Addon Idea, your thoughts? [The BlackList]

Community General Discussion
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So, i’ve been pugging this evening (healer here) in 7-10 range and the toxicity level is through the roof tonight, i’ll say it. it’s gotten to me and these people are getting away with it.

I’m planning on making a new addon, A global BlackList addon were users can submit toxic players with proof and will alert those who in the group of such people. along with a platform to view the evidence… lets go down the naming and shaming route. ignoring it isnt helping, reporting certainly isnt helping and blizzard isnt helping anymore.

what are your thoughts as a community? on this idea.

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It is agaisnt blizzards ToS and Eula to do that and it will only end up with ban’s.

This works for forums and in game.

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There was a discord setup in classic for just this. I joined well after it was established. It was ran by GMs and only person of each guild was allowed on. I found it descended into likes and dislikes. People were being blacklisted from guild invites on very little evidence. People being human leaves this sort of system wide open to abuse. Blizzard definitely need to tighten up their act on warnings from spam complaints, and controlling the griefers, but this is not the way to handle this imo.

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yes that mentioned naming and shaming on the forums, this will be an external service i’ll provide

There was a discord setup in classic for just this. I joined well after it was established. It was ran by GMs and only person of each guild was allowed on. I found it descended into likes and dislikes. People were being blacklisted from guild invites on very little evidence. People being human leaves this sort of system wide open to abuse. Blizzard definitely need to tighten up their act on warnings from spam complaints, and controlling the griefers, but this is not the way to handle this imo.

this will be tightly monitored so it cant be abused, not automated. im thinking radier dot IO but for toxic pug players.

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As much as I would love to get rid of the toxic players in game. I can’t see this working as the same toxic players have access to the same system and the community couldn’t be trusted not to abuse it. Everything else gets abused in game what would make this any different?

I’m not a fan of people being guilty without proper evidence, Especially when the people who are spreading the guilt aren’t trusted themselves.

Also Blizzard would defo end up shutting it down like mentioned above.

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Well with any addon blizzard will look into it and as i said the rule applies to forum and in game. Feel free to tocket blizzard before you do anything.

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While I would love to filter out toxic people, time and time again has shown that toxic people will invade these sorts of groups and it will come full circle to start wrongly excluding players based on petty disagreements and misunderstandings. Very few people on WoW have nuance with these things.

It would just reinforce cliquish behavior too. Not enough score? Not known to the system? Just not liked by the creator? Suddenly black listed. For no fault than not being part of the status quo.

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So you would be the only and sole arbiter of this for all servers? For one, that would be entirely overwhelming for just one person to create. I think anyone would burn out on that, because you would have to manually verify each “proof” and Details! Log and the situations between two opposing people. And it would be constant. WoW players fight like cats and dogs just because they’re on a different faction. Just cause Blizzard thinks the faction war is over doesn’t mean the players do.

And I can’t just trust one sole arbiter, not because it is you in particular, but because this would be tyrannical for just one person to say a whole person’s account / character would be blacklisted and rejected from pugs. And even a council can be biased.

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Against ToS.

Also an addon wont be enough, you will need an external backend and frontend for people to submit data - which will be integrated into the addon and released every day i guess, like the rio score in the beginning - but there the data was pulled from an API.

I doubt you will pay for all of that, even if its not that much nowadays.

People are also lazy no one will go through the hassle of typing in all that stuff on an external website. And no one will want to update the addon every single day.

You for sure wont monitor it.

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It’s a nice idea that won’t work. Not everyone’s definition of toxic is the same, and there are spiteful people out there who will find a way to use the add-on as a tool for revenge or bullying. People who don’t deserve to be community blacklisted will end up on that list.

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Not only that, but what is the burden of “proof?” What would be the lowest threshold to being on the exclude list? How would the addon work? Would it scan for names? What about in the event of name changes or people moving servers? Would their reputation extend to that too?

