mott555

It runs counter to the American dream. The ideology that anybody can come to America and make a living for themselves. That said, how the Republicans can honestly sit there and call Obama a socialist when it was their own President who used government spending to buy up $700 billion's worth of bad assets is beyond me. That was the finest example of socialism going, except that only favoured the rich while the poor has to now pay for it. Except that around 70% of the nation's tax money comes from the richest 5% of the population. Most poor people don't pay income taxes, and social security and sales taxes combined don't amount to much, so how exactly are the poor paying for it?

You know what drives me nuts? People treat W. like he's mentally [developmentally delayed]ed. And so you see all of those dumb flash adds showing him flopping around like a [developmentally delayed], and it says "His IQ is 125! Are you smarter than Bush?" Yet 125 is actually quite intelligent. And already they now show Obama looking all statesmanlike and intelligent, and it says "His IQ is 124, are you smarter than Obama?" They give Bush the higher IQ in those adds and call him [developmentally delayed]ed, give Obama the lower IQ and make him look smart. Media bias, anyone?

Sweet. We have another Jimmy Carter... At least in two years Republicans will probably take back a good chunk of Congress and maybe even the White House in four years once people start realizing what "change" actually means. On the other hand, I'm a poor college student who doesn't pay taxes, so I'll get some "tax cuts" (aka welfare). Maybe I should just quit my job and let Obama "redistribute the wealth" down to me.

Tbh I think RuneScape is stupid...but that doesn't stop me from playing it :D

It's always been like this. I admit in HD the RuneScape females are hotter than they used to be, but yeah, some people are too dumb to realize that the person controlling the character isn't necessarily a hot female.

That's a cool idea. I train on blue dragons and I always have to right-click (really a pain when some immature little ranger decides to be a [cabbage] and steal them from me), but I'd hate to be in the wildy, try to move and accidentally attack the Chaos Elemental and get pwnt instantly.

I really wish they'd do something like that. Lately the chat system/report abuse/appeal offence system has been a bloody mess, and I think the only way it'll get better is if Jagex stops targeting little kids and actually has real people read offence appeals. Personally I'd like some mature worlds where you have to prove you're 18+ (using a credit card or something) and then the offensive language and personal details rules (and possibly the censor) don't exist on those worlds. I'm sick of getting black marks because some little kid reported me for asking my IRL friend when has to work or something like that.

This is a pretty sweet idea. Rangers get a dedicated slot for their arrows, why shouldn't mages get dedicated rune slots?

Offensive yes, but they probably aren't actually racist. I bet they were just a bunch of bored kids trying to see what kind of reaction they get.

Well, I guess I did make a comment about recreational drugs, but I can turn around and blame Jagex for putting an item in QuickChat that was open to such interpretation. If the appeal system wasn't automated, they (hopefully) would have understood that I misunderstood the meaning of an item in QuickChat. Interestingly enough, "spadeful of coke" is no longer available in QuickChat.

Well that's the hard part. How am I supposed to know what other people consider offensive? I follow my own rules of speaking, avoiding language that I consider offensive and language I know other people will normally consider offensive (and for five years that's worked great, no blackmarks until a month ago), but the problem is that nearly anything can be viewed as offensive by someone. I don't view my comment as offensive, and I know most of the people who hang out in Edgeville don't either, since I practically live there and I talk quite a bit to them (and many of them make comments that are much easier to define as "offensive" than what I said). But I can't control other people's thoughts or ideas (unfortunately =P) nor can I read their thoughts, so I can't know if I said something offensive. I guarantee someone out there will even find this post offensive, simply on the basis that I don't find myself offensive. I think "offensive" language is actually the wrong term. In my opinion, offensive language can include more than just dirty words. It extends to ideas. Many people find conversations "offensive" even if each and every word is totally acceptable, simply because of the idea expressed. For an example that's easy to relate to, if I said "Removing PKing was a dumb move," that could easily be considered offensive by someone who loves the new wilderness. Since that could fall under the category of "offensive language," (after all, I did offend them) could I be potentially reported for that? On the other hand, if I said "Removing PKing was a good thing," I'd probably have former PK'ers threatening to kill me in my sleep. Obviously that statement can be considered offensive. My point is that "offensive" language is far too broad and gray of a term. It may be difficult to define the boundaries of what's considered "offensive." I think the "offensive language" option should be replaced with "foul language." The category of "foul" or "dirty" language is much easier to define and understand than "offensive" language. And it removes the possibility of punishment for saying something that isn't dirty but may be controversial. And it would allow me room to mistakenly believe a "spadeful of coke" is a "shovelful of drugs."

