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Do you report offensive behavior that occurs in general chat?


Kabjat

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EDIT: Just so people are aware because there seems to have been a question...I DO NOT have a problem with so-called swear words in chat. This is NOT about the language filter. The issue that is at the center of this thread revolves around certain topics and behaviors in chat that is wildly inappropriate and offensive. Bioware clearly outlines what those things are in the rules of conduct I linked at the bottom of this post.

 

Ok, first of all, let me just say that I am not one of those busy-bodies that tattles on people just for the fun of it. I really am a laid back person and honestly do not care what others do in their personal life. I sometimes use bad language and have even slipped before and said a bad word in the presence of my children. It happens, we are all human, you move on and try to do better in future.

 

Now, with that said, when I am playing SW:TOR and I see a swear word in chat I usually think nothing of it. After all, I don’t play the game around my kids so honestly I don’t care about a bit of colorful language. I won’t report someone for that.

 

What DOES get me is the frequency general chat will erupt with puerile, disgusting, and offensive talk that has NO PLACE in this environment. Now some of you will just say, “The ignore button is your friend. /thread.” Well, my answer to that is, what do you do once your ignore list is full? At the rate one encounters players who engage in disgusting and offensive talk, that list would fill in one night. To me, that is not a solution.

 

It’s also not a solution to just turn on language filter because let’s be honest…the language filter makes chat virtually unreadable. It filters words that shouldn’t be filtered and is a HUGE annoyance. I am not talking about the odd bad word. I am talking about several people talking about things that are disturbing, disgusting, perverted…you name it. Only solution is to leave chat. Why should the rest of us, who simply want to play the game, interact with others like DECENT human beings isolate ourselves just to avoid the LOUD MINORITY of childish people who cannot be bothered to control themselves on a public forum?

 

Confronting the offenders in general chat asking them politely to please stop or take their discussion to a private channel only gets you flamed.

 

So this got me wondering…how many of you out there are sick of the filth that scrolls through chat FAR too much? How often do you report those who make inflammatory, racist, sexist, and threatening comments? Again, just so I am not misunderstood, I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT A BIT OF FOUL LANGUAGE…I WILL NOT AND HAVE NOT REPORTED ANYONE FOR SAYING THE ODD BAD WORD. I am talking about continuously abusive and offensive language that does NOTHING to add to the community except to make it unpleasant.

 

I fully expect for trolls to respond to this. I really don’t care about them and only want to hear from those of you who have something constructive to add, whether it is for or against what I have said, either way I welcome your thoughts.

 

http://www.swtor.com/legalnotices/rulesofconduct After reading through this, I believe it’s up to the community to report offenders. For those of you who disagree and would claim I would be ruining your fun and should mind my own business, let me just remind you that you are a sentient being with the ability to make informed choices. You are not an animal and are therefore responsible for your own actions. If you choose to break the rules, you shouldn’t get mad when you are called on it.

Edited by Kabjat
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If someone is being offensive or abusive, absolutely report them. I have seen some disgusting performances by people over the years playing MMO's and i make sure i report it when it takes place. Its a social game, and while we need to all be aware that not everyone has the same standards, its not socially acceptable to treat other people badly.
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I Know what you mean. I have reported a few people already and that's surprising. It's surpising because IRL I curse quite a bit and it is hard to offend me.

The things i see in SWTOR spatial are in another league altogether. The reports I made were due to really hateful racial & sexual slurs. I had a hard time the first few weeks of the game because my guildies were ahead of me and after seeing the spatial chat, I was reluctant to group up with strangers. I have other friends who went to RP servers and they are aghast at what we have in spatial chat. It has made me question my choice of where to play more than once, but I adore my guild so I am sticking it out. I will be reporting and ignoring for awhile but eventually it should calm down. I think the first free month many folks with no interest in star wars play because it is a new game then get out.

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I have clicked report spam a few times, also the other night the spam report function was down, so I submitted a ticket reporting a very annoying, abusive user talking in /1 (the dude was a troll)

 

The problem is, the /b/tards get on the game and because they're used to socializing with other 12 year olds that speak in memes, they don't understand why people dislike them.

