Cool more silent removal

I made a post in the gifs thread, it got removed overnight, i have no idea what was wrong with it, i don't know how to avoid such a takedown in the future, so it might become a repeatable thing. I can only guess what it was that was inappropriate enough to warrant being taking down so can we just have more transparency with the mods in regards to stuff like removal and bans(thankfully this didn't happen) so it can be avoided in the future i'd rather not tread on thin ice not knowing where to go thank you very much.

Was it the otter pic? Cuz if it was, apparently that's a big no no for the mods.

You might wanna avoid doing it again. They won't come down here and explain things but I guarantee you next time, they'll swing that banhammer (from the forums, not the game).

At the very least they should comment to the OP with an email as to why the thread was removed. It's hard to not make mistakes about what is acceptable if they don't even say why.

At this point what we need is a complete revamp of the site as a whole, including moderation policies and moderator engagement. I'd like to see the community representatives engage more with the community here. We're not a terrible lot, really - yet the bulk of their time is spent on Twitter and Facebook. Ironically, a quick look at the comments in reply to posts over on those two sites will show that the moderation isn't as intensive over there and that the comments made are often far nastier than any you find over here.

You can find the rules for the forum here. Hopefully this will help you with whatever went wrong.

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

Was it the otter pic? Cuz if it was, apparently that's a big no no for the mods.

You might wanna avoid doing it again. They won't come down here and explain things but I guarantee you next time, they'll swing that banhammer (from the forums, not the game).

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Nah no otters i learned from #ottergate

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

At the very least they should comment to the OP with an email as to why the thread was removed. It's hard to not make mistakes about what is acceptable if they don't even say why.

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Just something, anything to inform me what about it was wrong so i can avoid in future, i'd like to not cause more trouble than possible but it is impossible to change behavior when you have no clue what is wrong.

It was just a post not a thread but same principle i can't improve if i don't know what i done wrong, silence doesn't help anyone.

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Originally Posted by Zarabeth

You can find the rules for the forum here. Hopefully this will help you with whatever went wrong.

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if it was something not related to FFXIV then 1/6 of the post would qualify,
if it was something inappropriate that could relate to so many posts within that gifs thread not just my own,
if it was something offensive i cannot imagine what part that would be related to, the closest anything got was a dancing fat man which if classed as offensive hope mods never go to a beach, but that also has horrible implications of body shaming.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

if it was something not related to FFXIV then 1/6 of the post would qualify,
if it was something inappropriate that could relate to so many posts within that gifs thread not just my own,
if it was something offensive i cannot imagine what part that would be related to, the closest anything got was a dancing fat man which if classed as offensive hope mods never go to a beach, but that also has horrible implications of body shaming.

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Specially in regards to the first thing: While 1/6 posts would (probably) qualify you'd also need someone to report those posts since the mods dont really "patrol" all threads and posts made (at least not to my knowledge... that would also seem a little insane...) - so sometimes you can get away with breaking the rules as long as no other poster cares and reports you over it. But if someone does... well, they gotta stick to their rules after all. Even if whatever you did seems trivial or you see someone else doing the excat same thing in a different thread without it being taken down it doesnt mean that your rule-violation is okay. The other guy might just be luckier and didnt get reported over it.

I do agree though that they should tell you which rule you violated.

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

Was it the otter pic? Cuz if it was, apparently that's a big no no for the mods.

You might wanna avoid doing it again. They won't come down here and explain things but I guarantee you next time, they'll swing that banhammer (from the forums, not the game).

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Otters are the equivalent to the antichrist.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

At the very least they should comment to the OP with an email as to why the thread was removed. It's hard to not make mistakes about what is acceptable if they don't even say why.

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That's a lot of work.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

At this point what we need is a complete revamp of the site as a whole, including moderation policies and moderator engagement. I'd like to see the community representatives engage more with the community here. We're not a terrible lot, really - yet the bulk of their time is spent on Twitter and Facebook. Ironically, a quick look at the comments in reply to posts over on those two sites will show that the moderation isn't as intensive over there and that the comments made are often far nastier than any you find over here.

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You don't live on twitter? Hah! I bet you don't have your blue checkmark!

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Originally Posted by Zarabeth

You can find the rules for the forum here. Hopefully this will help you with whatever went wrong.

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Don't worry! It won't!

