I agree. While I
love the onsite pinglists (and have been a victim of pinglist harassment myself), I think disabling mass pings is going to cause far too many issues. In addition to those already discussed, I also want to bring up some other problems caused by disabling mass pings: inactive users and sudden issue pings.
There are pinglists that I signed up for years ago whose owners are now inactive. But I'm still interested in those services if they ever come back! If they return after mass pings are disabled, they will have no way of contacting the people on their lists.
Sudden issue pings are things like when threads get accidentally deleted, or sheets/image hosting breaks. These are rarer, but they do happen. In these instances you want to ping all participants to let them know what's going on. This won't be possible if mass pinging is disabled, and could lead to people missing important information.
And then of course, I simply can't see a way staff can replicate the features of something like GASP without massive amounts of work. So I would rather see them implement some changes and additional features, and then monitor and evaluate if harassment is still an issue. I think with the right additions, issues can be virtually eliminated while still allowing mass pings to exist.
Basically, pinglists seem to exist in the following use cases:
- single list, single user (ex: artist pinging for more slots opening)
- single list, multi user (ex: Dom watch)
- multi list, single user (ex: skin shops)
- multi list, multi user (ex: GASP)
single list, single user
This is basically what's covered best by the current system. It works great for that and I love it!
single list, multi user
These can work well with the current system if we're allowed to set who can use a pinglist. Settings like Everyone, Invite only, Flight only, Only me, etc would allow this to function pretty seamlessly. Unauthorized pinglist use isn't generally a problem, and not the way pinglists are utilized for harassment, so I don't see any reason not to update the feature to include this.
multi list, single user
This sort of thing is primarily being used in skin shops, where the owner has to ping for preorders, payment collection, updates, reprints, etc all for specific skins. This can work with the current system, but it's pretty unwieldy and a whole lot of lists. I think this particular use case is best catered to with the skin system update. I would love to see things like user storefronts for auto-reprints, onsite preorder systems, and skin specific widgets that allow players to sign up for info about that skin. Some of this overlaps with the pinglist system, but I think the majority of it is better addressed as part of the skin system update.
multi list, multi user
And this is the version that I just don't see flight rising being able to replicate. Massive filterable lists seems like it would be really difficult to implement. Now if they can do it, then sure! By all means! But I think this might be better addressed by allowing mass pinging to stay, and simply updating to a modular block system. Allow people to block mass pings, pings from a specific user, pings from a specific thread, etc. There are relatively few of these absolutely massive lists, and if all other pinglist use cases are addressed with onsite features, then opportunities for harassment should go way down.
If after all this is done there are still issues with harassment, then okay. We can re-evaluate and discuss disabling mass pinging and how to make things like GASP still function. But I don't think blanket disabling should be plan A.
