do nothing but this 1 time they might actually do something we want? lol.

I had a read through some of the gold spam prevention methods (posted here) and from what I can tell, the only way they're dealing with the problem, is to make it 'easier' to report gold spammers...which isn't really a fix.  The reported player will be automatically added to your Ignore list for the rest of the session.  But lets face facts - how many Gold spammers use the same character name twice?  (Names such as "dsufwniowje" ring a bell but I can guarantee it's never the same character name twice).

Another one of Blizzard's implementations which I think will get rather annoying for most players:

Message throttling:

* Players will no longer be able to send large amounts of text at one time, filling a chat screen with a repeating message, large blocks of gibberish, or text that could disrupt an entire conversation. This throttling, along with the new chat-reporting feature should make it much easier to keep unwanted text off your screen before it becomes overwhelming.

Memories of the middle-aged LookingForGroup channel evolution come to mind..."You cannot send more than 'x' number of messages every 'x' seconds".  I'm rather hoping that option will be removed before the patch goes live...or people have the option to turn it on/off (unlikely as it seems like a global thing like the LFG spam annoyance).

Edit:  Just a personal opinion, that last part of the Spam prevention will also do away with addons that help Crafters with their professions.  I remember one such mod in which you whisper the crafter with "!gem" or "!enchant" and the Crafter whispers you back a list of their current craftable items.  I can see this new 'improvement' by Blizzard to cause many headaches for players worldwide.

[Maziel]

The problem with adding too many words to a filter is you might filter someone who isn't a Gold Spammer using the word in a sentence in a different context.

Myself, I've removed all of my custom filters from WIM to test out its new filtering system, so far I've received no gold spam or spam from any level that i set the new level blocker to.

And I'm only using WIM, have disabled every other gold spamming filtering program, aka SpamSentry and SpamMeNot are completely turned off.

But that reply thing is a good one to test for that I didn't think of either, so i wanna test it out and best to replicate how you got your set up (though will test it both ways, on pop ups and suppressed windows) just to make sure.

In regards to the LFG spam: Myself I absolute hate seeing LFG LF1M every minute so installed an addon to remove it completely. Did a search i think it was on one of the mod sites for LFG and found one. I could add the text manually to WIM's filter and no doubt achieve the same thing but was lazy so just downloaded a LFG filterer. - It's called: LFGBlocker (http://ui.worldofwar.net/ui.php?id=3915) and it was based on Chuck Norris Blocker by Gidde of Runetotem (http://addons.kaniggits.net).

As for Blizzards additions: About time I say.

Edit:  Just a personal opinion, that last part of the Spam prevention will also do away with addons that help Crafters with their professions.  I remember one such mod in which you whisper the crafter with "!gem" or "!enchant" and the Crafter whispers you back a list of their current craftable items.  I can see this new 'improvement' by Blizzard to cause many headaches for players worldwide.

Might also upset Advanced Trade Skills Window, where you can shift click an item and it sends the list of mats one sentence at a time, basically sending multiple whispers. That'll be up to the mod writers to figure out a way to delay their messages or put more items per message etc. I'm sure they'll figure it out.

[Pazza]

Looking into it. It is possible that I am still setting last whisper target even though the message is being blocked. as far as using ALT UP to toggle through your messages, the only thing that I can think of to avoid this is to disable the option in WIM (/wim) that intercepts whispers. WIM hooks into a function of blizzards that formats the edit box for whispers. (the purple text with name of the person you are sending a whisper to while typing /w pazza hello...). When you toggle through your past messages, if a whisper was sent, it will execute that hooked function.

Unfortunately I do not see any clean way around this although one idea came to mind while typing this... I will give it a try. If it doesn't work, you will have to decide which feature is more important to you, the toggling or the intercepting.

[Maziel]

I wonder, just a random thought (good morning Pazza):

Whisperer_Name == Pazza

new Whisper <> goldSpammer/Blocked, call Whisperer_Name.

Something like a global value that you can throw non blocked names into and after a gold block, re-update the target with the Whisperer_name value

?

Or can you intercept the /r command and list only the whisper that have been allowed in your own list? As in, each time an allowed whisper comes in, add it to a tempory list and intercept the /r command and toggle through that list instead of Blizzards?

[Pazza]

IMO Blizzards approach is dumb. However in their defense, there isn't much that could be done. What I think they should implement to avoid spammers is to disable the ability to initiate a whisper if you are using a Guest Pass. The same way they disable other features with the guest pass. This way, in order to spam, they must use a real account which a. will cost them money, and b, if reported, the account can be suspended/banned.

