Suggestion(s) - On keeping Novice Network bot-free

Greetings!

My name is Spiswel Gwennardec, I am a Mentor operating on Shiva server.

Lately, our community has seen an increase in bot activity within Novice Network itself. Alas, when me (or my fellow Mentors) spot a RMT bot among us, we can NOT in fact kick them because of this procedure. Instead we get a message a bit like this:


[15:49]Unable to kick. That character has already left the channel.

Proposed solution:

Render Mentors capable of banning people PERMANENTLY from the Network, REGARDLESS OF THEIR CURRENT STATUS TOWARDS THE CHAT CHANNEL. (As in, unlike the current 30-min kick system, they'd have to be re-invited again from scratch by a Mentor.)

Thank you for your consideration,

- Spiswel (and fellow Mentors of Shiva)

My original post was limited by 1000 characters, so allow me to develop.

So far, we are unable to tackle this problem efficiently, our only option being to advice our newbies & fellow mentors to Report & Blacklist the bots one by one as they appear.
Bots sighting are usually mostly following this exact scenario:

- Bot XYZ shouts in a populated area to request invitation into the Network
- Bot XYZ is invited by an unaware Mentor
- Bot XYZ proceeds to place a spam/RMT message in the Novice chat channel.
- In a fraction of a second, Bot XYZ leaves the chat channel as to avoid permanent kicking by the Mentors present.

Our suggestion to alleviate this problem (again, that we have onyl seen increase recently), would be something as described in the OP.

Pros

- This would allow us to dismiss unwanted bots who have gained access to the Novice Network chat but dodge our attempts at kicking them by instantly deactivating the channel.

- Reasons would have to be provided for each permanent kick. Like when we kick someone, specifying the reasons. It could be a free writing zone like the one we currently have, or a checkbox list such as "harassment" "rmt" "cheating" a bit similar to vote-dismissing in dungeon.

- Beyond a certain number of "permanent kicks" ie if someone (player or bot) is being reinvited over and over and still causes trouble, render them unable to be invited entirely. The number of "warnings" is up for debate. Three or five kicks maybe?

Below is a screenshot taken by yours truly to demonstrate our issue. (edited because names)
https://i.imgur.com/HdypjOy.png

You can go back and edit your posts to circumvent the character limit. Also, for the sake of not being told you're naming and shaming (and a moderator possibly editing your post for this purpose), would be best to blot out character names in that image.

there are a lot of problems with this in a sense.im unsure how the novice is on your server but on my server people are simply kicked for having a varying opinion or when someone says something another does not like.
far from being overall toxic or a bot. in your situation, there would be a few players "mentor and novice alike" who would be permenantly restricted from the chat all due to a few others who had a momentary spat between the two a couple of times.


while i do agree a solution to prevent bots should be in order, i dont think adding a permenant kick option is the best course of action.


id gladly rather see a few bot msgs a day (on my server we get maybe 8 bot messages in total on a 24 hour day? give or take) over potential inviting bad mentors to abuse a kick system to fit the novice to there preffered likeness

I believe this bots normally do their spam and then they delete the character and make another with another name, so you would have to ban the whole account for this to work.
I'm not sure if trial accounts are able to join novice network, if they are then this system wouldn't work cause they can make an unlimited number of accounts =/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spiswel

we can NOT in fact kick them because of this procedure. Instead we get a message a bit like this:

[15:49]Unable to kick. That character has already left the channel.

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It's a bug, they do actually get kicked. Sort of. They do get removed from the channel, but instead of broadcasting in the chat who kicked the person (like it used to) you instead get that error message. Worse, the person themselves doesn't even realise they've been kicked as they still see themselves in the channel, but nothing they say actually appears in the real novice network (because they're not really in it any more) and nor do they see anything typed in the actual chat (so to them, it looks like they're being ignored...)

Also, it's not a real kick any more either, as they just have to relog and they're straight back in the channel without the usual cooldown.

There's a bug report on it here and SE have moved it to the forum "Confirm/planning to address", but no idea when it'll actually be fixed.

You can also confirm this for yourself with the help of some willing volunteers in your network.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spiswel

Proposed solution:

[B]Render Mentors capable of banning people PERMANENTLY from the Network, REGARDLESS OF THEIR CURRENT STATUS TOWARDS THE CHAT CHANNEL.

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Sorry, but personally I really disagree with this, there's way too much chance for abuse, especially as right now kicking it isn't working properly and you're not seeing who is kicking people, so who's to say we (or SE) would see people being permanently kicked either...

If someone is spamming your network that much, just report them to the GMs.

Pointless. Said bot probably already doesn't exist by the time you've clicked on their name. You'd be getting a "Specified character does not exist" error instead.