Debate this: Community Rep Forum Involvement

So first, let's all take a breather from the doom/gloom/vent/rage threads that's stuffing the forums.

We good? Good.

I was browsing the japanese forums earlier today. Never tried it before until today actually. Google translate...is kind of fun to use there. Like a puzzle, you try to make sense of what it tried to translate to get a general idea. Was trying to sate my curiosity about what was their views and reactions on the incoming changes (thank Eos I'm not cat race or I probably wouldn't have survived).

And that was when I noticed it: The cleanliness. No outrageous/extreme thread titles (at least for the first five pages I've visited). Had a "not bad obama" face going on but that's not even what really amazed me.

What amazed me is not only the swift response from the Community reps on their side to some threads but also how they take care of closing these threads by merging them.

I felt like I missed a memo somewhere about how NA threads should run amok and multiply faster than the T-Virus until they either peter out or become so embroiled in miasma, someone finally decided to breathe a sigh of exasperation and close a thread.

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is this: Should we have Community Reps manage our threads a la Land of the Rising Sun style? Smoosh our duplicate threads together to forum one singular dysfunctional (or the sometimes oddly-appearing functional) one?

Add your 2 cents here.

Disclaimer: Perhaps there actually is an actual piece of documentation somewhere stating that SE feels more comfortable letting NA forums run itself like an unsupervised Toys R' Us store, which then would explain. a. lot.

The problem with the NA forums is that people just want to post opinions. They aren't there to debate anything; they just want to post what they want to say and not pay attention to anything else the thread says. This is why there are so many repeat threads.

It wouldn't surprise me if the posters on the JP forums generally have a lower post count. Just a wild guess there. However, it does make me feel posting in the NA sections of the forums are really pointless. It sounds like if you actually want to have a conversation and talk about the game, the JP section of the forums are the way to go. I would LOVE the NA forums to become what the JP forums are, but the chances of that happening sound slim to none.

EDIT and relevant:
One of the greatest thing about America is you can say whatever you want within reason. However, that makes most people think their opinions are well thought out.

Different culture
We're like Eorzea, they're like kugane (no problems in kugane), lots of problems in limsa (pirates), ul'dah (rich people who hate the poor/refugees), and gridania (they hate outsiders).

I blame the aliens that created us

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Originally Posted by Ghastly

Different culture
We're like Eorzea, they're like kugane (no problems in kugane), lots of problems in limsa (pirates), ul'dah (rich people who hate the poor/refugees), and gridania (they hate outsiders).

I blame the aliens that created us

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they have the same problems, the cultural difference is that they are trained not to scream about them.

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Originally Posted by savageink

they have the same problems, the cultural difference is that they are trained not to scream about them.

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Scream in a forum? How would one manage that? Every thread I read is a calmly composed paragraph or two. I think you might be confusing "screaming" with "having an opinion".

It's just a different culture. This is how things go on western forums. We value freedom, and they try to give us that. We express our individuality while they tend to conform.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Scream in a forum? How would one manage that? Every thread I read is a calmly composed paragraph or two. I think you might be confusing "screaming" with "having an opinion".

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have you really read the forums? (I have no idea if you were being sarcastic or not. I hope so.)

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Originally Posted by savageink

have you really read the forums? (I have no idea if you were being sarcastic or not. I hope so.)

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I'm here right now reading this one. You also made no effort to answer the question.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

I'm here right now reading this one. You also made no effort to answer the question.

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This is me guessing, but I suppose aggressively pushing someone's opinion without really listening, or blatantly not listening, to other comments said by other people on how they could be incorrect could be attributed to the act of yelling and/or covering one's ears and going, "lalalalalala" really loudly. That certainly does happen on the NA forums quite often.

Also, most threads sound like flame wars about complaints telling the devs how to make their own game.

Oh, right. Didn't really answer the question. No, I don't think we should have more regulation than we have now. I think it's fine how it is. It's more amusing this way.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

I'm here right now reading this one. You also made no effort to answer the question.

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because it's a stupid question... or a literalist interpretation of what i said, which just kind of makes you trolling.

Side-barring cultural differences ever so slightly...

Is anyone curious as to why Community Reps are more active in responding to questions posed over at the Jpn forums (They usually post a link that answers/explain the Op's request) than ours? I mean, we do have some decent threads here that address legit concerns in civilized manner. Then three more pop up about the same thing more or less. Again some civilized, others...not so much. From what I've seen over there, the opinions are not shutdown but rather consolidated.

