The GM team is completely ineffective.

[Kazmarek]

I don't know if it's the team itself or the policies, but it's completely ineffective. Absolutely nothing gets done. I've taken to reporting spam again in recent weeks. It's all over the place, I've submitted reports for the same names (yes, it's always the same character) so many times and nothing is ever done about it.

This came to a boiling point last night when I actually got to speak to- what I assume was- a living, breathing actual human GM. I asked them to tell me, point blank, if what I was constantly reporting was actually against TOS. Their response was telling me they could not provide me with any conclusive answers.

This is, of course, entirely unacceptable. If anybody should be able to provide conclusive answers, it's a GM. This isn't even to mention how- if by some measure of bad luck- you actually manage to get suspended, you won't be told what you got suspended for. You'll be told what part of the TOS you violated, but you won't be given the specific incident, meaning you just have to guess at what happened.

Once again, this is entirely unacceptable. I can only be led to believe that the GM team is either incredibly overworked at best, or completely incompetent at worst. To be honest, I don't care which one it is. I want to see better from the community. I want to see actual courtesy, I want to see the GMs enforcing their own rules. The bottom line is, it needs to be better.

[Azureskies01]

The GMs have always been ...ohh what could I type here to not get my post deleted, umm... lackluster. That is just kinda how it goes in the west with any type of community manager type people but I will say SEs policies are terrible as well. Much like the GMs, the policies have always been this way. Gotta take the bad with the good and hopefully SE rights the ship so it continues to have more good than bad.

[Jeeqbit]

Well spam is a vague thing. It can be a problem in certain circumstances and your definition of spam may be different to theirs, so that's most likely why they couldn't just give a conclusive answer.

But if you reported it and it didn't stop, then most likely it's because it's fine.

[Kazmarek]

But if you reported it and it didn't stop, then most likely it's because it's fine.

Then that's something they should tell us, no? Something as simple as "We've reviewed your report and determined the actions do not violate Terms of Service" or something like that. It'd give everyone a much, much better understanding of the rules than the guessing game we have to play to this day. Now, of course, that's not on the GMs, that's on the policies; which are probably a big part of why it feels like the team is completely ineffective.

[Jeeqbit]

Then that's something they should tell us, no?

Well again, the context may take some investigation and confirmation (since, your report could be a lie for all they know and they need to check), so I doubt they would just tell you on the spot.

Something as simple as "We've reviewed your report and determined the actions do not violate Terms of Service"

Well you see, that would confirm they took no action on the user. They don't want to confirm or deny if they took action on a user for privacy reasons.

Why does the privacy matter? Laws aside, it presents a big problem if they give you ammo to publically say "this person got successfully reported" in a mocking way, and likewise if the person receiving the punishment knows who or what prompted it then they may go after them and create a feud of some sort. For all these reasons they keep it vague.

It'd give everyone a much, much better understanding of the rules than the guessing game we have to play to this day.

You could, like, read the rules. Then it wouldn't be a guessing game. I've always fully understood them, but a while back they provided examples for people who struggle to interpret them. The examples are in line with the understanding I have always had: that you just need to be kind and considerate and that's really it.

Now, of course, that's not on the GMs, that's on the policies; which are probably a big part of why it feels like the team is completely ineffective.

They are constrained to a degree. When this is the case, they usually direct you to the official forums. Which of course is kind of a dead end because there is a language barrier, but it's the only thing they can do because SE's policy is that "if you want change you can post about it on the official forums".

why I'll probably never touch WoW again is the fact that they entirely gutted their CS team and replaced it with a copy/paste bot

The truth is that in customer service, you are answering the same questions over, and over, and over again. It gets to a point where you are repeating the same thing every single day. You are virtually writing out templates that exist in your head. At this point, you may as well write actual templates and optimize them to come across polite and navigate all the social rules and political correctness rules. So that's what they do! It also saves a lot of time. Of course, I think they can go off-script if they feel it's necessary but I think in most cases they don't need to because they had a script for your exact scenario.

[Sove92]

Judging by post history, this is about venue ads in PF or the infrequent shout in every city. Yea, ofc GMs do nothing, they are not against the rules.

[Kazmarek]

Advertising is not against the rules, spam is. This is not a hard concept to grasp.

[Neoyoshi]

Advertising is not against the rules, spam is. This is not a hard concept to grasp.

Are we talking about gold selling spam? Could you be more clear on what you are referring to? because for all i know, you are talking about 'spam in a can'. Are you talking about people spamming emotes? Are you talking about people just typing in chat?

[Kazmarek]

Are we talking about gold selling spam? Could you be more clear on what you are referring to? because for all i know, you are talking about 'spam in a can'. Are you talking about people spamming emotes? Are you talking about people just typing in chat?

Spam is spam, it doesn't matter the form it comes in. Emote spam, action spam, chat spam, party finder spam, gold selling spam, it all is ultimately the same thing: spam. There doesn't need to be a qualifier, it's all spam.