The OP makes two points, number 1 is about the clutter of chat, number 2 is that users are "earning" money through automated means. What I'm trying to explain is that advertising is no more an automated means of earning money than a forum post is, for example. For your reference, in case you don't remember: I hope that this satisfies your requirement for me to use logic, if you were perhaps more polite from the get go rather than jumping the gun. Perhaps asking me to explain myself better, or you taking the time to even try to understand, this conversation would've gone a different way.
I'm the first for changing the cooldown from 3 to 5 minutes, or even make trade ads paid. That would be a strong deterrent against auto afk advertising. But I don't think that making them illegal would be a good idea, and the reasons for this viewpoint have already been explained by others before me in this thread. Also, how could you tell if someone is actually afk, or maybe is just very busy ingame/doesn't want to answer or do business with you? -1
Like I said, I'm more talking about the people that put they are afk in their trade messaging, offering services that have to be done in game, just like yourself.
For the people asking for a way to enforce this rule, a way to enforce can be from the player base. To further explain, I'm talking about when the person afk advertising says they are doing services like tp'ing or water, but are afk and unable to do it. The person pm'ing them wanting to purchase these services could post a complaint about this person, as they are afk and advertising. Remember, things like pm harassment, can only be handled by a user posting a complaint, this would simply be another user based complaint. Obviously this rule would have to be modified a lot, but I am just giving a basis to how it would be moderated.
You obviously didn't read my comment: Hell, one could even have just /ignore'd you! (and I think I'm going to do it right now) Having users pestering staff with such childish requests would make their life impossible. Plus, I'm under the impression you didn't understand this comment, please read it again:
While it may be annoying I don't think this needs to be implemented. It would also be a pain in the ass to follow the "protocall" for determining if their afk.
protocol* And yeah, I agree. This sounds like a major pain in the ass for staff. Just increase the amount of time between messages in trade chat, or disable macromod. Don't add more ambiguous rules. The rules are too complicated and ambiguous already.
I agree that trade channel feels too crowded sometimes (and I do agree that this is mostly due to auto ads), however we need other ways to reduce the amount of ads. If this suggestion was to be implemented, it would establish unneeded and unpractical restrictions.
It isn't AFK money generation as the person can't really do shit unless they're at the computer. Note the word "generation" - Sure you beg for money using a macro and you might get a tiny bit of money - But that's no generation, as you aren't generating shit, just actively getting money from players - Money that already exists. This rule only applies to users who are intentionally disturbing others. I seriously doubt someone using an advertising macro would be trying to disturb people - They only want to advertise more efficiently, that's all. There's quite literally no way to enforce that - Do mods just tp to everyone checking if they're afk? PMing them? Lol. Even if it can be enforced, it sounds like a pain in the ass to do so. Now, I do agree that there's a problem with the trade channel as it's spammed with ads by numerous players. There's two ideal solutions to this problem. Blocking the ECHO command via ClientPermissions plugin Or Increasing the amount of time trade ads have to be before creating a new one from 3 minutes per 2 different advertisements, to 5 minutes per 2 different advertisements. The first one is unrealistic as many players already rely on MacroMod for doing shit, and removing it would and will make a large part of the player base upset. That now leaves us with the second one, increasing amount of time someone has to wait before posting a new advertisement from 3 minutes to 5 minutes. This will reduce the constant spam in the trade channel while not completely blocking macros from advertising. This is the best solution we have so far. Any attempt or suggestion to remove the MacroMod or make certain aspects of it illegal is unrealistic and unfeasible. What we should be doing is working on how to stop trade ads in general, usually by increasing the amount of time someone has to wait before posting a new advertisement. -1
How will you address all the players I have ignored (the list is quite long at times as pretty much anybody using macros every 3 minutes or takes 10 sentences to say 12 or so words is on there)? Will I be penalized if I am reading or watching a movie and miss a pm? Even new players will learn to ignore those that continually spam the chats.
My thoughts... this suggestion is trying to address something that isn't the problem. People advertising while AFK aren't the issue. Do they contribute to it? Sure. Will eliminating it actually solve the problem? No, it won't. We should cure the problem, not a symptom.
