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Forums > Home› Star Trek Online General Discussion

Whatever You Do....

auckaaucka Member Posts: 38 Arc User
edited April 2015 in Star Trek Online General Discussion
Don't type "random mook" in chat. Just had my account banned for it, and my son's account as well (while testing to find out what combination of words I could possibly have been banned for). As there is no direct contact support, I'm waiting on a response to a ticket.

Thinking of forming a guild called Random Mooks if anyone wants to join.
Post edited by aucka on

Comments

  • kjwashingtonkjwashington Member Posts: 2,529 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    Considering what the word means, I doubt that's the reason you were banned. (Mook usually means a stupid or incompetent person, usually a male.) Or if it was, the person who reported you just didn't know what it meant. Also, never try to test out what words can get you banned. You'll end up getting banned. :P
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  • auckaaucka Member Posts: 38 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    kjwashington wrote: »
    Considering what the word means, I doubt that's the reason you were banned. (Mook usually means a stupid or incompetent person, usually a male.) Or if it was, the person who reported you just didn't know what it meant. Also, never try to test out what words can get you banned. You'll end up getting banned. :P

    Actually, that is exactly what I typed. I posted to fleet chat "Just got a friend invite from a random mook," and saw a system message warning against linking to restricted websites in chat. I thought nothing of it and the message didn't go through, so I entered it again (as it obviously was not a link in any way, shape, or form) and was immediately force disconnected.

    I know perfectly well what a mook is. It is the type of person who sends random friend or fleet invites, and this game has a lot of them :P
  • razar2380razar2380 Member Posts: 1,187 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    In some places, the word "mook" is a racist term. That may be why it is not allowed. There are other words that in one place are not racist, just insulting or derogatory, but in another are. So, they will ban accounts if they are used more than once.

    What I suggest is not repeating anything that you get a warning message for. Even putting it in a PM in the game will cause your account to be banned.
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  • organicmanfredorganicmanfred Member Posts: 3,236 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    For starters you could write Trendy a pm here and tell her that it was rather a mistake instead of something else.

    The support seems to have their hands full with account stuff so it can take a while.
  • shevetshevet Member Posts: 1,667 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    Oh dear. I wonder if you've fallen victim to a mad regular expression? "Random mook" contains the letters m - m - o in sequence, and that's often found in the website addresses of the gold spammers. The business about "linking to a restricted website" might bear that out. It wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing's happened, unfortunately.
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  • auckaaucka Member Posts: 38 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    shevet wrote: »
    Oh dear. I wonder if you've fallen victim to a mad regular expression? "Random mook" contains the letters m - m - o in sequence, and that's often found in the website addresses of the gold spammers. The business about "linking to a restricted website" might bear that out. It wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing's happened, unfortunately.

    That makes sense, sort of. But I wonder do they ban everyone who uses the word "MMO" in chat? Seems kind of weird.

    Anyway, it's all rather funny, provided I get my account back in a timely manner :P
  • battykoda0battykoda0 Member Posts: 959 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    shevet wrote: »
    Oh dear. I wonder if you've fallen victim to a mad regular expression? "Random mook" contains the letters m - m - o in sequence, and that's often found in the website addresses of the gold spammers. The business about "linking to a restricted website" might bear that out. It wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing's happened, unfortunately.

    Placing my bets on this one...
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  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    Strangely enough, my first experience with the word mook was with an enemy group in City of Heroes called Mooks.
  • bluegeekbluegeek Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    Considering that the term has negative connotations, it's probably best if we don't keep using it in this thread.

    Thanks for the warning so nobody else makes the same mistake.

    Hopefully it was just a temporary ban.
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  • berginsbergins Member Posts: 3,453 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    shevet wrote: »
    Oh dear. I wonder if you've fallen victim to a mad regular expression? "Random mook" contains the letters m - m - o in sequence, and that's often found in the website addresses of the gold spammers. The business about "linking to a restricted website" might bear that out. It wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing's happened, unfortunately.

    You should try metioning "Michael Jackson's Hits" in chat, the filter does something similar. Not a "ban" filter, last I saw though. The filters do seem to ignore spaces...
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  • auckaaucka Member Posts: 38 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    bluegeek wrote: »
    Considering that the term has negative connotations, it's probably best if we don't keep using it in this thread.

    Thanks for the warning so nobody else makes the same mistake.

    Hopefully it was just a temporary ban.

