How Suspensions Are Dealt With

I recently received a 24 hour suspension. The suspension upset me, but not nearly as much as the mountain of trash surrounding it. Let me take you through the steps of me dealing with this.

I tried logging in one afternoon and received nothing but red text telling me I was suspended. I checked mogstation, which also said I was suspended. Confused, I checked my email for an explanation, and received the most vague not-reasoning I could have expected.

http://i.imgur.com/pKcYWhg.png

In this email I am first accused of harassment, then later told I used profanity. You can also see in the first paragraph it says that I did this on the 9th, which I was certain wasn't true as I worked late that day and hardly logged in at all. The two roulettes I remember doing were uneventful and I hardly spoke outside my fc chat and ls.

(cont.)

24 hours pass and I'm unbanned. I haven't even received a confirmation email saying they got my report. I do check the service desk to see if there was a reason there, and it said I spammed. Now I have 3 excuses for what I did! Still no clue if any are true. So I make a silly sounding report to hide my anger. In it I address the real issue, albeit masked in a joke. They tell me they can't respond to this report.

I send another report a few hours later, this time longer and explaining how the unexplained suspension does nothing to help me or the community. This time I receive a response.

The GM informed me the incident wasn't on 7/9, but was instead on 6/30. I ask for information as to what I did that was wrong, since I try to remain respectful while I play and have no memory of wronging anyone. They tell me that telling me what I did wrong could result in "more harassment" of the player.

This reasoning is ridiculous. If I was told what words I used only, there may be a small chance I remember the name of the person it was directed towards, but if I did that I could just be banned again. The harassment will end there with the second ban for harassing someone for reporting my harassment.

By not telling me the behavior I need to stop, I don't receive any feedback as to what qualifies as harassment. The harassment may never end until I'm banned longer and longer and eventually banned permanently, all because of what might happen if I'm told what I did wrong.

I was told what I did was "definitely harassment," and should avoid anything that could be seen as harassment in the future. As I already do, the only thing I can assume is that I was banned for making a joke that was taken seriously. I don't know what that joke could have been, so I won't know what is considered going "too far."

This whole situation resolves no issues, and only makes me afraid I will be banned permanently eventually without a reason. And on top of all of this, the spam thing is never addressed either. So did they just add that in for good measure? This whole situation is making me believe they don't have a real reason for banning me. This authoritarian approach to dealing with ***ALLEGED*** wrongdoing has the potential to be useless and solve nothing but allowing GMs and people who report to vent their frustrations by taking away people's accounts. It must change, or no one in the community is safe from abuse of the system, both by players and by GMs.

I don't want a 72 hour ban, and as I don't know what I did that counted as harassment/profanity/spam, I don't know how to change my behavior. I will avoid speaking outside my fc and ls, as those are the only places I can be vaguely safe speaking until I know how broadly Square Enix treats the term "harassment."

I'll just let you know first off, you can go beyond 1000 characters. Just edit your post and the restriction is gone.
Good luck in finding out what rule you broke.

Oh thank you, it was infuriating having to wait 30 seconds between continue of this post

What confuses me is that it says "for the following harassment violations" Then does not show or say what you did at all. That is ridiculous

Yeah, it's almost as if they accidentally left it out. But when I asked for it they said they can't give it to me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Timplar

The two roulettes I remember doing were uneventful and I hardly spoke outside my fc chat and ls.

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If it would help you jog your memory at all, could it be possible that something you said to your free company or linkshell offended someone enough for them to make a report?

I wonder if they leave out what you did/said because they think some people may go harass the person who reported them even further...that is the only logical thing I can think of lol. But yea, not telling you exactly what is against the ToS seems counter productive.

I can understand why they won't tell you what you said, or said to who. Just like the GM said, if you found out that information, people could potentially go back and harass the person who put in the report. For example, if you said something that was harassing somebody, "Man derp nerd scurb tier!!", and then you in turn got upset over the report, you could go back and find the person and then harass them more out of anger. Heck, even saying something minor and just slightly offending somebody, saying "I don't like gay people" could possibly result in a report if you say it wrong, and again, same thing applies, once you remember what the statement is, its easy to put a name to it. I'd just take it with a grain of salt, and try or pretend to be more civil, cause I doubt the report was made just because, the GM's do go back and read chat logs...

Yeah, see, it's possible a GM could make a really bad judgement call and when they go back and check it and see the GM messed up and you did nothing wrong, they tell you you did do something wrong to save face. They don't want you losing faith in their system, so they just tell you they can't say what it was because that will allow you to break more rules (which they can then punish even harder so it's not a real excuse) and reprimand the GM in private. I don't KNOW if I did anything wrong or not, but this system definitely allows abuse in the system and results in mistrust.

