Forum etiquette - double-posting vs separating ideas?

[KisaiTenshi]

SE pays attention to the number of likes in a post; if a post has several hundred likes, they’re more likely to pay attention to it.

That has NEVER been the case in the English forums at all, in any shape.

The only time they even consider "likes" is in feedback threads for the Live letter, and even then, most of that is ignored in favor of softball questions.

If likes were money, people use them. Instead likes are just a way for people to go "I have nothing to add, but don't want to reply with a 10char."

Why do we have these kinds of limitations anyways? Is there a fundamental reason why we can only make starting posts with 1000 characters or less first, before editing them as much as we want? Also, why do we have a posting limitation per day too? I'm afraid that I haven't been on the forums for very long and this is mind boggling when I've been to other game forums and generalized forums that aren't nearly so restrictive with their userbase.

The character limit is a Japanese thing. Ever see a Japanese novel? It's 1/10th the size of an English one of the same story. This also also why Twitter increased the post size for the non-east-asian languages.

As for the post limits, it's more of a moderation measure. If people can't post more than 10 posts or so within a 24 hour window, then people will think twice about engaging with pointless flamewars with trolls, and instead concentrate their posts to stay on topic. It also keeps spammers from posting to the forum as you can't post to the forum for about 24 hours after you've logged into the game.

Most "western" forums don't have these limits, because western people have an inflated ego, and see "dem's fightin' words" everywhere if everyone isn't praising them.

Another issue is "necroposting" which is when people dig up a thread, only to not add anything new to it. If a thread is older than 30 days, that is a necropost. If someone used the search (eg the forum search, or google) and post to something without checking the date of the last post, then that's a necropost. People sometimes do this intentionally if something has changed, and there is a limit to how many threads you can make as well.

This forum is not really that bad about it except for some posters who create essentially identical threads just to stoke the fires of an argument they were losing in another thread to bury the previous one, and all the other conversations with it.


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[HyoMinPark]

The only time they even consider "likes" is in feedback threads for the Live letter, and even then, most of that is ignored in favor of softball questions.

Nah, most are probably ignored because people ask questions that aren’t related to the topic of the thread. Like asking the creator of Ivalice job balancing questions. Or asking the person in charge of the STF questions about future glamour options. I can’t even fault devs for ignoring questions from the NA side because people don’t read the threads and just ask whatever.

The character limit is a Japanese thing. Ever see a Japanese novel? It's 1/10th the size of an English one of the same story. This also also why Twitter increased the post size for the non-east-asian languages.

Both the character limit and the post limits are anti-spam measures. Because apparently the 1.0 forums had issues with that. Hence 1,000 characters only/20 posts per day.

[Sigma-Astra]

Most "western" forums don't have these limits, because western people have an inflated ego, and see "dem's fightin' words" everywhere if everyone isn't praising them.

.....I think that's a bit rude to make a generalized assumption that everyone who lives on the western side of the hemisphere have inflated egos, especially after you just talked about flamewars and trolls. I mean, it doesn't matter what side of the world you live on, everyone has an ego, just some people make their own more apparent than others.

[KisaiTenshi]

.....I think that's a bit rude to make a generalized assumption that everyone who lives on the western side of the hemisphere have inflated egos, especially after you just talked about flamewars and trolls. I mean, it doesn't matter what side of the world you live on, everyone has an ego, just some people make their own more apparent than others.

I manage/manged 4 or so "big" boards, and there are entire forums dedicated to "forum games" that do nothing but inflate the post count. Trust me, people post, just to be seen.

Both the character limit and the post limits are anti-spam measures. Because apparently the 1.0 forums had issues with that. Hence 1,000 characters only/20 posts per day.

The forum software is a generic vbulletin 4.1.2 install from 2011 that they've obviously created some linkage to the Square-Enix account as a spam control and user session authentication. The actual post sizes and limits are things they could change in a control panel, and as much as "spam control" is the obvious reason, it's been stated in various places that because east-asian text requires less space due to the Kanji, "1000" characters is considered more than enough.

Perhaps someone in the community management should bring this up, because pretty much everyone knows how to circumvent the post size.

[Miste]

I manage/manged 4 or so "big" boards

How many forums you apparently manage still doesn't give you any authority to make such a massive generalization about everyone who lives in multiple continents. We're talking like maybe a billion people if not more you do realize that right?

Trust me, people post, just to be seen.

Trust you on what? You offer no factual evidence or statistics to back up these massive generalizations.

This is just what you personally think about people who post. It doesn't make it true and it definitely doesn't mean that you can generalize multiple continents just because of your own personal opinion. It only makes you look ignorant.

[Sigma-Astra]

I manage/manged 4 or so "big" boards, and there are entire forums dedicated to "forum games" that do nothing but inflate the post count. Trust me, people post, just to be seen.

