Quote Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi View Post
Because it doesn't stop with "parsing". People who claim that they're only using them as DPS meters, simply aren't. They lack no understanding of the underlying data. They have no understanding of how such realtime DPS meters can't be 100% accurate, but abuse the fact that they got that tool that tells them information that other players don't have. If people were simply running a network parser in the background, and uploading things after-the-fact, there would be a lot less to complain about because players would not be subjected to being kicked by players who are parsing everything.

There's no consent within the present tools to ensure that players can not abuse it. A properly written tool would recognize a consent sequence (eg "spectacles yes") and a revoke sequence from the players and only show those realtime meters for those who opted-in, and would anonymize the log of those who didn't opt in. That solves the main sources of abuse and harassment that the current parsers enable. A parser plugin like cactbot should not exist, and neither should the triggers plugin, because these change the nature of the "parsing" from "DPS meter" to "just follow the instructions like a walkthrough".
When it comes to things like FFlogs, I do wish they were opt-in instead of out, because due to my group not knowing that FFlogs were opt-out we caused some issues for a few members that were getting carried through content (for varies reasons) by uploading our logs to go over the data to improve our play. So I am all for having a system that is based around consent, but even so the current system is not inherently awful, sure some players treat the data as the end all be all and live and die by it. Still those players are few in the grand scheme of things. Though even if SE did release an official system that was opt-in most people would simply still use fllogs. While I do not agree that if fflogs switched over to an opt-in system it would ruin it due to the less overall data. That is for another topic.

I do have to say for someone that dislikes third party applications you sure bring them up a lot. :P