Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Nadirah]

The one in wow you don't enter text at all.

It's a menu selection. Automatically gives character name, world name, timestamp and chat log for the past few minutes including the message sent that prompted it.

That's just the chat log report. You can also report players in the world with a right click menu on their target frame name but most speedhackers and bots port around and are hard to target. They move out of range quick.

[Snugglebutt]

The one in wow you don't enter text at all.

There is nothing wrong with requiring a description box as it allows for not only more comprehensive description than the drop down menu report type but such additional information could help list more than one character present at that location you might be reporting at same time which is the only time I have not been able to target botters aka like when they stacked on top of each other so comment box would help let GM's known there is more than one. Even when botters are underground I can select them by selecting what they are targeting and then on them from that.

The problems I have with current system is annoying amount of effort to access the report function and requiring information manually input that could be easily obtained by the function itself automatically such as name of person selected, your name, world/server/location data and time/date. Such data is already stored in memory and could easily be handled automatically by the function. The comment/description box would be additional information you want to give on top of the metadata the function could gather as opposed to us currently having to put all that metadata in ourselves manually. Leaving additional information in that comment box would be optional.

Niwas idea about chat box report function would also be good and would attached a copy of the chat log to the report automatically. Again way I see it working as a function would be chat box GUI button/function for reporting opening up report window that has one drop down menu for report type, a comment box for explaining any additional information want to give plus all metadata such as time/date, your character/world/server/location information and chat log attached by the function itself automatically. The report window once again having send/cancel buttons and a confirmation popup when click send.

The right click target player report function would not attach the chat log though as it would be a different method of making a report which would attach selected target player data instead, a different function not related to chat reporting. The chat reporting function includes chat logs instead of selected/targeted player data. The current method in game feels like either lazy design or intentionally trying to put people off reporting. Many people feel like it is the latter but I feel it is probably the former reason though the lack of SE's desire to improve the situation via such solutions given above is also concerning.

I have some experience programming various coding platforms though limited in scope/experience even I know it should not be that hard to have the function handle most of the metadata mentioned above without the need for manual input plus adding the functions themselves should not be that difficult to do simply altering the GUI slightly and linking the new coded functions to it. SE could probably create these two functions described above and GUI changes in less than a week easily and it is the sort of thing people keep asking SE to do so no wonder people are frustrated by SE not doing such a minor amount of effort for a major improvement to the system.

There are two issues here, two parts to it. a) Report b) Response. The examples I gave above would help resolve the report problem even if the response issue is still perceived to exist (as in if once reported you see that same player still following what appears to be scripted bot routines days, weeks or even months later). That is a separate issue to the first one which is the report aspect of the equation and the report issue you could easily resolve and improve. The response issue is a bigger issue because it accounts for what actions you take in regard to the reports and how you can show the players that you are taking their reports seriously but in the meantime you could fix the first issue about reporting if wanted to quite easily yet have failed so far to do such.