Maybe at the time of forum creation, someone decided it'd be better not to step on NA toes and just let us be free (so long as it doesn't break ToS). That I could see as the actual cultural difference?

I guess what I'm also getting at is whether or not moderators have de facto orders let us live and let live.

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Originally Posted by savageink

because it's a stupid question... or a literalist interpretation of what i said, which just kind of makes you trolling.

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My question isn't "stupid" just because you think it is. Do you go around calling everyone names from behind the keyboard? Perhaps the problem lies with people like you.

I don't understand why they'd go thru all the extra effort of condensing everything just to appease people who are anal about order. The community reps are more active and comfortable with the Japanese forums because they can be a little biased if you haven't noticed. I doubt just organizing and self-policing ourselves better is going to get us any additional individual attention.

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

Side-barring cultural differences ever so slightly...

Is anyone curious as to why Community Reps are more active in responding to questions posed over at the Jpn forums (They usually post a link that answers/explain the Op's request) than ours? I mean, we do have some decent threads here that address legit concerns in civilized manner. Then three more pop up about the same thing more or less. Again some civilized, others...not so much. From what I've seen over there, the opinions are not shutdown but rather consolidated.

Maybe at the time of forum creation, someone decided it'd be better not to step on NA toes and just let us be free (so long as it doesn't break ToS). That I could see as the actual cultural difference?

I guess what I'm also getting at is whether or not moderators have de facto orders let us live and let live.

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Blizzard has a similar problem, Devs are only really active at NA forums while other regions are like this one.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

My question isn't "stupid" just because you think it is. Do you go around calling everyone names from behind the keyboard? Perhaps the problem lies with people like you.

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Yeah. Probably. But I'm a jerk in person too.

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Originally Posted by savageink

Yeah. Probably. But I'm a jerk in person too.

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Safe to say the forums would be a better place without jerks.

In line with MomomiMomi - also adding our forum is not only spiriting that freedom sense but that we also have a /massively/ more diverse culture pool meaning we will more often not see eye to eye. It would be difficult for us to conform even if we wanted to... where to start the line itself would be confusing lol.

Would be nice to see our community leaders more often though. I'm sure they have a lot of hoops to get through but if we could lower / make easier / more often that would be cool.

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Originally Posted by Valinis

Safe to say the forums would be a better place without jerks.

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and irony, don't forget that one. we can't have any irony.

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

Is anyone curious as to why Community Reps are more active in responding to questions posed over at the Jpn forums (They usually post a link that answers/explain the Op's request) than ours? I mean, we do have some decent threads here that address legit concerns in civilized manner. Then three more pop up about the same thing more or less. Again some civilized, others...not so much. From what I've seen over there, the opinions are not shutdown but rather consolidated.

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I can't say for sure, but I think our reps are lower on the totem pole, so to speak. They have less access to the devs and therefore less ability to answer questions and engage with the community.

And we have a lot of inane threads that probably drive them nuts. They'd have to wade through a lot of garbage to find things worth responding to. And any post they make is like a shining beacon on a thread that drives activity into it and probably gives them even more work to do.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

In line with MomomiMomi - also adding our forum is not only spiriting that freedom sense but that we also have a /massively/ more diverse culture pool meaning we will more often not see eye to eye. It would be difficult for us to conform even if we wanted to... where to start the line itself would be confusing lol.

Would be nice to see our community leaders more often though. I'm sure they have a lot of hoops to get through but if we could lower / make easier / more often that would be cool.

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That's a really good point.

Now I'm torn lol.

On one side, I like that our opinions aren't swept under another's rug, agreeable ones or not.

On the other hand, it'd be nice if community reps could more involved, not just on an organizational scale but also on a interpersonal one.

(Insert something about having my cake and eating it too here)

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

I can't say for sure, but I think our reps are lower on the totem pole, so to speak. They have less access to the devs and therefore less ability to answer questions and engage with the community.

And we have a lot of inane threads that probably drive them nuts. They'd have to wade through a lot of garbage to find things worth responding to. And any post they make is like a shining beacon on a thread that drives activity into it and probably gives them even more work to do.

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I keep thinking of those movies scenes where everyone's trapped in a dark cave/hole with hostile people then suddenly, this ray of light pops from above ground and everyone scrambles for it.