OP, I just feel like you’re more resentful of players these days from your posts. Now you want to go through the astronomical task of making a backend exclusion list about pugs since player reputation doesn’t really follow them from pug to pug or instance to instance like it used to be.

Like, it’s a little much.

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It seems like a lot of work. Have you tried the No Pressure discord?

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Yeah I do use that but it takes longer to organise a key sometimes

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Let me add to my first answer. If you need to develop an external service, which you have to for up to date lists.

As a software dev let me tell you. Dont forget the legal nightmare you will have to manage.

For example here in germany. Using google fonts, which every does, but not mentioned it? Sued.

Using local storage (cookies) to store application state, which every one does, but not mentioned it? Sued.

Dont mentioned contact info with real name and valid address? Sued. If you add the info think about the ppl who gets shamed on your website, they now know how they can meet you in rl.

Someone used the text input for behaviour description to fill it with racism for all users to see? Sued.

Do you use an account feature, but dont think about the laws for securing user data? Sued.

Do you want to earn some money with adds to help with server cost? I hope you have registered a business and have your taxes in order - else sued.

If you dont develop an external service and implement it as an addon which will try to sync the lists between players you meet in the world you have problems, too.

First the lists will never be up to date. A lot of people need to use it and meet one another for the addon to sync lists.

Now think about someone who intentionally fills his list with racist stuff. His list will be propagated to other players and they will forward it further. Great now you have an addon which spams others with racism and every one who uses it gets banned.

Just dont dude. Report them and move on.

Edit: Using blizzards IP for a naming and shaming website - sued, like boss level sued.

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I don’t think you understand the bases, this isn’t RL people just in-game characters. No real information will be gathered.

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The addon would soon get revoked in practice. You can’t run a naming and shaming addon.

You can build your own ignore list of people you don’t want to play with, that is fine.

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Try thinking how this would look in the real world and you will see how terrible this idea is. Personally I meet very few toxic people in the game. The occasional swear or outburst is all that I meet and when it’s too much I just report them and move on. I don’t see why anything more that that is necessary and forcing people into an addon that you control is certainly not the way to go.

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I doubt you’d ever meet the same person again nowadays.

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Until Blizzard stops relying on AI and algorithms to do their work for them your add on idea is a bad idea and hopefully never sees the light of day.

Also. Your idea of toxicity is probably very different from mine.

It’s also why Blizzard’s continued attitude of sticking their head in the sand and allowing their own forum to police itself has consistently failed ever since they started the idea.

Its almost as if their Community management team has never spent 5 minutes on the internet.

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I think you dont understand software development.

Where does an entry about a toxic player come from?

You have two options.

It is handled in the addon itself. Then your lists will be pretty small. Addons cant communicate out of wow. If you type in something into an addon there is no way for all users of said addon to get a new entry.

So in order to complete the lists players with the addon installed need to meet inside wow and the addon can exchange their lists.

If you want the lists to be updated with new addon releases the data has to be uploaded by users.

Either by submitting their addon cache, where your listst will be saved as the addon state, the only way for addons to do that. Or by manually typing in stuff. Both of this require an external website and with that you have all of the above. As soon as you host an API and or website all of the above apply to you, a user connection is the beginning of handling user data. You have ip addresses and using google fonts for example will automatically forward requests to US servers, which is only alllowed if you have an explicit article about it in your website. Saving a single variable in the local storage is a cookie, you must show a cookie agreement because of this. Displaying adds will forward user data even further and you get in big trouble if you dont have any idea about what you do.

So either your addon will be lackluster and exploitable because the sync will happen ingame and only if people with the addon meet. Or you have a ton of legal work to do additionally to the implementation of the backend, frontend and addon itself.

Btw. Free text field and file upload for every one is a bad idea. Again - people will upload and weite what ever they want and you will answer for that as the host of such services.

Tbh. I am sure you dont have any background for developing such an addon. You seem to not have any development background at all.

But dev stuff aside. It is against ToS and rightfully so.

1 Like