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Originally Posted by Vidu

Specially in regards to the first thing: While 1/6 posts would (probably) qualify you'd also need someone to report those posts since the mods dont really "patrol" all threads and posts made (at least not to my knowledge... that would also seem a little insane...) - so sometimes you can get away with breaking the rules as long as no other poster cares and reports you over it. But if someone does... well, they gotta stick to their rules after all. Even if whatever you did seems trivial or you see someone else doing the excat same thing in a different thread without it being taken down it doesnt mean that your rule-violation is okay. The other guy might just be luckier and didnt get reported over it.

I do agree though that they should tell you which rule you violated.

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No.. you can report, and they won't do anything sometimes (even if it is breaking the ToS above).

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

No.. you can report, and they won't do anything sometimes (even if it is breaking the ToS above).

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My point was more that if no one reports you, nothing is gonna happen for sure - which is probably the case that most posts that could be considered a violation of the ToS are still up. Obviously they could still decided against taking a post down if they consider it not offensive/violating "enough", but the most likely reason I always assume that no one bothered reporting this thing because it really didnt seem worth the effort.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

You don't live on twitter? Hah! I bet you don't have your blue checkmark!

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Due to my job, I'd likely qualify for one - but then I don't want to tie my online activity to my real name. :p

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

I made a post in the gifs thread, it got removed overnight, i have no idea what was wrong with it, i don't know how to avoid such a takedown in the future, so it might become a repeatable thing. I can only guess what it was that was inappropriate enough to warrant being taking down so can we just have more transparency with the mods in regards to stuff like removal and bans(thankfully this didn't happen) so it can be avoided in the future i'd rather not tread on thin ice not knowing where to go thank you very much.

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Were you replying to another post that was also deleted?

Any time a post gets deleted, the entire chain of replies goes with it - "erasing all evidence of its existence" basically, even if the replies had nothing wrong with them, or they didn't even directly quote the offending post.

If you didn't receive a warning, I would assume you didn't actually commit an offence.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Were you replying to another post that was also deleted?

Any time a post gets deleted, the entire chain of replies goes with it - "erasing all evidence of its existence" basically, even if the replies had nothing wrong with them, or they didn't even directly quote the offending post.

If you didn't receive a warning, I would assume you didn't actually commit an offence.

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No. I can tell you from personal experience, they leave what they want. Context or no.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

No. I can tell you from personal experience, they leave what they want. Context or no.

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I've had huge posts deleted because I made a one-line comment towards a deleted post in it. Or in one case, and in-depth conversation that spawned off a deleted post but wasn't actually relevant to it - but would have had a chain of quoted posts leaving back to it.

I've never received warnings. There is no reason for me to assume I'm personally being moderated for it.

They don't always delete everything, and they don't always ban people. Sometimes they just delete some posts or carpet bomb entire sections of a thread. They don't give out warnings either. It's either ban or delete, and no appeals either.

I would consider post deletions as warnings, although I don't know of the fates of the original posters. Some posters here make big huge mistakes, like revealing they use parses and post numbers and suddenly.. they disappear for 10 days. Then there is some that are just really nasty, myself included but I can tell you that happens if I feel provoked, whereas a lot of people here just don't care.

I guess we can just pretty much agree the modding is, well, inconsistent. Like, truly truly inconsistent. Sure, the ToS rules concerning forums usage are there but they're not always followed. And yes, it seems mods to tend to personally check threads themselves and yet at the same time, they leave alone threads that are either questionable, dubious,volatile or completely unrelated to FF14 threads until flagged/reported.

What I find most fascinating is the lack of lock usage from their parts. I've seen its use in the support section, purely from functional standpoint but I can't say I see it done here on a regular basis. And by that, I mean it in comparison to most game forums where mods frequently use the feature and typically leave a final post to explain why they're locking it. You would think mods would do the same, at the very least to send a warning sign to anyone else who would try to replicate the offense in the threads but instead, they escalate right to deletion and/or bans.


But you'll be sure to hear from them directly when a new moderator announces themselves, only to never been seen again until they get the green light to do so.

An appeal system would be wonderful. Am I mistaken, or was an appeal system not mentioned briefly in an official capacity only to never be brought up again? So far I've - thankfully - managed to avoid getting into trouble, though there's been a few posters over the years who have tried to bait me into saying something I'd regret.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

An appeal system would be wonderful. Am I mistaken, or was an appeal system not mentioned briefly in an official capacity only to never be brought up again? So far I've - thankfully - managed to avoid getting into trouble, though there's been a few posters over the years who have tried to bait me into saying something I'd regret.

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I got smacked during Ottergate and there was no appeal system and no real explanation of what had been done wrong either. Took forum speculation and the realization that the forum mods REALLY took offense to the otters and subsequent threads about them to realize what had happened.