Can you pls refer to english forums and not NA forums..such doesnt exist..not everything thats in english is NA ;)

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Originally Posted by HiraQin

Can you pls refer to english forums and not NA forums..such doesnt exist..not everything thats in english is NA ;)

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Totally off topic but I can't help but notice that you're a male with a female name. Totally bugging me!! If that was intentional though... carry on. :P

French section is easier to moderate, less topics :D

I don't think anyone with harsh and mean spirited things to say would vent it out in the Japanese forum on their side of things. That's what 2ch is for. If you want actual dirt you have to check stuff like http://hakkisi.blog.fc2.com/ . They're going to be civil with stuff that actually has their name attached to it.

As for the community rep thing, I think people would get really angry if they attempted to manage things anymore than they already do. Knowing my fellow Americans people would start yelling censorship and nanny-state micromanagement. If people start completely flooding general with multiple thread about the same thing like the ping issue then yes we do need moderated thread consolidation. But generally people get ruffled about any minor change here for a few days and move on after a while.

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Originally Posted by HiraQin

Can you pls refer to english forums and not NA forums..such doesnt exist..not everything thats in english is NA ;)

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ENG forums it is.

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Originally Posted by HiraQin

Can you pls refer to english forums and not NA forums..such doesnt exist..not everything thats in english is NA ;)

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"I did not understand a single word you said. Try speaking american, it's the only language I understand."




/jk will refer to ENG forums from now on. Bonus points though for anyone who recognizes the quote.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

I can't say for sure, but I think our reps are lower on the totem pole, so to speak. They have less access to the devs and therefore less ability to answer questions and engage with the community.

And we have a lot of inane threads that probably drive them nuts. They'd have to wade through a lot of garbage to find things worth responding to. And any post they make is like a shining beacon on a thread that drives activity into it and probably gives them even more work to do.

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Originally Posted by Texa

As for the community rep thing, I think people would get really angry if they attempted to manage things anymore than they already do. Knowing my fellow Americans people would start yelling censorship and nanny-state micromanagement. If people start completely flooding general with multiple thread about the same thing like the ping issue then yes we do need moderated thread consolidation. But generally people get ruffled about any minor change here for a few days and move on after a while.

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Pretty much, these two things, too. Again, back when I worked as an in-game moderator, customer service rep and bug tester (it was kinda great trying to purposely make the game crash through legitimate means on a test servers :)) for a completely different game (I absolutely need to state this every time before someone accuses me for posing as a staff member for FFXIV), there were lots of times were communication was an issue and we often did not have answers in timely fashions. When things don't get answered quickly or reasonably by some, flooding does tend to happen, especially if the community feels it's an important issue. This is then made further into an issue when the developers don't regard the situation as important, compounded with any foreign developers and having to wait on information to come as well as if releasing certain information is O.K.'d. Wading through the debris of what can be a disaster zone is not something that is appealing and often times information will come in the form as a completely different topic in a manner that does not address any one comment, but tries to be a cover-all of what will probably happen and the status of what is going on. Great example on our forums: Naoki Yoshida's Comment in Regard to Jump Potions Boost Potions

Again, going back to my days of moderating, I did also have the option of moderating the forums. I did not do this, and I had told my boss why, and he was pretty cool with it and understood. Basically, when we tried to interact with the forums often and speak with community on a regular basis (some people loved it because they felt they could talk with us directly), it became a cesspool of negativity because when you started to say things people don't like. Let's take disabling PvP chat as an example since this is still a hot topic for some, people resort to personally attacking. We had the option of stripping the ability to speak/post or simply banning the person, but sometimes that does compound the issue. Especially if the community, again, feels this is important, the poster has made some valid points (or not, I'm not being exclusive here), but said things in a way that violates the ToS or any "rights" the poster had, people tend to attack the staff as they feel they are justified and in the right.

There's a reason I don't moderate anymore. I won't ever moderate for anything I love. I can understand the grief the players put moderators through.

Basically, it's like working in retail. Once you work in retail, you understand what people that work that job go through. You try not to be that person who makes their day utterly miserable.

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

...Should we have Community Reps manage our threads a la Land of the Rising Sun style?...

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Merged thread are usually hard to follow because the intersection of posts. I view the threads being merged more as a "please stop make new threads for same thing" alert, than "forum cleanness".

