How forum moderation works - requesting a GM response please

[Cylla]

I agree a suspension was harsh, a warning / edited post with said warning would have been enough. Disagreements happen all the time on forums, but telling another poster to shut up on a forum over a disagreement / being tilted was also silly in itself. Warning is all you should have gotten in my opinion.

Agreed. Even more so when it was a first offense to start off with. I kind of laughed. Never in my whole gaming life have I been banned from an OF until recently.
Their whole appeal system or getting them to tell you what you were actually banned for is like, yep, nope not happening.
It frustrating seeing people get away with murder around here while somewhat more innocent people are getting slammed with a hammer they shouldn't be or if they are deserving of it, not for weeks over something small and silly.
Ah well, it is what it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[MistakeNot]

It seems like forum moderation has some sort of casual bias to me. When people attempt to use data and evidence in an argument about job balance or optimization they will quite often see a temp ban for involving fflogs and yet notorious forum trolls who will remain nameless only for the sake of my account remaining active can disparage entire servers and communities with little to no apparent consequences. But its okay because they're fighting on the side of "mash buttons, play however you want!" which is apparently the 'correct' narrative.

This is similar to something I have seen on certain other official game forums (not SE-related).
The average complaining and whining and general "<xyz> sux!!!!" posts are mostly disregarded because nobody takes those posts all that seriously anyway.
Pointed, detailed, well-written, valid criticism of the game or company - that makes someone nervous and such posts tend to disappear sooner rather than later.
Can't say if this is true here as well.

[Freyt]

The point of loose guidelines is to apply them when they're sensible. The problem is when instead they're applied when it's convenient. Someone says something you don't like? Find one of the many loose guidelines that might blanket over it, and ban them. This is directly opposed to the spirit of loose guidelines to begin with, when is to promote a free and healthy dialogue.

[Jijifli]

I got a 10 day ban as my first punishment because there was a swear in the quote.

A swear... in the quote... from another player... WHAT?

[Lilseph]

I'll be blunt. This "review" process appears to be little more than a PR stunt because of two threads here and another on reddit were getting enough attention it looked bad. I doubt a single ban gets lifted nor did they ever intend for it. This is simply something they can now point to and claim they're doing something.

Honestly, it doesn't sound too far-fetched. I also had the same impression. The whole system might a bluff and they are closing requests masively.

[Awha]

Agreed. Even more so when it was a first offense to start off with. I kind of laughed. Never in my whole gaming life have I been banned from an OF until recently.
Their whole appeal system or getting them to tell you what you were actually banned for is like, yep, nope not happening.
It frustrating seeing people get away with murder around here while somewhat more innocent people are getting slammed with a hammer they shouldn't be or if they are deserving of it, not for weeks over something small and silly.
Ah well, it is what it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Their appeal system is a joke, they got back to me after my 240 hours were up. Much good that did.

[NotOliverB]

Here the thing, I along with a few other people reported the person who was admitting to breaking terms of service in-game and was even flaunting a screen shot to prove they owned half a ward by buying houses and was even selling them. They got no ban and yet I got banned for god knows I don't know what. My only best guess is, either because I told someone to shut up because all they were doing was getting people railed up and supporting the other person who was breaking ToS or that I called out SE on their failure to follow their own ToS.

SE doesn't like to clearly state what their banning you for. All they do is give you this long list of things you "may" have done, link the whole post that they banned you for, and calls it a day. I went to appeal the ban, they got back to me five-six days later saying, "We can't explain this over email. Please contact our phone or chat support." to which at that point I just laughed and took my ban with pride.

So no, SE doesn't look into reports. At least not the one's they should be looking into.

You're funny

[Joven]

This isn't forum related, but back when I first started playing I would report bots or RMT spammers that were everywhere and almost every time I filed a report the next day that I went to log in I would get the message "your account has been flagged for suspicious activity, please change your password to to ensure your account is protected." This happened three times. After that I just stopped bothering to report anything. Surprisingly never had a problem on the OF.

[Rockette]

Their appeal system is a joke, they got back to me after my 240 hours were up. Much good that did.

:<

Well, that's super disappointing. Why bother with the GM comment on the ban thread at all then. They could have stayed silent and it would have been the exact same system.

[Kirsten_Rev]

I wanted to chime in - and will be doing so on the 'elephant in the room' thread as well - with my boyfriend's story. I don't normally post on the forums, but these threads of late have caught my eye, given his experiences.

Like many have described, he got perma-banned for a relatively innocuous post. It had a single f-word in it that he bleeped out (asterisks for the three letters after f), and also a four-letter word beginning with p that also means urine. I'm hesitant to type either, because I don't know what he got banned for exactly. He was strongly responding to a post that had labeled a previous one of his with the r-word, but these were the only two words that could even remotely convey rudeness. The poster who called his ideas the r-word didn't receive so much as a temp ban that we could find. My boyfriend, on the other hand, received a perma-ban, despite having only one offense on his record previously (for a more clear-cut, but still language-related, post about a year ago).

He appealed the verdict through the form that was posted a few weeks ago, and got nowhere. Ban fully justified, and stays in effect. This means he cannot participate in certain forum-only community events, cannot contribute his ideas, cannot really comment on the game at all via official means. All because of - near as we can tell - a self-deleted swear word (it was never written in its full form) and a four-letter word for urine that one is likely to hear by the time they're six years old.

So we second the OP's request. We'd like clarification as to the rules, so this doesn't happen to anyone else. And we'd go a step further: the complete removal of permanent bans except in extraordinary circumstances (persistent harassment, for example). We'd also like to see a profanity filter implemented, rather than bans being inconsistently issued for foul language. That's how language is handled in FFXIV itself, and it seems reasonable to treat the forums no differently than the game. My boyfriend's behaviour would not have gotten him banned from FFXIV, or even warned - so why are the forums policed in this manner?

Anyway. Just our collective two cents.