    I don't know how you could consider "negative connotations" in the word mook without being a mook yourself. It's a common enough term. We use it to refer to all our companions/henchmen/etc in the various MMOs we play. Common usage: "I'll be right there, I am sending my mooks out on missions," or, "My mook pulled all the mobs in the next room over."
  • cptjhuntercptjhunter Member Posts: 2,288 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    I lived just outside of NYC as a kid. I think mook was a slang short for morone... Italian for moron. That word got tossed around a lot in grammar school in NY.
  • acheronbladeacheronblade Member Posts: 37 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    Isn't that the name of the Mugato in colony invasion? It would be odd to ban you for that one word. It may indeed be something about the combination of the two words.
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  • kiralynkiralyn Member Posts: 1,576 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    bluegeek wrote: »
    Considering that the term has negative connotation...

    Huh, really? Never knew that. I've seen it used in gaming & action/adventure genre for decades to refer to Hordes Of Random Badguys. Particularly weak ones.

    Heck, there's a TVTropes page for it.


    ...hmm, which has a brief mention waaaay at the end that it's an obsolete slur against Italians. :confused:
  • zedbrightlander1zedbrightlander1 Member Posts: 14,782 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    Moe Howard seem to use it with impunity when talking to Curly and Larry on The Three Stooges.

    TV Tropes link

    Also, the word is used in some game dialog over on Champs so if it's banned on the board they had better get cracking on some in-game edits. :eek: ;)

    Edit - Missed by that much.


    LOL Great minds and all that.
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  • prierinprierin Member Posts: 7 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    aucka wrote: »
    Don't type "random mook" in chat. Just had my account banned for it, and my son's account as well (while testing to find out what combination of words I could possibly have been banned for). As there is no direct contact support, I'm waiting on a response to a ticket.

    Thinking of forming a guild called Random Mooks if anyone wants to join.


    Seems a bit... aggresive for STO to ban you for that... can you show use HOW you used it (via private chat as to avoid a forum ban)...
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  • auckaaucka Member Posts: 38 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    prierin wrote: »
    Seems a bit... aggresive for STO to ban you for that... can you show use HOW you used it (via private chat as to avoid a forum ban)...

    Since there is nothing actionable in what I said, I will just quote it here.

    Our fleet has a global channel for communication between Fed/KDFfleets, Neverwinter, etc. I had just finished an STF in which someone I didn't know had sent me a friend invite. I posted into our global fleet chat, word for word quote, "I just got a friend invite from a random mook." When the chat didn't go through, I entered it again. The nanosecond I hit enter, I was forced off the server and the account was banned, with absolutely no lag time whatsoever. The only other person in the chat channel with me at the time was a longtime guild mate of 10+ years.

    I logged onto my son's account to try to figure out what the hell had just happened on my main account. I typed each of the words from that sentence individually, with no effect. Then started typing them in pairs. When I reached the combination of "random mook" I got a system message saying not to post links to restricted websites in chat. So I had narrowed it down to the exact phrase that had triggered the ban.

    Unfortunately, I had a derp moment and typed to my friend, "wow, it banned me for saying random mook" and realized the second I hit the enter key that I'd done it again. POOF. Second account banned.

    Still waiting on a response to my tickets. It's inconvenient but also kind of funny. There's obviously something in the filter that got riled up. Someone suggested that the letters MMO are in "random mook" sequentially, but I find it hard to believe the word abbreviation "MMO" would get you instantly kicked and banned by the system... I mean, STO is an MMO, after all. So there is probably something arcane in the filter algorithm or whatever system they use that saw something it didn't like.

    If nothing else, it seems like something out of a Star Trek episode. Ensign Mook beams down to the planet Cryptic, and says "Howdy y'all" and is put on trial for the capital offense. The people on the planet Cryptic don't like the word "y'all" and it is punishable by the death penalty. Only Captain Kirk can save him by outsmarting the computer overlord that runs the planet.
  • talientalien Member Posts: 712 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    shevet wrote: »
    Oh dear. I wonder if you've fallen victim to a mad regular expression? "Random mook" contains the letters m - m - o in sequence, and that's often found in the website addresses of the gold spammers. The business about "linking to a restricted website" might bear that out. It wouldn't be the first time this sort of thing's happened, unfortunately.

    This is exactly what happened, that phrase actually contains the name of one of those websites.
  • auckaaucka Member Posts: 38 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    talien wrote: »
    This is exactly what happened, that phrase actually contains the name of one of those websites.