Forum modding here is at its best, mods are barely noticed other than some announcement they made, and this is a good thing. I don't see anything to change.

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

EDIT and relevant:
One of the greatest thing about America is you can say whatever you want within reason. However, that makes most people think their opinions are well thought out.

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This is where the error lies though, NA forums aren't American Forums, they are English Forums, for the English Speaking players.

Forums are not split based on country of origin otherwise we would have NA, UK, EU or whatever country of origin you are from but it's not, it's English. That's why the English forum gets chaotic, a lot more people speak fluent English or have a better understanding of the English Language compared to French, Dutch and Japanese. Japanese is mainly spoken in Japan, can you state any other country which also uses Japanese over English as a Primary or secondary language? This is pretty much why the chaos will exist because the English Forums will have a lot more voices from a lot of different locations all over the map compared to the Japanese Forums which will have a huge portion of their playerbase from Japan.

I agree with Airget. People often talk like this NA forum is bad but this is an English forum thus people from all over the world will write down their opinion. I am from Germany yet I am barely in the German forum simply because there are way less people who talk about things and the chance is way bigger that moderators and SE staff will read something on the English forum. But with that you will have lots of people who do not have English as their main language which can lead to some confusing posts because of the language barrier. I am always kinda questioning my posts because I am afraid that people might misunderstand it or that it might come over as aggressive or something like that. With so many different cultures you will also have much more different views on things while on the Japanese forum you will have mostly Japanese players. And the Asian countries are known to be more about the group and not the individual.

But lets not forget that they at the same time have official black lists thus name shaming people on the internet and their reaction towards things like the 280 weapon was also way harsher than yours. They even wanted to kick people in other content if that person had such a weapon. They also were the ones that wanted Yoshida to go away after the housing fiasco. So its not like they are without criticism and anger too.

I would love if the community reps would show up more often. We do have bigger threads, for example the one about the butler and maid campaign that is over 160 pages long. We maybe had like five or so comments from some rep, so most of the time they stayed completely silent even though people had more than enough good reasons to be angry. Even with the new campaign these things stayed mostly in that thread yet we still got no answers. We also had that really long thread about Au Ra faces and horn styles that got barely any answers at all..so I am not surprised that people try to catch the attention by creating more than one topic, maybe even in the hope that if you discuss it often enough someone will have to answer it. Sadly they mostly just ignore it, delete posts that are not even attacking someone, or just closing and deleting topics..I know that there are enough threads that are only there to start a flame war..and its fine to delete those. Yet more than enough we have people being banned that are most of the time discussing fine and yet pure trolls still can create threads.

My wish would be: Let us feel like you read these threads, even if you cant give us more information or only some PR talk..its still better to read something like "nice idea/criticism we will direct it towards Yoshida", even if it might not change something, than getting no answer at all.

And I wish they would clean this forum up but in a fair way. Instead of deleting threads just merge them together. Take out pure trolls and give people warnings that are just creating threads to spite someone or to make fun of an actual discussion. Dont punish people that are normally posting fine and are just overdoing it once or twice. (Its strange how often you see someone getting banned or their post deleted when nothing bad was said, yet there are post that are outright insult people and that are either banned really really late or not at all)

This would be imo not an attack on the freedom of speech but more a way to have order in this forum. Just because you can say anything you want does not mean you can get away with it and I feel like they do that here inconsistently.

Japan is a collectivist culture, whereas the United States is more individualistic. We should also take into account that this part of the forum is for all English speakers, so people who have English as their second or third language also come here. One forum is a clash of cultures and the other shares the same culture.

I do not know but I like to see more rep involvement here. Like this:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...woldmap-revamp

How come we do not see them responding?

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

And we have a lot of inane threads that probably drive them nuts. They'd have to wade through a lot of garbage to find things worth responding to.

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This is probably the biggest thing.