As Miste has said previously, that doesn't make you an authority nor give you the right to just make blanket statements about billions of people you've never meant and probably never will meet just because you have a skewed and negative personal perception of who they really are.

I could make a comment that the entire eastern hemisphere is ignorant about their perceptions of the western hemisphere, but that would be a blatantly wrong and rude generalized assumption to make unfairly against a lot of people if I were just basing it on my personal interactions with other players and users from that side of the world. You see how judgmental and ignorant that makes you look?

It's nothing I would do personally, it's not a good thing, and you shouldn't try to justify in doing it either.

[HyoMinPark]

Trust me, people post, just to be seen.

If we're going by this logic, I suppose that also explains why you post? Since we're making generalizations here?

I post to answer questions or just to say something. Not out of some need for internet validation or feeling important. It may surprise you, but I don't care about "being seen". Considering I'm the very definition of an introvert, it's not something that is important me. I prefer the opposite; I don't like internet notoriety. So let us not generalize here.

[KisaiTenshi]

If we're going by this logic, I suppose that also explains why you post? Since we're making generalizations here?

It's certainly why at least a dozen people on the English forum post who have large post counts centered on the general forum, because they don't add anything to the conversation, and are just waiting for that one person they don't like to post anything so they can jump in and add a sarcastic retort that that insults the person.

As I said, I've managed big boards before, and those who spend a great deal amount of time on the forum, just want to be seen.

If you think I'm calling you or anyone else out, please put a pin in your ego.

Trust you on what? You offer no factual evidence or statistics to back up these massive generalizations.

There are studies on this, don't be ridiculous. Anonymity makes people act differently than they would in a physical setting, because anonymity lowers inhibition.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9ea...f0452c75e6.pdf
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/59830/1/Accepted%20Version.pdf

[HyoMinPark]

It's certainly why at least a dozen people on the English forum post who have large post counts centered on the general forum, because they don't add anything to the conversation, and are just waiting for that one person they don't like to post anything so they can jump in and add a sarcastic retort that that insults the person.

As I said, I've managed big boards before, and those who spend a great deal amount of time on the forum, just want to be seen.

If you think I'm calling you or anyone else out, please put a pin in your ego.

Honestly, I don’t care how many “big boards” you’ve managed. That doesn’t suddenly make you an expert on people or forum posters. It certainly doesn’t give you the right to generalize the lot of them. Personally, I post on forums because I’m bored, or because I have something to say/add to a conversation. When I’m not bored/don’t have anything to say or add, I’m typically not on them. Again, not out of some need to be validated by strangers on the internet.

And the irony of being told to put a pin on my ego.
You do realize by your generalizations you are including yourself in them, yes? If people with high post counts on the OF just “want to be seen”, well you have a fairly sizeable post count yourself, so what does that say about you? The logic applies to you as well. If you don’t like being included in the generalizations, best not to make them, my friend.

The entire point of my post wasn’t any sort ego stroke. It was to give you another perspective on why people frequent the forums (yes, even these westerns that you consider so confrontational), since you are so keen to exclude such things when you make these generalizations about people.

There are studies on this, don't be ridiculous. Anonymity makes people act differently than they would in a physical setting, because anonymity lowers inhibition.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9ea...f0452c75e6.pdf
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/59830/1/Accepted%20Version.pdf

No one said that anonymity doesn’t lower inhibitions. They said that you aren’t entitled to call everyone on the western side of the world:

Most "western" forums don't have these limits, because western people have an inflated ego, and see "dem's fightin' words" everywhere if everyone isn't praising them.

Neither of the studies you linked say anything about how western individuals have massively inflated egos and look to argue and bicker with every poster they come across because they feel the need to argue. Thereby, they don’t prove your point.

[KisaiTenshi]

It certainly doesn’t give you the right to generalize the lot of them. Personally, I post on forums because I’m bored. When I’m not bored, I’m typically not on them. Again, not out of some need to be validated by strangers on the internet.

Yet, somehow you personally took offense to a generalization that is very true for this forum, and all unmoderated/loosely moderated forums on the internet, because you felt that I was attacking you, when I was describing the behavior of people who add nothing to the conversation, because there is no moderator.

When there is low moderation, the amount of ****-posting goes up. Those are posts that add nothing to the thread, but exist entirely to inflate the users presence. That is just one thing people do, and it's very popular to do in Western and Eastern forums when the moderators are asleep, or absent. Prior to this concept, as I described before "forum games" exist where people post to the same thread, over and over with one-liners, it's entire purpose to inflate the user's post count, and visibility on the site by being the last poster to every forum game thread. This forum doesn't have this because it's against the terms of service to do it, and the posts-per-day limit lowers the rate at which the post inflation happens.

What? Why is it rude the snip posts? This is the second time somebody said it. How is that rude? I do it because I'm responding directly to the person I snipped. This feels like an overly sensitive reaction to a minor thing.

It's equal to saying "what you said meant nothing, thus you're an idiot"