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While this suggestion won't appeal to the more illiterate and lethargic members of the community, I believe that it is a proper alternative to the current situation.

As of now, it's apparent that gaia has been trouble cracking down on botters. The quick-page-load prevention system issues 15 minute bans to innocent exchangers who watch the marketplace. By the time reports of botted comments actually reach any moderators, the botter has already transfered the gold elsewhere or bought something, resulting in the ban of an innocent user for being involved in a transaction with that botter, due to the moderators futile attempts to remove the botted gold from the economy.

A much more practical solution would simply to adjust the forums so that users are unable to bot at all. I've come up with a simple suggestion for this.

Make it so that users cannot post the same message twice in a one week time span.

Even bots that use several messages will no longer be able to run in the forums or arenas. Instead, all messages on gaia would have to be uniquely constructed.

While this would unfortunately prevent legitimate users from posting the word "bump" multiple times a week, users could still "bump" their threads by posting a unique message each time, or using picture bumps.

I believe that the advantages to this system outweigh the difficulty that it would cause some users.

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Hoist the colors high...

I believe that while some people are lazy and copy and paste text (like if they're advertising something on several threads), this is still a great idea. For most of us, posting a unique message isn't that hard. There are billions of combinations of letters, people. Let's not complain that you're too lazy to type more than 'bump'. Put a different smiley each time. If you run out of smileys, type bump and then smack the keyboard randomly. Or:

bump1
bump2
bump3
bump4

and so on.


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Picture bumps would have the same URL, making it the same "message".
And what about users who have pre-generated answers for helping in Q&A?

This is a really horrible idea sweatdrop

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sephirothgal
Picture bumps would have the same URL, making it the same "message".
And what about users who have pre-generated answers for helping in Q&A?

This is a really horrible idea sweatdrop


By picture "bump", I didn't mean only the picture. They'd still have to individualize it.

And pre-generated responses can still be slightly customized. It's spammy just to copy/paste the myqna answers.

In all honesty, I don't see any problem with it, other than gaians who aren't willing to type a little extra to help the community.

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I can see this working in the arena.

But not the forums, for reasons already stated.

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Horrible, horrible idea.

Gaia will lose so many members and people will complain almost as much as they do about the "cancel auction" button from the marketplace.
Maybe even more.

Besides, It would probably cause so many bugs as gaia has to memorize every single post you make during a week until it "reboots". And that would cause even more problems and more complaining.

I think it's too much work and too dull to work out.
Sorry, but the botting is up to us, mostly.
That's what the "report" button is there for.

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How about a warning instead of a ban? I mean, maybe you forgot you posted 'yes' four hours ago. Would that really warrant a BAN?

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The Cootie Hunter
Horrible, horrible idea.

Gaia will lose so many members and people will complain almost as much as they do about the "cancel auction" button from the marketplace.
Maybe even more.

Besides, It would probably cause so many bugs as gaia has to memorize every single post you make during a week until it "reboots". And that would cause even more problems and more complaining.

I think it's too much work and too dull to work out.
Sorry, but the botting is up to us, mostly.
That's what the "report" button is there for.


Unfortunately, there is no report button for arena comments; additionally, it would be extremely easy to code as gaia already saves all your posts in the "egosearch" feature. It wouldn't be hard at all for them to make it.

And if members aren't willing to actually type, what the ******** are they doing on a forum in the first place?

Your argument really isn't very convincing.

@Vijaya: It wouldn't ban you. It'd just keep you from posting with a "You cannot post the same message again" popup.

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Awiergan
The Cootie Hunter
Horrible, horrible idea.

Gaia will lose so many members and people will complain almost as much as they do about the "cancel auction" button from the marketplace.
Maybe even more.

Besides, It would probably cause so many bugs as gaia has to memorize every single post you make during a week until it "reboots". And that would cause even more problems and more complaining.

I think it's too much work and too dull to work out.
Sorry, but the botting is up to us, mostly.
That's what the "report" button is there for.


Unfortunately, there is no report button for arena comments; additionally, it would be extremely easy to code as gaia already saves all your posts in the "egosearch" feature. It wouldn't be hard at all for them to make it.

And if members aren't willing to actually type, what the ******** are they doing on a forum in the first place?

Your argument really isn't very convincing.
What are they doing on a forum? Making gold.

You're supposed to copy down the name and PM it to a mod saying you strongly suspect them of botting in the arena.

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1. We do not ban users who unknowingly receive botted gold or items through normal transactions. Please stop spreading this misinformation.

2. It would be extremely easy to create a botting program that generated a random string to for each message, or numbered each post incrementally. Email spammers already do this exact thing to prevent their messages from being caught by less sophisticated anti-spam filters.

It'd probably end up inconveniencing normal, TOS abiding users far more than botters.

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a week seems a tad steep for this idea, otherwise, I like it.

make it a day, and I think that a lot of botting would be deterred that way(and plus it would stop people from advertising in other threads, etc)

Alright, let's say we can post every minute(is it 45 seconds or a minute? I can't remember) therefore, in a 24 hour period, a bot could post about 1,440 times. If the number of unique messages is restricted to a 24 hour period, then a bot would have to come up with at least 1,000 or so unique messages just to post.

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GinoLeTV
You're supposed to copy down the name and PM it to a mod saying you strongly suspect them of botting in the arena.


I know that. Assume that I've considered the alternatives before making a suggestion. Most members aren't willing to go out of their way to do that, though, especially when it's something that gaia can prevent with such a simple feature.

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Anlina
1. We do not ban users who unknowingly receive botted gold or items through normal transactions. Please stop spreading this misinformation.


I was not informed of this on my other accounts that have been here for a year. THANK ******** GODS.

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Awiergan
GinoLeTV
You're supposed to copy down the name and PM it to a mod saying you strongly suspect them of botting in the arena.


I know that. Assume that I've considered the alternatives before making a suggestion. Most members aren't willing to go out of their way to do that, though, especially when it's something that gaia can prevent with such a simple feature.


Which, sadly, a gold gain from PMs might encourage

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Anlina
1. We do not ban users who unknowingly receive botted gold or items through normal transactions. Please stop spreading this misinformation.

2. It would be extremely easy to create a botting program that generated a random string to for each message, or numbered each post incrementally. Email spammers already do this exact thing to prevent their messages from being caught by less sophisticated anti-spam filters.

It'd probably end up inconveniencing normal, TOS abiding users far more than botters.


1. I don't agree with banning of users who knowingly received botted gold, fro that matter, when it's gaia's responsibility to punish the user who actually broke the rules, not those who were later involved. It's the equivalent of banning a user for knowingly posting in a thread that was in the wrong forum.

2. I considered this before posting my suggestion. Most botters aren't creating their own programs, but using ones that were already coded. I've personally looked at a few of them, and most of them have only one message that is used over and over. The more complicated ones allow you to enter several messages that it chooses from. But I've yet to see one that randomly generates messages. Aside from that, anything random would be reported as spam, and easier to pick out in the arena.

A bot that says "10/10" is indistinguishable from a user who says "10/10". But a bot that says "fsgdfsdrs" will be reported anyways.
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