 

I'm on an RP server so generally /1 is pretty good. People actually use it to socialize and they type properly "not lyk dis". Alot of people tend to take unkindly to people with names like "awesomedude" and report them, and they also jump down the throats of people that show even the slightest bit of troll in them (which is kinda good in a way)

 

Personally I don't like spam, in my guild we have a specific rule against it. If it comes to a point where general chat is bugging me, I either close it or just ignore it. I've been around enough beta weekends and launch to learn how to ignore the chat without actually pressing anything :p

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thank you all for your comments. I'm very glad to know that I'm not the only person who genuinely is bothered by this type of thing. To be honest, I hesitated starting this thread because it seems like if you show any kind of disgust with what has come to be 'commonplace language' once you are online you are immediately trolled and made fun of and told to 'grow up'. I mean, really?? Maybe it's just because I didn't grow up socializing behind the safety of a computer monitor that I find I cannot separate online rudeness from RL rudeness. It's all rude, no matter where you are. LOL
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I'll be honest, I'm a pervert and I love joking around. Sometimes it offends people, but I try to be tactful at the same time.

 

That being said, if I see someone that's openly degrading themselves or others in any manner, I will report them.

 

see and that's how my husband and I are! :D In our old WOW guild we were all over 30 and in g-chat things would get pretty colorful xD. I can be pretty perverted with the jokes too, but I would only ever do that in a controlled, private channel like g-chat where I know everyone there is of age and won't be offended.

 

It's the public chat channels that this occurs that bother me, lol....other than that, I'm about as crude as they come >.>

 

But in general chat, you have no idea who is seeing it...or their sensitivities. When some idiot starts mouthing off about a topic that could very well be a trigger for someone...maybe something happened to them that was really traumatic...I dunno, I suppose I'm just a carebear with a thin skin. ROFL

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I see people being racist and trolling quite often in the game, especially on Dromund Kaas. Really makes me sick. I should probably start reporting them.

 

hehe I don't know what it is with Dromund Kaas. That zone seems to turn people into brazen trolls. Luckily it doesn't last TOO long and then you are in the Barrens...er, I mean Balmora.

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WoW has had this issue for years, and the simple fact is that there is no real solution. Sure, you can report people for being crude or offensive or whatever. You can report people because you don't like them (I've seen it work in WoW). In the end, though, nobody is forcing you to read the swill. It takes a certain amount of willpower to not read it. It takes more willpower once you've read it to not respond. But, it can be done.

 

The inherent problem is the internet provides people with a the means to be complete d-bags with no real reprecussions. Bioware may ban a player, but nothing is going to stop them from creating a new account and going back to their old repulsive ways. The internet removes the human part of interaction. When you remove the ability for one person to inflict physical harm on another, all bets are off. The very worst of humanity can be found on the internet...thriving.

 

That being said. I've been superbly pleased with the current climate of my server. The grammatical acumen alone was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I'd quit WoW almost two years previous, and my dreams were still haunted by what passed for communication in that game...

 

Unfortunately, I don't think there is an answer to this issue other than to shrug, and hope the game attracts and continues to attract a more civilized crowd.

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hehe I don't know what it is with Dromund Kaas. That zone seems to turn people into brazen trolls. Luckily it doesn't last TOO long and then you are in the Barrens...er, I mean Balmora.

 

It's somewhat amusing at times, but mostly it's just plain annoying. Balmorra also has quite a few trolls as well, though it's less than Dromund Kaas at least :p

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see and that's how my husband and I are! :D In our old WOW guild we were all over 30 and in g-chat things would get pretty colorful xD. I can be pretty perverted with the jokes too, but I would only ever do that in a controlled, private channel like g-chat where I know everyone there is of age and won't be offended.

 

It's the public chat channels that this occurs that bother me, lol....other than that, I'm about as crude as they come >.>

 

But in general chat, you have no idea who is seeing it...or their sensitivities. When some idiot starts mouthing off about a topic that could very well be a trigger for someone...maybe something happened to them that was really traumatic...I dunno, I suppose I'm just a carebear with a thin skin. ROFL

 

If there's some mild perverted joking around in general that's not actually very colorful, I'll happily join in. As I said, I like being tactful in public. xD But gchant is generally a free for all. xD My WoW guild is like that. I run it and I know everyone's age, so it's safe to let loose.

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I personally don't give a damn how offensive people are and what depraved things they want to talk about in general. I simply don't read it if it pisses me off. The exception might be massive discrimination such as guilds not recruiting people because they are of a different nationality, creed, sexual preference or things like that (and I'd only ever report them if this was systematic and not just if someone calls someone a "gay" for example).

 

The sad thing is: I see absolutely no point in reporting people what so ever. The GM and customer support don't react to anything important or game-breaking so I highly doubt they have time to waste on trivialities such as people being loud-mouthed on the internets (and if they are wasting time on this then I'd get really annoyed because they should be working on tickets that block people from enjoying the game).