I've heard people say that the moderation system here is very Japanese, in that moderators are cleaved away from the rest of the community as silent enforcers and while if that is the case I can see the appeal I do wish they'd modify their approach in some key ways. Moderators don't have to interact with us on a daily basis but when someone is doing something wrong or a thread is derailing enough to need mod intervention a quick step in to say 'stop doing x' would do wonders to keep people from being smacked with a ban or having their post chains deleted. Especially since the rules aren't always applied evenly across the board or even interpreted the same way by each individual mod.

For all that people say to look up the rules it doesn't really help all that much when it seems the moderators can't even seem to agree on which of the vague rules should be enforced where. A warning would help a lot in keeping people in line, even if that warning only comes when someone is temporarily banned. It'd at least be better than the nothing we currently get.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Were you replying to another post that was also deleted?

Any time a post gets deleted, the entire chain of replies goes with it - "erasing all evidence of its existence" basically, even if the replies had nothing wrong with them, or they didn't even directly quote the offending post.

If you didn't receive a warning, I would assume you didn't actually commit an offence.

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Nope stand alone post, half of which was about ultimate but it was a jokingly from my experience type of post.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

An appeal system would be wonderful. Am I mistaken, or was an appeal system not mentioned briefly in an official capacity only to never be brought up again? So far I've - thankfully - managed to avoid getting into trouble, though there's been a few posters over the years who have tried to bait me into saying something I'd regret.

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there is an appeal system but it's bullpoop and don't work.

the way they do bans here is the most oddest thing. when you're permanently banned you can't even participate in any events that require you to log on because it won't let you even view the forums. bans are: you're soft-banned for a few hours, then it's escalated to nearly 2 weeks or perm. that's it.

just think it's weird that you are literally paying to use these forums so you think how the place is ran would be a bit better than this.
It's almost hard to even have discussions without being reported and banned for someone's hurt feelings lol.

here's the post talking about the appeal

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4734275

I always wondered if its ok to post photo shopped pictures or screen shots from other games.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

I always wondered if its ok to post photo shopped pictures or screen shots from other games.

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I dont see a reason photoshopped screenshots from this game wouldnt be okay - assuming they're still "appropriate" (no racist or sexual content, for example).

In regards to pictures from other games, series etc.: As long as theres a clear link to FFXIV, for example trying to show an example of a gear-design you'd like to see etc. it should be fine aswell. Running your private blog about GW2 here or creating a "Share your WoW-screenshot"-thread are probably not. But as long as the main topic is FFXIV - why shouldnt they be okay?

They used to pop into threads and warn people things were getting heated and they'd be locked if things didn't cool down. They used to lock threads and tell you why. They used to respond a lot more. I don't know if LGM Enkratia(sp?) (the one who did most of these back when they were common) is no longer around or if policies or procedures changed or if they've honestly just given up trying to moderate the mess that is the English subforum.

moderator in this forum is like god. you cant see it, you cant touch it, but you can smell their existence. just like fart...

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

if it was something offensive i cannot imagine what part that would be related to, the closest anything got was a dancing fat man which if classed as offensive hope mods never go to a beach, but that also has horrible implications of body shaming.

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Was the man mostly naked? Because I remember seeing somebody posting a picture of a guy dancing who was mostly naked and thinking it was probably gonna get deleted for that.

Disregard if I'm thinking of a different post :P

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Originally Posted by Theodric

At this point what we need is a complete revamp of the site as a whole, including moderation policies and moderator engagement. I'd like to see the community representatives engage more with the community here. We're not a terrible lot, really - yet the bulk of their time is spent on Twitter and Facebook. Ironically, a quick look at the comments in reply to posts over on those two sites will show that the moderation isn't as intensive over there and that the comments made are often far nastier than any you find over here.

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Nah, overall, these forums are pretty atrocious as far as the population goes. It's a cesspool, with people constantly being condescending to others, trying to make others feel like they're stupid, rampant narcissism, petty passive aggressive replies in almost every single post, very little to no empathy, having too much pride to apologize when proven wrong, and all of this is just barely scratching the surface, these forums are in a very bad spot. The only other community I've seen that was this toxic is probably GTA Online, but at least there it's done in a joking/trolling manner rather than just being outright malicious and hateful.

Of course it's not everybody, but it is the vast majority. I've said it once and I'll say it again: I would really hate to meet some of you in real life...

