Quote Originally Posted by Enkidoh View Post
Your idea of a more dynamic user-defined filter might actually be more effective than the 'SE defined' one though as it would be easier to block RMT whenever they find an exploit.
The advantages of having the filter be user-defined are that it can be maintained as dynamically as the user wishes and be as broad or specific as the user wishes, as well as the fact that, because each player's filter is a bit different, it's much harder for the spammers to actually know what's being widely filtered and come up with suitable workarounds for it.

The biggest disadvantage of it being user-defined is that anyone who doesn't have such filters set up is still getting the full brunt of unfiltered spam. This includes new players getting their first impression of the game, as well as anyone who simply hasn't taken the time to update their spam filters lately. There are a lot of players who don't put much effort into specializing and configuring their interface, and such players likely wouldn't have much if any spam filtering if they had to set it up and maintain it on their own.

The most effective version of chat filters would likely be a combined approach, where SE filters out as much spam as they can, but then also allows individual users to set additional filters to catch anything that made it through SE's net.