The scariest thing about an auto-report system is that if it exists, they never told us. We really should be warned before such major updates to the chat system are implemented.

Wow, that's actually quite scary. I'm gonna register a f2p junk account really quick and check it out. I've always been a RuneScape faithful, continuing to play even after pure essence, the G.E., removal of free trade/pking/duel arena and stuff, but this appeal system and possible auto-report might make me start second-guessing my choice to stay. If there is an auto-report system that will generate abuse reports based on things that are said, that could be a big problem. In essence it would function very similarly to the censor system, and we all know how messed up the censor is at times. Remember when the word "fletching" was censored? I'd hate for that to happen again (but with the auto-report system instead) and then get muted for telling some newb that I have a fletching cape.

I've been playing RuneScape for 4 - 5 years now, I'm combat level 97, I have a quest cape (can't wear anymore because of Rocking Out), and I've never had a black mark/offense. Until now. Actually it happened about a month ago, but I play so little anymore that I didn't find out until today. Anyway, here's the incident. It was the day Quick Chat was released, and several odd things were available in their items list, including "Mobile phone," "9mm revolver," and "Pretty girl." I was hanging out in Edgeville exploring Quick Chat with all of the usual people who hang out there, and I found that "Spadeful of coke" was an item in Quick Chat. Now, where I live coke means only two things--Coca-Cola and cocaine. Since a spadeful of soft drink doesn't make sense to me, I made a comment (aloud, in public chat) wondering why they'd have a shovelful of drugs as an item. I then speculated it was an easter egg or a joke and moved on to other things. Being bored with RuneScape and busy in real life, I put the game down for about three weeks. I logged back in today to catch up on quests and saw I had messages from Jagex. I discovered that I had been reported for breaking rule 1 (offensive language) and had a black mark put against my account, and by looking at the evidence, it showed me my comment about a shovelful of drugs. I appealed the offense, explaining that we were trying to figure out some items available in Quick Chat, and when I clicked submit I got an immediate response. No waiting time. The response said something along the lines of "We have conclusive evidence that you were in fact in complete control of your account when the offense was committed." Now in my appeal I never made the claim that someone else controlled my account. The response indicates that Jagex didn't even read my appeal. Even more disturbing was that the response was immediate. Being a computer programmer in real life, I can recognize automated responses. Naturally, I made my way to the rants forums and posted a quick rant against canned, automated appeal responses. Within five minutes it was locked by a Forum Moderator stating that it was "not a valid topic of discussion." Over the next hour I watched as another dozen or so rants about the exact same subject popped up, and they were all quickly locked. Some even hidden. One guy even received a forum ban for his thread. I find it disturbing that I was reported for something relatively innocent and received a black mark for it. I find it more disturbing that the appeal system is totally worthless, that you can send anything you want and the system just automatically accepts/rejects (RS forums are full of posts about people who successfully appealed using only jibberish or swear words). It sounds like the system has some kind of percentage, for example automatically accept 15% of appeals and reject the rest (made-up numbers). But even more disturbing is the fact that we were being silenced for pointing out the injustice of the appeal system. I hope I can safely post this on these forums, as apparently this is a common occurrence. Jagex Customer Service seems to have some serious problems, and when we point those out we get silenced. We need to be able to point out flaws in their system and not be swept under the rug and punished when we find these things out. Apparently the safest thing to do in RuneScape is never speak. Because anything you say--no matter how innocent or trivial--can always be construed as offensive by someone. And if that happens to you your appeal doesn't matter, because a human won't read it and a machine will use a random-number generator to decide whether or not to remove your offense. Unfortunately, never speaking will probably get me reported for macroing.