I've been muted for 60 minutes

Hello,

I've been muted in Bughouse for 60 minutes because I clicked an icon once and then a different icon 2 more times and tried clicking again.  First time, I was warned and second time I was muted.  This would not have been flagged previously.  Can you please let me know what is considered spam now so I can strategize my communication and time on this site better?  If I click 3 times, how long do I have to wait before attempting to communicate again?  Is it move or time dependent?  Is it just arbitrary punishment?

Thanks,

Staff are looking into that and working on a fix. It happens with quick successive chat messages including the piece buttons. There is a time element but don't have any idea how much time between messages will get flagged.

Cool, I appreciate that.  I'll try to be more mindful

Not cool, just happened to me

I was mad at first too but it's all good.  I'm sure a lot of work goes into this site.  I hope they come up with a creative way to facilitate communication in games.  Maybe even better than the icon set we're working with currently.  Spam is toxic and chess.com has made many improvements since I've been on here.  I trust the process.  Also hope they bring automate back.

Staff should also allow people to click icons in Bughouse when they're muted

This site works HARD to alienate variant players, doesn't it?

From disabling links to see variant statistics, to banning us from the league feature mid-competition, to not following the rules of crazyhouse as it pertains to repetition draws, to allowing indefinite move repetition in bughouse for a time, to chat-banning players who are trying to communicate something as simple as "pawn mates" in the universal language of piece icons twice in an hour, this site seems to really want to get rid of serious variant players.

seriously what the heck? I'm playing bughouse and I send my partner the N and P icons in quick succession to tell him I need a knight and/or a pawn, and I get a warning. A minute later I tell my partner "ok" and "time" and get a 60 minute mute, and we lose the game because I cannot communicate. This is positively ridiculous, chesscom. 

My communication efforts were pretty normal when I received the errors.  One time it was just ok and gg on separate lines, but I had just asked for a few pieces.  I have tried waiting what seems like a while but still get warned so I've decreased talking in games.  They had the seek settings set to make you play with lower rated players.  They might just be troubleshooting ways to keep the lower rated people engaged.  Chess.com if you're reading this, I was thinking you could use AI to find the common patterns in communication and start consolidating some of those to streamline requests while avoiding spam.  Another approach is to review the logs of when people were flagged for normal communication and group icons together based on those instances.

It's entirely understandable why you might mute someone for spamming the chat in a regular game of chess. However with 3 minute blitz Bughouse it is almost imperative to have the ability to communicate and send multiple messages rapidly.  E.g. Sending a message saying I need a Pawn immediately followed with a message saying "I have checkmate". 

Even following the guidelines puts a player at a significant disadvantage.  Picture, if you will, "pawn mates him", with a 3-second threshold to be considered spamming.  The team is up by 3 seconds on the clock.

So player 1 hits the "pawn good" button and sits for the mating pawn.  Player 2 sees this, but as a fairly fast player in a time crunch, figures it's not worth a queen or even making a move that results in mate in 2 to get it.  Many decent players can rattle off 4-5 moves in those 2 seconds, so player 2 and his opponent make 4-5 moves before player 1 can hit the "mates him" button.  By now they are down on time, player 2 has decided not to compromise his king for a pawn, and player 1 and player 2 lose the chance to mate due to "community guidelines", which pretty much amounts to "don't communicate with your partner or you will be prevented from communicating with your partner.

At a minimum, it would be best not to mute chat during a game.  If one is abusive towards the other, there is a "report for bad behavior" button already implemented.  It would also be best to unmute muted players for the duration of a bughouse game so they can communicate with partners.  It would also be best to prevent a player from disabling chat during bughouse games so the communication is guaranteed to go through, or put in a feature that allows a player to filter out partners who have chat disabled, but I am not holding my breath for these.

I completely agree with both of you.

I don't program or work for chess.com and don't know what I'm talking about here.  This site collects a lot of data.  There is the possibility that they're working on improving communication and with the tools they are using to gather information, it's just easier to flag everyone who is talking quickly as spamming.  Maybe the chat muting is just a bug.  I'll stay optimistic about it.  To Chucklemange's point, if I'm wrong about that, I hope that at least they'll let chat continue through the game or at least leave the icons for muted or chat disabled players.  Bad behavior reporting and more reasonable spam filters were already a part of the variant.

   I got muted earlier this week for 24 hrs, for posting a bad word. But then I went to the Veteran's Administration and they gave me some anti-mute pills.....now I'm better.