Not to defend how this was/is dealt with, but there is at least 1 thing you can do. Read the ToS right now. It could give you a clue about what you may have done. So if you read a part and go "oh I didn't know I wasn't allowed to shout that someone early pulled a hunt mob" (for example) then you think back to doing that and if that's the only thing you see that you violated then that was probably it.

Again, not defending this idea they shouldn't tell you what it was about.

But also, even if you read the ToS and don't see something that makes you realize what it was, you'll at least have a fresh look at what's allowed and not allowed.

And some of it is crazy sure, like a guy can join an FC and empty their company chest, and that's OK, because SE will say it's up to the FC to manage permissions, but the moment you shout that this player did that to you and include their name, you're in the wrong. Even if you don't agree with it, knowing how SE sees things can help.

They attached the part of the ToS they said I violated and I highly doubt it applies to anything I've done

They just replied to my support request with a generic response

So it turns out they can play with your account however they want without any reason, and say it's to "protect others"

They have nothing on me, they know it, and they're hiding behind "preventing bullying" by allowing GMs to bully
http://i.imgur.com/RzVscrr.png

Now you're just getting paranoid. GM's aren't going to pick on people to randomly bully them like this.

Does it matter when the system makes it easy for them to do it and get away with it?

I can make these claims knowing they'll never be challenged because challenging them is against company policy

They can do whatever they want

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Iromi

I wonder if they leave out what you did/said because they think some people may go harass the person who reported them even further...that is the only logical thing I can think of lol. But yea, not telling you exactly what is against the ToS seems counter productive.

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This is a really weird assumption since you can't even be sure the person that reported you was the one being harassed. What if you're just dicking around with a friend and some passerby catches half the convo and assumes you're being legit rude? Let's take it a step further and assume it was all RP with out-of-game consent?

Failing to give even broad strokes of the incident means the punishment is worthless. Giving a penalty and saying "read the rules" doesn't accomplish anything if there's room for interpretation and context.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Timplar

Yeah, see, it's possible a GM could make a really bad judgement call.

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GM's can make bad judgment calls yes, but you don't think that they have a boss that looks at the cases, or when a GM doesn't know how to handle something, they ask a supervisor? You're looking into this way to deeply. Take a step back and just remember to use common sence when talking to people and try to be generally nice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

This is a really weird assumption since you can't even be sure the person that reported you was the one being harassed. What if you're just dicking around with a friend and some passerby catches half the convo and assumes you're being legit rude? Let's take it a step further and assume it was all RP with out-of-game consent?

Failing to give even broad strokes of the incident means the punishment is worthless. Giving a penalty and saying "read the rules" doesn't accomplish anything if there's room for interpretation and context.

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GM's don't do anything about 3rd party reports, only if you report something where you were directly negatively affected.

Hey remember me?

You answered my pf ad?

And I just wanted too know if you were really serious about what you said?

I don't even know if you will end up seeing this or not?

Cause I am not even sure if you still read the forums anymore?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Timplar

I made a character on Famfrit. Lets meet up some time :')

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Well here's my discord if you wanted to talk some more

Hailey Quinn#4011

Okay well as far as girlfriends and relationship status goes

I am looking for something real

Which basically means that I was kinda hoping to have some sort of romantic relationship with my partner

You know like what it's like to have an actual real girlfriend

I am also looking for someone with whom I could become quite close with and have an emotional connection with as well

I am also looking for an actual real girl too

Not a guy playing as one

So what's the name of your character on Famfrit?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deathgiver

GM's don't do anything about 3rd party reports, only if you report something where you were directly negatively affected.

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Can confirm. It's a bad policy but at least it rules out that possibility here.

edit: and...wait a sec....wtf has this thread turned into?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Timplar

Can confirm I'm a real girl :')

Are you sure your

Discord name is

Correct?

It isn't

Coming

Up

?

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Oh sorry

I got the numbers mixed up

Sorry about that

It's

Hailey Quinn#0411

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ninster

If it would help you jog your memory at all, could it be possible that something you said to your free company or linkshell offended someone enough for them to make a report?

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Could be this :P in 10 ish years of wow i had one ban for being too witty i guess (was deserved and the wit was well worth it :P still was funny in a game were cussing is so prevalent lol, guess you can use foul language but not creative language :P) and the first and second one, was more than likely from a guildmember lol. We tend to get overly comfortable in linkshells and that can lead to some colorful language XD

Hey I remember this topic.... it uh, didn't turn out as I was expecting...