 

TL;DR:

 

I'd only report massive infractions and systematic discrimination even if I doubt it will do any good.

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WoW has had this issue for years, and the simple fact is that there is no real solution. Sure, you can report people for being crude or offensive or whatever. You can report people because you don't like them (I've seen it work in WoW). In the end, though, nobody is forcing you to read the swill. It takes a certain amount of willpower to not read it. It takes more willpower once you've read it to not respond. But, it can be done.

 

The inherent problem is the internet provides people with a the means to be complete d-bags with no real reprecussions. Bioware may ban a player, but nothing is going to stop them from creating a new account and going back to their old repulsive ways. The internet removes the human part of interaction. When you remove the ability for one person to inflict physical harm on another, all bets are off. The very worst of humanity can be found on the internet...thriving.

 

That being said. I've been superbly pleased with the current climate of my server. The grammatical acumen alone was enough to bring tears to my eyes. I'd quit WoW almost two years previous, and my dreams were still haunted by what passed for communication in that game...

 

Unfortunately, I don't think there is an answer to this issue other than to shrug, and hope the game attracts and continues to attract a more civilized crowd.

 

 

I can appreciate what you are saying. I guess, where I'm coming from is that being passive doesn't seem to help either. I played WoW for years and would fall into the trap of becoming indignant over the things people would spew out...and not just filth, I'm talking outright hostility to other players. I would let it ruin my fun to the point where I would log out. In SW:TOR, I've wised up and just simply turn off chat at the first sign of things going downhill.

 

Therein lies the rub: I resent reducing my game experience to a single player game just so I don't have to subject myself to behavior that is AGAINST THE RULES.

 

You are right that the internet provides a shield for people to let out their more....aggressive sides. My point is, why should the rest of us be apathetic about it? If we just shrug and do nothing, saying it will never go away, it surely won't.

 

My husband and I started out on The Harbinger server. The community there was abhorrent. We have since decided to switch servers, re-roll and start from scratch. So far, our new server seems far more mature and the community populated with people who recognize that there are other PEOPLE behind the avatars.

 

I guess I'm still irritated that we even HAD to move servers. I have a couple of mid level characters that I've abandoned because of this issue.

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I really don't care one way or another.

 

Best not to get involved and just turn general chat off for a while after you put the person on ignore.

 

Simply ignore the person and BAM! Problem solved.

Not much to it.

 

Apathy just makes a bad community worse.

 

Like I said before, ignoring is not a long term effective solution because it won't take long at all for your ignore list to fill. I resent people like this being sent the message that their behavior is acceptable because no one will stand up to them by reporting them. If enough people REPORT unacceptable behavior, over time, the degenerates will eventually learn that there is a COST to acting like a savage online and perhaps learn to curtail themselves if they wish to not get banned.

 

Much like in REAL LIFE.

 

The percentage of people who are the problem is probably SMALLER than we imagine. The reason it seems so cancerous is because the MAJORITY (us, the decent people who believe in treating others with respect, online or not) are apathetic about it.

 

In REAL LIFE, do we put up with disgusting lewd behavior in public? Do we just stand by and let some low life mouth off and bully us to our face just because he feels like it? of course not! So why do so many decent people insist that there is nothing that can be done about such behavior online? When there are clearly RULES in place that are designed to protect us from such things?

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I've used /report 3 times. Each report was due to racist or threatening chat. Most of the time, I stay in a tab that allows for guild chat. If I'm in a group, I have a party chat tab. I use general only when I'm looking for a group for the most part.

 

I've seen other players confront the idiots in chat, but as you said, it really doesn't go anywhere. There's some brief bickering, and the behavior often continues. I wonder what kind of sick thrill these players get from slandering individuals or an entire race of people.

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In all honesty I find threads like this to be imature. Unless something is directly said against you, there really shouldn't be a reason to report someone for using the chat feature.

I find it very hard to imagine anything that could be said not directed towards me that offends me so much as to possibly ban a person who has paid good money to play a video game (and I've been playing MMOs for 8 years now.)

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In all honesty I find threads like this to be imature. Unless something is directly said against you, there really shouldn't be a reason to report someone for using the chat feature.

I find it very hard to imagine anything that could be said not directed towards me that offends me so much as to possibly ban a person who has paid good money to play a video game (and I've been playing MMOs for 8 years now.)