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Nah, overall, these forums are pretty atrocious as far as the population goes. It's a cesspool, with people constantly being condescending to others, trying to make others feel like they're stupid, rampant narcissism, petty passive aggressive replies in almost every single post, very little to no empathy, having too much pride to apologize when proven wrong, and all of this is just barely scratching the surface, these forums are in a very bad spot. The only other community I've seen that was this toxic is probably GTA Online, but at least there it's done in a joking/trolling manner rather than just being outright malicious and hateful.

Of course it's not everybody, but it is the vast majority. I've said it once and I'll say it again: I would really hate to meet some of you in real life...

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I disagree. Things can get a little heated at times but I haven't seen anything here on the same extremely unpleasant level as what can be found within the FF14 Twitter and FF14 Tumblr communities where people are actively discriminated against or subjected to death threats. Many of which go completely unaddressed by moderators due to being aimed at 'safe' targets.

I haven't seen anything on that level posted here and when things go too far over the line the moderators at least step in and deal with genuinely unsettling posts.

I've found most people to be fairly pleasant to deal with here and I have made a fair few friends simply by posting on this forum and then being recognised in-game as a result. There's the occasion issue with tone policing, but you get that anywhere.

Reddit is way better! I can't even post there, because people just downvote things they don't like! I literally had the FFXIV reddit mods tell me to go post on OTHER reddits to farm upvotes so I could post there. I haven't logged into reddit since. Not that I used it much in the first place.

The community here is.... something... but it's OUR... something..

This is what I got from the FFXIV reddit mods

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Hiiya,

Your post was automatically removed due to your low comment karma score, which is currently -65. We would recommend participating in other subreddits in order to raise your karma score.

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What kind of backwards....? HECK NO! I am not the type of person to pander for upvotes just so I can post a comment. Give me a break. Over here like... wish I could actually post my REAL thoughts on this. I wouldn't be as polite.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

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Oof. I mean, I've seen a handful of toxic and rude posts on here, but this is probably the least toxic MMO forum I've seen overall
WoW's forum is a real cesspool a lot of the time, with some posts being almost impressive in how outright hostile and nasty they are. Way more than I've seen here, anyway. I've had a few times over there where I had to stop and be like... Dude. Do these people just not even read their own post to themself? And think maybe? They shouldn't post this??? And then I just close the site for a while lmao. It's baffling to me how little care some people have for other people in general.

Anyway. I've definitely seen far worse than the FF forums. The forum here is also a very... quiet forum compared to what I'm used to, far as how often new posts get made in general discussion anyway. Probably at least a part of why I've seen less of that unfun side of things I suppose.

There is a reason the official forums are a laughing stock everywhere else. Some of the reasons why people are suspended/banned are straight up hysterical. This also goes for really odd moderation choices, this isn't the first time this has happened and it won't be the last.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Of course it's not everybody, but it is the vast majority. I've said it once and I'll say it again: I would really hate to meet some of you in real life...

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In order to slip past moderation, passive aggressiveness is the actual only way to avoid a post deletion or ban, provided it's done in the most passive way possible. I, personally, prefer to be overt. But I am well aware it just takes one good slip to have someone smash that report button and have it actually go through. I mean, I report posts a plenty, but it's rather hard to report for trolling when the post itself is the equivalent of looking the other way and whistling innocently.

Hateful, no. I don't think people are like that. But they do so love what little control they can wrestle by being under the radar.

All forms of moderation whether the forums or in-game are a joke, honestly.

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Originally Posted by Selova

There is a reason the official forums are a laughing stock everywhere else. [...]

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Any proof for that? Wherever I read it's the same: "Riot forum sucks" (right now they have a revolt because of the moderation). "ArenaNet forum sucks" because Gaile Grey had no clue what proper moderation is. "Blizzard forum sucks" because they get their matchmaking rant posts deleted in Overwatch. "Bethesta forum sucks"... Let's not talk bout Reddit or the Steam forums either.

To me, this sounds more like the average, angry mid-30s tax payer: "Everything is bad! I could do it better! I would have not infracted that". It's their house and their rules. At work it's the same when we ban people from the store. "I dindu nuffin, you are all wrongz"!

You are all here on this forum for some reason but you hate it so much apparently. Weird, hm?

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Originally Posted by MrKusakabe

You are all here on this forum for some reason but you hate it so much apparently. Weird, hm?

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I've already given several reasons. Reddit is a popularity contest, twitter... yeah.. no.... uhh.. where else are their equivalent message boards? I don't use social media (I use twitter for announcements). This is my FFXIV spot.