Novice Network needs some serious fixing... not sure if bug or intended

[Finnfinite]

Today I got forcefully 'invited' to the NN. I have NO option to decline, and whoever invited me didn't bother messaging first. Suddenly I just was there.

The first thing I do is politely inform them that I'm on an alt and I don't need the novice network. And turns out, once you're in you're in. No escape.

I turned off my sprout. Still in. I requested to be kicked, and a mentor obliged. Thirty minutes later, I'm back again.

The only option available to me is to turn off the chat visibility. I'm still IN the network against my will, and while turning off removes a lot of annoyance it's the principle of the matter. I apparently have no choice but to remain a silent member of this organization I wanted no part of.

1. The NN needs an ACCEPT/DECLINE type of invitation, not a 'taken forcefully' invitation. If you insist on having it stay the way it is, players need a way to label themselves not interested.

2. The NN needs a simple way to leave. Please. Get me out.

[Bacent]

I know when you're a mentor you can leave, but they just need to get rid of the chat at this point. 9 out of 10 times it's just general complaining about being in the chat/general idiocy, and rarely have I seen actual help for newer people being given.

[Tonjiar]

Nabbed this from a reddit post. Hopefully this works for you.

Open your character settings, go to the log settings sub-section, pull up the settings for the "General" log tab, and disable the Novice Network. It'll hide all the messages.

[Finnfinite]

As I stated in my original post, I can hide the messages... but I'm still a member. I don't want to be listed on their roster at all, and there's no way to leave like you could with an FC or an LS.

[CBF]

• As the OP mentioned, it NEEDS to be "opt in/out". I remember being a newbie and the default chat box is super tiny with enormous letters. With the current "Mentor linkshell" meta that it is, where mentors are just rubbing elbows and using it for another chat channel 95% of the time, newbies are gonna miss almost everything relevant, and because they're newbies, they don't know how to switch it off, how to change settings so they see important stuff, so on. An added frustration to the lack of opt-in/out is that whenever we kick bot-novices, they are immediately part of the channel again some 30 minutes later. This is ridiculous.
• I don't know how to recommend a workaround for this, but 40 hours playtime of the Sproutling status is simply not enough for new players who actually want and need to be in the channel as a novice. My opinion is to extend the duration of the sproutling itself (it wasn't an issue before since there was nothing like this system, however now that the status actually affects their "help" options now, this must be done), or remove the sproutling condition from the novice channel altogether.
  Coming back to my above opt-in/out problem, I think a very good way of doing this would be to give the novice an option to leave the channel or their sproutling status forever. Perhaps there would be some sort of hard-cap to this, such as reaching level 50 or level 60, or reaching a specific part of the main story or achievement points or some such. To expand on the above, I levelled an alt to around 30 before patch 3.2. The playtime on the alt right now is 1 day, 22 hours. I'm level 32, and let's just say for a moment it's not an alt, how on earth do I get access to the system that has been implemented for me? How do I get help? The answer? I don't. I continue playing as though there is no such system.
• The new effect of removing mentors once they are afk is fine. This has been a change for the better, albeit a very insignificant one compared to the scale of issues this system has. I was very surprised to see that the majority of problems noticed by the vast majority were largely ignored. To expand on this issue, I believe that when a Mentor, who is actively inside the channel, goes inside a duty, they should be removed from the channel. If I'm raiding with my static for 4 hours, I do not expect to either go AFK, or to address any problems raised by any newbie novices.
  This means if I was in the channel at the beginning of the 4 hours raid time, then I'm certainly still in the channel 4 hours later, without any novices being given an ounce of attention. There are people right now who raid much longer than I, and who are online for much longer too, compounding the problem. This is not something that must be expected of the mentors to do themselves. If I log in, late for raid time, and find myself in the mentor channel, the last thing I'm going to do is address the issue of being in the mentor channel, since my priority is to ensure I'm ready for the raid (food, potions) and quickly make my way to Hinterlands and so on.
  
  This is just one example of what is many many things. The Mentors themselves should also be allowed the chance, outside of the above issues, to opt in/out of the channel. Nobody should be forced inside or outside of this channel. The execution is ridiculous; I found myself asking an FC mate to log out, to allow me to get into the channel, so once he logged out, I ran inside and outside the FC house several times until I got inside. This is a most ridiculous methodology.

The problems noted above are ones I can think of just now off-hand, however I'm sure there are more issues that others may wish to contribute, and I'll add more myself if I remember. Please, someone at SE read this and do something, the idea is very good, but the execution is just awful.