    Sigh... a little bit of investigation shows that, indeed, the name of a gold selling site can be pulled from the letters used in that phrase, in sequence. Amazing coincidence.
  • belidosbelidos Member Posts: 452 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    razar2380 wrote: »
    In some places, the word "mook" is a racist term. That may be why it is not allowed. There are other words that in one place are not racist, just insulting or derogatory, but in another are. So, they will ban accounts if they are used more than once.
    bluegeek wrote: »
    Considering that the term has negative connotations, it's probably best if we don't keep using it in this thread.

    Thanks for the warning so nobody else makes the same mistake.

    Hopefully it was just a temporary ban.



    then why is there an NPC in the game called Mook?

    http://sto.gamepedia.com/Mook

    If it's a derogatory or racist word then they need to remove that NPC!
  • belidosbelidos Member Posts: 452 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    cptjhunter wrote: »
    I lived just outside of NYC as a kid. I think mook was a slang short for morone... Italian for moron. That word got tossed around a lot in grammar school in NY.

    It's Chinese, the term is Mook Jonk, it's used as a Kung Fu slang term basically meaning stupid china man, so it's not just derogatory, it's racists too.
  • admrenlarreckadmrenlarreck Member Posts: 2,041 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    My bet is on the ban not being in any way linked to the word mook. But to the letters in sequence MMO. I saw a gold seller in system space a little while ago that used slashes to spell it. I hit report spam on him.
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  • choromyslnychoromyslny Member Posts: 30 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    Bluegeek: Not trying to start an argument, but just bringing up this - the term is used all over media, especially video games, to refer to the generic 'stormtrooper' types of enemies that are low level, low powered, and not much of a threat except en masse. TVTropes has a full definition, and does mention the fact it's an obsolete slur, but the widespread use of the term certainly shows the public meaning has changed over time.
  • rahmkota19rahmkota19 Member Posts: 1,929 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    Judging from your story, this is something innocent and you deserve your account back.

    However, it can take time for Support to reach you. Best you can do is remain patient, check any respond to your ticket, and provide them with as much information as possible.

    Good luck!
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  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    And yet, despite these instabans just for typing a sequence of letters off a secret list, the goldspammers still manage to spam. :rolleyes:

    I'm all for blocking spam links, but if they're going to give out automatic bans for sequences of letters that appear in common words, they could at least tell us what it is we're not allowed to type.
  • auckaaucka Member Posts: 38 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    warpangel wrote: »
    And yet, despite these instabans just for typing a sequence of letters off a secret list, the goldspammers still manage to spam. :rolleyes:

    I'm all for blocking spam links, but if they're going to give out automatic bans for sequences of letters that appear in common words, they could at least tell us what it is we're not allowed to type.

    That's kind of what I'm after in a roundabout way.
  • beaver#8175 beaver
    beaver#8175
         Member Posts: 31 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    I've been banned from games before by using my own last name... Beaver... I had to get Facebook, Gmail, and a few other companies to remove beaver from their filter...
  • auckaaucka Member Posts: 38 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    thebeaver111 wrote: »
    I've been banned from games before by using my own last name... Beaver... I had to get Facebook, Gmail, and a few other companies to remove beaver from their filter...

    Leave it to Beaver....
  • shadowfirefly00shadowfirefly00 Member Posts: 1,026 Arc User
    edited April 2015
    warpangel wrote: »
    And yet, despite these instabans just for typing a sequence of letters off a secret list, the goldspammers still manage to spam. :rolleyes:

    I'm all for blocking spam links, but if they're going to give out automatic bans for sequences of letters that appear in common words, they could at least tell us what it is we're not allowed to type.
    Good point, sir. In the first, there is no good excuse for such lists to be secret (or, in the larger picture, for secret laws of any sort). I imagine a real-world analogue would be a police department handing out tickets for parking on a particular streeet... and there being no mention in any public channel of such a street being a no parking zone.

    In the second, software filters are no substitute for actual human review. They cannot judge context, and using them to dispense bans on a simple if-then script is laziness. To give another example: one of the characters in SNK's Samurai Spirits series happens to be named Shizumaru Hisame... and for a while the filters at GameFAQs assumed that first name to be an obsuscation of profanity. Again I am reminded of the admonition against assumptions: thou shalt not assume, for in doing so you make an TRIBBLE of 'u' and me.
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