You actually don't need to be online for jail time to pass. Jails should be enforced perhaps every 2 /warnings or so, and increasing every time. I don't think its a bad idea.
Being online for jail time to pass largely depends on how things are set up. However, a good amount of servers require you to be online for it to be passed. Anyways, jail gives trolls and such acknowledgement and many times attention, especially when the jail is public. You're somewhat encouraging trolls, not discouraging them - they live on attention and acknowledgement. Besides, a jail where you don't have to log on for time to pass is literally indifferent from a tempban, and even encourages trolling more so when the jail is public, for the reasons I've stated. Mutes, on the other hand, essentially tell trolls to "shut up" and offers them no acknowledgement. That's an effective deterrent to trolling, even if it may not be completely visible.
yeah jail is stupid. i like the idea of mutes though if they work for pm. anyways something needs to be done about these harassment trolls
+1, this would be an excellent moderation tool. However I agree with nicit about mutes being the real way here to deal with trolls -1 to jails, they sound really juvenile and lame. Mute or a forced ignore would solve the problem but keep the player in the game. And keeping players is sort of a thing we wanna do these days.
+1 mute them for a 48 hour period while on server as first offense then 1 week then 1 month. That is true torture being on server and not being able to talk to anyone
This. The way I've re-worked the chatter system for herochat is that the entire folder gets flushed on shutdown. Mutes are much better.