The only thing I find usefull is the throttling feature however I can see that as causing problems. Once the patch is released, I will see if I can figure out their throttling methods and add a status bar similar to what AIM has. So you can keep track of your current governered whisper throttling.

[Maziel]

Oh I completely agree. Guest Passes should not be allowed to Whisper until they've maxed out their Guest Character and definately not allowed to send in game mail.

That would wipe out almost all spam.

[Draemon]

Maziel:

I only have 1 'phrase' to block for Gold spammers at the moment and once I added it, not a single gold spam   (www.), works like a charm  .

As for the LFG spam thing, I'm a farmer at heart and a collector aswell, if I see "LF Mage for instance PST" I'll most likely send em a tell lol.  Personal preference I guess.


Pazza:
That's what I'm doing at the moment to counter-act the Alt+Up issue at the moment.  It's a shame that the WIM chat window and the default Chat window can't be sepparated...but I guess that's a Blizzard Addon coding issue that they probably won't be changing.

Also that idea about putting more restrictions on Guest pass accounts is a smart idea, I'll probably end up posting that on the forums somewhere, because at the moment the gold spams I get are usually 1-2 lines at max...I highly doubt the Throttling feature will put an end to that particular aspect of spam.  The frustrating thing isn't just 1 spammer, it's the fact that they come in waves.  After 1 gold spammer does his trick, you know 1-2 mins later you'll have another gold farming company spam their macro in your face aswell, and so on and so forth until it just gets damned annoying.  Blizzard should've thought their spam measures through a little more thoroughly before implementing something.

Status bar for Throttling sounds like a good idea  .

[Maziel]

www. will block any website link someone is trying to send you. Might be a mate with a link to a cool mod to block spam

Also, I'd add: w w w - some spammers are using w w w.blahblahablah

And yes, personal preference. I went through the LFGBlocker code and added a few things I wanted, no doubt some people will remove things they want. But I liked the idea of it.

[Edit]
The Throttling will just mean Gold Spammers will use the idea too. Code up something or even use WIM to send their spam sure, it'll be throttled, but they'll still spam.

I think we all can agree the best and simpliest way is restrictions on guest accounts. Why is it that people who get money from over 8 million subscriptions and have teams of coders for this game can't see the obvious like we can. >.<
[/Edit]

[Draemon]

Yea they're getting inventive with the gold spam I'll admit that.  So far so good with that one phrase though, if I get a farmer being tricky I'll be sure to throw in a few new words to combat it.

[Pazza]

Throttling I think is a good idea. You just need to look at it the right way... You see it as 1-2 messages.. That is 1-2 messages to you. They send 1-2 messagse to everyone on their /who queries, that is where the throttling will be affected. They are sending out (what is it 50 whos at a time) so 50-100 whispers in one shot. What the throttling will do is make spamming a lot more annoying for the spammer. And thus making spamming less frequent. Thats my two cents on it at least. As stated before though, I just hope it doesn't effect normal everyday whispering. I personally do a lot of my chatting through whispers.

LFG doesn't bother me much. I personally don't pug too often it has proven to be a failure 9/10 of the time.

[Maziel]

As do I Pazza, I'm a fairly fast typer and often chat away with people press enter then next message, enter, then next. I just hope I'm not blocked from my regular typing with people. I cannot help it if i can type fast or type lots. I as a user shouldn't be restricted by Blizzard in how fast i talk with my buddies on WIM. That'll annoy me if I as a paying user have to wait for throttling bars just because of gold spammers when there is a perfectly simple way to stop the spam that they're not doing. >.<

[Edit]
Gold Spammers must be sleeping. I haven't received one yet and I've been on for two hours.
[/Edit]

[Draemon]

I'll agree that Throttling is a good idea to combat mass-farming spam to as many players as the do it to currently, though I hope the reset time on the Throttle is relativly short or that really will start to affect people in their every-day playing.  I know as a raid leader and group leader (for PuG Heroics...yes it does happen from time to time...) that some people don't understand first time what exactly they're meant to be doing in a particular given situation.  Hence mass whisper spam to multiple people explaining their role in a particular fight.  Rather annoying but not everybody has been around the block as much as others may have.  With the majority of WoW players typing speed (imo, WoW does increase typing speed a fair bit, whole sentences within 2.5 seconds before you have to press your action button again) it will start affecting regular chat.

[Maziel]

That's what I am afraid of, it affecting normal play. As for not being around the block, i agree. I'm level 70 and still haven't gone on a raid yet so I would be the first to stick my hand up and say, 'yo Draemon, can we stop for five and go over the rules and objectives etc'.