 

My little cousin has downs syndrome. I used to watch him all the time and he's difficult to deal with sometimes. I've also volunteered at the Special Olympics. I've seen posts in trade chat on WoW that seriously offend me because of this. I'm not talking about, "Oh that's retarded." I'm no so sensitive that that bothers me. I'm talking some SERIOUS trash talking against people with mental disabilities.

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What DOES get me is the frequency general chat will erupt with puerile, disgusting, and offensive talk that has NO PLACE in this environment.

 

I hear ya OP. Swear words don't bother me at all but some of the other stuff that goes on in general.. well it really just makes me think of kids/teens/young 20 somethings who get a thrill from "poo poo pee pee" talk (what we call it in my house lol).

 

That being said, I don't report them. I just put them on ignore. Not flaming here, just explaining my reasoning (and the following really should not be mistaken for apathy). While I don't have a problem with these type of people being reported, I don't have any real problem with them being stupid and disgusting in general either. If people find it amusing, whatever floats their boat. If they find it annoying or offensive and wish to ignore or report, that's fine too.

 

As for kids, my youngest plays (almost 13 now but he's been playing MMOs since he was 8 or 9), as does my oldest (now 19 so not an issue but playing MMOs since he was 14). My personal take with my own kids: I don't censor what they see and hear (within reason of course). I chalk these kind of things up to conversation and learning opportunities.

 

As for other people's kids and what they see or don't see... well, it's not my job to clean up general chat for them. It's the parents' job to monitor what goes on and deal with things in a way that makes them feel ok about it.

Edited by Lunazen
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In all honesty I find threads like this to be imature. Unless something is directly said against you, there really shouldn't be a reason to report someone for using the chat feature.

I find it very hard to imagine anything that could be said not directed towards me that offends me so much as to possibly ban a person who has paid good money to play a video game (and I've been playing MMOs for 8 years now.)

 

I have a note program on Firefox. In it, I keep stuff so I can quickly c/p when I need it.

 

Inappropriate Language and Naming http://www.swtor.com/support/helpcenter/1884

STAR WARS™: THE OLD REPUBLIC™ RULES OF CONDUCT http://www.swtor.com/legalnotices/roc

 

I think Kabjat said it best in a post above:

 

I resent reducing my game experience to a single player game just so I don't have to subject myself to behavior that is AGAINST THE RULES.

 

It takes less work to NOT use naughty words.

 

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

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nope, I never report or ignore people. I usually start most of the offensive behavior in general so maybe that's why.

 

 

It takes less work to NOT use naughty words.

 

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

Lol naughty words? I didn't realize we were all in kindergarten Edited by GregMD
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I generally just put the person on ignore if they're obviously trying to cause trouble. I have yet to report anyone, but if something was over-the-top offensive (racist, blatant sexual harassment, etc.) I'd probably do so.

 

Why would I want that stuff in games I play?

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In all honesty I find threads like this to be imature. Unless something is directly said against you, there really shouldn't be a reason to report someone for using the chat feature.

I find it very hard to imagine anything that could be said not directed towards me that offends me so much as to possibly ban a person who has paid good money to play a video game (and I've been playing MMOs for 8 years now.)

 

 

I think you are missing my point. I don't wish to deprive anyone of their good time or their right to play the game. It's like I said before, everyone who plays are humans with an intellect that help them to differentiate between socially acceptable and socially reprehensible behavior. The fact that people choose to willfully disregard the rules and subject others to their foulness shows how selfish THEY are. When they say such inflammatory and offensive things in a PUBLIC CHANNEL for all to hear, it becomes my business, REGARDLESS if it was directed at me or not. It affects me because I shouldn't have to see that.

 

In short, it's against the rules, so why should I stay silent about it?

 

You call these types of threads immature, when all I am doing is voicing my concern about a very real problem. If you would read my OP you would see that I stated I would never report someone for bad words or what have you. Indeed, I would NEVER report anyone for 'using the chat feature'. I WILL however report someone for ABUSING the chat feature to vomit their hate speech and abuse for the entire zone to hear.

 

That is unacceptable behavior and should be reported.

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If the person in general who is being offensive also happens to have a wildly inappropriate name (which happens often, I've noticed), I just report their name. I figure being forced to change names will calm them down a bit. Otherwise, I've had good luck by trolling them a bit. I act like I'm playing along with them (although declining to be vulgar and offensive myself) and basically make them look really stupid. If you do it right, the other more mature server members will usually jump in and join you, and that just ruins the troll's fun. I've found it is easier to take over the chat with decent talk, and build your friends list, than to let myself get riled up and build my ignore list.
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