Terms of Service that don't require us to censor ourselves

[Zenoxio]

It hath been destroyed. What was it about anyway?

AFAIK, the post is still there?

[Xanthe]

Seriously SE, you made these forums to get our feedback, correct?

According to your Terms of Service for the forums, we can't say anything bad about FFXI, the forum, or SE. How exactly are we supposed to give you our feedback when all we can post is:

"I like FFXI, FFXI is good, and SE is a great company."

If you want people to kiss your ass then get your secretaries/interns to do it, don't make it so everybody on the forums has to do it as well.

There is a large difference between constructive criticism and blatant attacks, especially in that the former will generally be accepted and the latter will generally get you in trouble with the moderators. So yes, these forums are in part a way for us to give feedback to SE. Just because there are rules against outright slander does not mean that they don't want to hear our criticisms. All they are saying is that it needs to be done with a degree of civility. If you complain for complaining's sake and do it in a crass way it's unreasonable to expect a favorable response.

[Kuishen]

I fail to see how this belongs in the General Discussion thread seeing as how it's Feedback of something on the Forums, but gg SE, bury it amongst all the other useless drivel.

@Xanthe: The fact that I can't even reply to most of the posts on this forum without fear of getting banned from the game is evidence that there is something wrong. The amount of stupid ideas coming from this forum is horrific. Nobody can tell them they are stupid ideas because of the ToS, which means the occasional good idea is going to get swept under the rug by the sea of stupidity on these forums and nothing good will come out of this. This is the internet, if SE wants people to be polite and courteous they need to go to church, not try to force the issue on a sub-culture that is obviously incapable of doing so.

[bungiefan]

Totally agree. Oddly enough, the majority of us don't live in a country where free speech is disallowed, so the idea of being told to be completely nice about FFXI or get out seems alittle... moot.

Free speech is only protected in public areas, and it prevents the government from stopping your speech. This is a private area, run by SquareEnix. They can limit your speech however they feel like on their own servers and forum, and can kick you off them if they don't like you. Your rights don't include a right to post here for whatever you want.

Every forum is like that.

[Gwynplaine]

Their property is not a democracy. And abiding by their terms is not "self censorship". You agree to post within the terms or you don't post.

[Raksi]

I just had my thread deleted ;; it wasnt insulting SE or the Game... Just the community >_> boo~.

EDIT: i cant spell

[Kuishen]

Their property is not a democracy. And abiding by their terms is not "self censorship". You agree to post within the terms or you don't post.

Explain to me what the point of asking for feedback is if it's only stuff that they want you to say?

[Gwynplaine]

I didn't say you had to like it. But it's theirs to do with as they see fit. I sincerely doubt if you write a proper thread that states your opinion it will just be removed without some reason.

[Tezz]

If they start censoring us. Someone out there will take screenshots of threads etc and posting them elsewhere.

Allods (1st Russian MMO) developer failed hard with this. Their forums were overflowing with negativity and the Mods there kept deleting virtually all of them and acted like all was fine in the game.
The game world lost something like 70% of it's members and all the zones were a ghost town yet the mod's insisted all was fine.

Don't make the same mistake SE.

[Antipika]

Explain to me what the point of asking for feedback is if it's only stuff that they want you to say?

Saying :

I do not approve of SE policy when it comes to [stuff] because [proper argument].

Is not a violation of the User Agreement. Voicing your opinion isn't. The above do not fall under : "Posting seeking to damage or disparage Square Enix, the forum, FINAL FANTASY XI, or others. ".

If you ever been to the XIV Beta Forum before, Square Enix never ever delete such threads. Negative feedbacks were all over the place. That's how a company can move forward anyway, thanks to feedbacks, that include negative ones. There is just a way to say things.