Cannot send mail

Argleblaster

NA client, PC

I cannot send mail. I can receive it, but pushing send does not cause any reaction. I have tried with and without items attached.
I have switched characters. I have reloaded UI. I have closed the game and restarted. I have turned off the computer and restarted.
I am trying to find out how to repair the client, but not sure that will fix the problem.

I have submitted a bug request 161226-002208. I had to list it under chat, as I could not find an option to list anything under the topic of "mail"

Argleblaster

I also tried turning off all add-ons

Argleblaster

Ran "repair" and restarted the game. It did not fix the problem.

Elsonso

Have you been farming a lot recently? Harvest nodes or killing monsters? (I mean a lot)

Are you unable to whisper to people, or talk in guild chat, or zone chat?

If the answer is Yes, you might be participating in a rumored "social ban" that seems to hit people who farm a lot.

Argleblaster

I have been levelling a couple of my non-vet toons during the New Life festival. It's a lot more than normal for me, but probably not nearly as much as some folks.

I can whisper and talk in guild chat, but do not have access to guild banks or the guild store from a bank. Not sure about zone chat.

Day 3 of problem.

moonbat

Argleblaster wrote: »

I have been levelling a couple of my non-vet toons during the New Life festival. It's a lot more than normal for me, but probably not nearly as much as some folks.

I can whisper and talk in guild chat, but do not have access to guild banks or the guild store from a bank. Not sure about zone chat.

Day 3 of problem.

See this thread:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/310926/what-is-with-the-social-banning#latest

sylviermoone

If you haven't already, submit a ticket to ZOS and explain that you are GM of a guild. This issue happens frequently to GM's when mailing their guilds.

Argleblaster

I have certainly informed ZOS, but I don't think anyone is reviewing the player input (maybe the responsible folks are on holiday).

Day 4 of the ban.

Argleblaster

Day 5 of the social ban.

If this looks like it will persist through Sunday, I will probably hand off guild leadership so someone can run the trader--but I will be done with guilds. This is absolutely ridiculous. ZOS obviously does not want us to be able to manage the guild.

sylviermoone

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Please, can you help out with this? I've never had a social ban last more than the weekend, and only when that comes down over the weekend. 5 days on a social ban for a guild leader is a killer. It would be great if this could be escalated.

Argleblaster

Day 6 of the social ban.

Argleblaster

Day 7 of this silly ban.

Interestingly, this ban is making me seem to be a thief. I run a psijic fragment exchange service for my guild. Send me a fragment and tell me which one you want and I send back the one you need. Only now, I cannot send anything back. I cannot even tell folks why things are delayed in a mail. I posted a note on the MOTD page, but only so many folks read those.

hiyde

This reply is intended to be a heads-up to anyone who uses mail addons to communicate with their guilds.
While these addons are not banned, The ZoS position is that by using them, you run the risk of a social ban if something in your mail hits the automated tripwire in place to prevent Gold Seller spam.


@Argleblaster,

This is indeed a "social ban". It basically stops an account from interacting with anyone in any way beyond within a guild.

It includes:

- Cannot send mail
- Cannot send whispers (they never get sent even though it appears so)
- Cannot access guild store
- Cannot access guild bank
- Cannot speak in group chat
- Cannot execute a trade

I've been aware (i learned the hard way, unfortunately) of the fact that certain words or ways of writing mass mail to your guild can trip the automatic "social ban" system.

The first time it happened to me, I had put the term "Power Level" in a raffle e-mail (when ambrosia first came out). Fair enough, if anything would trigger an automated script that would do it lol.

I hear stories every few weeks of this happening to other GM's/People who send mail to their guilds, I've never heard of anyone who didn't have it reversed upon appeal.

I am concerned that the number of social bans may be increasing or something may have been adjusted. You are the 5th social ban I'm aware of in the past 7 days. Or maybe it's just a run of bad luck.


Thoughts on avoiding Social Bans for e-mail:

- Avoid words and phrases that might be found in gold-seller e-mails. I referenced "Power-Level" above as the ultimate example. Our subject last week included the word "Deal"

- Avoid excessive capitalization. (?) Even after adjusting our raffle mail template and removing "Deal" from subject and body, we got another ban on another officer account. The only difference we could find from our normal weekly template was that for that particular mail, the list of prizes had been typed in ALL CAPS. And included "ONE MILLION GOLD".

- Sending the mails excessively fast can also be an issue, but the addons dedicated to this task (such as GodSend and MailR) seem to have proper timing.

When it comes to the task of blocking actual gold farmer e-mails, their script seems to do quite well, I never see gold selling spam mail.

But when it comes to GM's of highly active guilds trying to communicate with their membership, without any guidelines whatsoever (which is why I shared what I know above), it's Russian Roulette every time a mail is sent to your guild and it would be nice to have a solution to this.

One solution that has been put forth to ZoS in meetings with guilds:

- Provide a permission based guild mail system within the game. Right now, *anyone* with an addon can send guild mail.
- Then disable mass-mailer addon functionality. Love addons but this should be a core mechanic.

Also, any type of account restriction should include an immediate communication from ZoS to the player.
If there can be an automated script to restrict accounts, there can be an automated script to notify us instead of leaving your customer clueless and playing detective to figure out what happened.

Even better, flag the account to have a human look at the email, it would take seconds to distinguish a Gold Seller mail from a Guild raffle mail. Just sayin...

We completely understand that ZoS needs to battle gold seller spam and we support those efforts.
At the same time, there needs to be a more efficient way of dealing with innocents who get caught up in the net...and hopefully someday built-in permission-based guild mail.

-H

Argleblaster

hiyde ,
Thanks for the thorough explanation. I am still learning about this problem. It never happened to me before, and I have sent out several guild mails for raffles, etc. (I am certainly curious why my "Golden Opportunity" raffles did not get me banned in the past).

I have been able to 'speak' in guild chat---fortunately. I was able to arrange to have someone put in a bid for our guild trader this week. I have also been able to use the officer's chat for the guild.

I agree with everything else you said. I even understand that ZOS needs a method of policing the mail system and battling gold sellers. I just think that it should not take seven days to fix the problem if the system makes a mistake.

hiyde

Argleblaster wrote: »

hiyde ,
I have been able to 'speak' in guild chat---fortunately. I was able to arrange to have someone put in a bid for our guild trader this week. I have also been able to use the officer's chat for the guild.

I agree with everything else you said. I even understand that ZOS needs a method of policing the mail system and battling gold sellers. I just think that it should not take seven days to fix the problem if the system makes a mistake.

Typo (fixed now). I meant to say can't speak in Group chat.

Guild Chat & Officer chat are about the only things one can do under a social ban. And yes a week is a long time. Sorry this still isn't resolved for you.

I've been made aware of two more social bans related to mail sending. That's now 7 GMs/Officers I know of in the past week, which makes me wonder if something has changed in their system to make it stricter.

Argleblaster

Day 8 of the social ban

This means that I have missed about half of the New Life Festival. I have a large amount of festival fish that I could not give to fellow guildees, have not been able to trade for the motif chapters I would like to collect, and have twenty-two Runeboxes that could have found a home before now.

Still no word from ZOS

Argleblaster

Day 9 of the social bug. Until I am informed that I received a ban, how are we certain that this is not a bug?

Argleblaster

Day 10, issue resolved