TL;DR: The anti-spam plugin doesn’t define the rules and what counts as a violation of the spam rules, context does. This suggestion is to guarantee that trying to bypass a false positive flag from anti-spam without violating the rules otherwise is not a violation of the rules. The player has the benefit of the doubt over the plugin.
The server rules do not explicitly define the subversion of anti-spam to convey a meaningful and non-disruptive message as a violation of the chat rules.
Furthermore, the anti-spam plugin is defined as a way to “control spam”. It is a basic filter that works in preventing some of the most common and simple instances of disruptive spam. However, the heavy cooldown and the frequent false positives that occur make the anti-spam seem more like a burden rather than a helpful tool to most players.
As such, I argue that it is both natural and justified that players might want to subvert the anti-spam by using fodder characters at the end of their message.
If context does point towards intent of disrupting chat flow or disregard for a proper compilation of their messages, the rules do come into play as they clearly target subversion of anti-caps and reluctance to stop cluttering the chat.
Example:
https://phase.dark-gaming.com/#messageref_74748707
The player EliasS. here is attempting to correct their misspelling of “Ah”, however they must add fodder characters in order to subvert anti-spam. This message serves to convey meaning, as in to correct their previous message which might have caused unnecessary confusion.
Later on, subversion of the plugin is implied to be a direct violation of the rules.
Example:
A common situation that I have found myself in multiple times is giving multiple small-sized responses consecutively, but being shut down for a large period of time due to anti-spam.
Wilton: apologize for what you have done
0re0: sorry
Wilton: thank you. sometimes even a small apology can mend deep wounds
Glasia: 0re0, are you going to give me my 6 dollars?
0re0: yes
anti-spam kicks in and I am muted for however long :/
I have not done so, but a solution would be to add fodder characters to the end of my 2nd message so that both responses are processed and I can continue to stay active in chat. Anti-spam’s large cooldown period has caused me to miss context cues and chances to chime in to the conversation many times.
This suggestion is to formally clarify that given the right context, such accounts of anti-spam bypass should be tolerated. This is to give more player freedom in conversation and to not punish unassuming players frustrated with the plugin’s flaws. The examples given are to showcase the benefits of this clarification.
There is a line to be drawn where anti-spam plugin bypassing may be used too frequently to the point it clutters the chat, or is exploited to repeat caps or spam meaningless messages, but those cases already fall under the existing chat rules and can be inferred from context.