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

"I did not understand a single word you said. Try speaking american, it's the only language I understand

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YuGiOh: The abridged series... at anyrate I just think the "Host" language of any games companies forums will usually always be monitored & responded to more often than "Foreign" language Forum sections (as somone mentioned Blizzard has this same thing just reveresed) so as Square-enix is a Japan based company the JAP forums section being replyed to & watched over more seams right to me. Its not a they are more right then us, even if they can be, just more sticking to their cultural circle as its more familiar while respecting the potential differences a different cultural circle may have (Hence why our Moderators are from Square-enix's ENG team as they "Should" have a better understanding of most English speaking culture's & styles)

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

Again, going back to my days of moderating, I did also have the option of moderating the forums. I did not do this, and I had told my boss why, and he was pretty cool with it and understood. Basically, when we tried to interact with the forums often and speak with community on a regular basis (some people loved it because they felt they could talk with us directly), it became a cesspool of negativity because when you started to say things people don't like. Let's take disabling PvP chat as an example since this is still a hot topic for some, people resort to personally attacking. We had the option of stripping the ability to speak/post or simply banning the person, but sometimes that does compound the issue. Especially if the community, again, feels this is important, the poster has made some valid points (or not, I'm not being exclusive here), but said things in a way that violates the ToS or any "rights" the poster had, people tend to attack the staff as they feel they are justified and in the right.

There's a reason I don't moderate anymore. I won't ever moderate for anything I love. I can understand the grief the players put moderators through.

Basically, it's like working in retail. Once you work in retail, you understand what people that work that job go through. You try not to be that person who makes their day utterly miserable.

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I tell my clients that if they want forums, they hire a full time moderator for every single one of them, or they will do without, no volunteers. Due to the propensity for forums to go "abandoned" and fill up with spam and illegal content, there absolutely has to be someone available 24/7 to be able to delete such content. Otherwise the next step is being contacted by the data center operator or the the upstream ISP that "illegal content is being hosted by your IP address, you have 24 hours to resolve it or it will be null-routed", anyone hosted in the US will comply within 4 hours.

Unfortunately game-centric forums and art-centric forums are incredibly toxic, probably more so than retail. Retail you deal with a lot of people with entitlement issues, and after trying to be nice for about a week, you realize that these people grew up without any consequences for their bad behavior, so you might be the first person who told them "no" and didn't back down. Once you start moderating forums, it becomes something of a "well X did that and didn't get ninja-edited/edited/banned/ip-banned" escalation until you just ban everyone who mentions a certain keyword regardless of context.

Part of this mindset comes from the current generation of over-sharing on social media, and the kinds of bullies we have running in elections. So right now we are living in a state of "enabled hate" by willful ignorance.

However it's very clear that nobody is moderating the general forum, otherwise the amount of harassment and rudeness going on would be stopped in it's tracks, and there would not be a half dozen threads with the same argument going on in all of them. However Square-Enix has categorically ignored feedback from the English players in the past, ever since V1.0. It is not a new thing. Every game forum is like this, there is often only one person for the entire game moderating the forum, and they basically don't raise the banhammer for anything less than posting porn.

The other issue is the Forum Rules are not enforced on a consistent basis.

Many of us that have been on these forums or ones prior for a longtime have seen users banned for little things, yet there are users consistently breaking rules on a daily basis without any actions. Many which are not "little things".

Certain users are literally record players going into threads unrelated just to post their agenda everywhere as well. Thinking the Dev Team will notice them when that is simply not the case.

In short: Many English users abuse the forums, yet SE doesn't enforce their own rules enough to counter this abuse. Which requires manpower as well.

My biggest concern with this is what happens when the 10+ threads on one subject get merged into a super thread... I don't have time to sit there and read through 100+ pages on a thread looking for dev responses or worthwhile additions.

Even if it is annoying to have 10 different threads on the same subject, shorter threads are easier to get through faster, so our constant topic bloat has something like a benefit, at least...

I don't think we need more regulation. I think people need to realize the forums aren't their personal blogs, and that their opinion isn't so special/different that they need to create a brand new topic for a discussion currently in progress. For example, today someone decided to make another WHM complaint thread when there's already 2-3 on the front page.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

In line with MomomiMomi - also adding our forum is not only spiriting that freedom sense but that we also have a /massively/ more diverse culture pool meaning we will more often not see eye to eye. It would be difficult for us to conform even if we wanted to... where to start the line itself would be confusing lol.

Would be nice to see our community leaders more often though. I'm sure they have a lot of hoops to get through but if we could lower / make easier / more often that would be cool.

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I think it's a classic contrast between the pronounced individualism of North Americans vs the more interdependent collectivism of other cultures. Individuals care less about the opinions and feelings of others than they do their own, and collectivist a care more about the community and those around them. The net result is that highly individualistic cultures are louder and more contentious than collectivist cultures.