Suspended for Otter Nonsense

[Joven]

Holy carp, one whole page just got nuked for some reason! We were up to 17 pages, now there's only 16.

[BiffWellington]

They're just remaining true to the Norse mythology that's so prevalent in the roots of the whole Final Fantasy series.

Loki had a run-in with an otter once, and look at what came of that! A whole series of bizarre events, including a dude getting turned into a dragon, that culminated in a great hero being murdered by his brother-in-law over some shiny trinkets.

Otters may look cute, but you do not want to take them lightly.

[SaberMaxwell]

First off, I wouldn't worry too much about a permaban. In forums at least, those happen so rarely they are basically a myth.

Dualgunner.
Cassandra_Solidor.
VanillexFang.
Sir_Rawrz.
Lorgana.
Selli.
Dervy.

These are all names I can think of off of the top of my head of people who've been permabanned; of them I know five, and talk to them frequently on Discord. Dualgunner was banned for a meme, Sir_Rawrz was banned for light profanity, Dervy was banned for numbercrunching on the forums (he said the "P" word), Vanille made the mistake of posting a screencap of FFLogs on the OF, Selli was banned for a ridiculously silly reason.

Someone said it's a three-strike system. For some it is, for most of the people I know it's two-strike, and it's a permanent record. Dualgunner's bans were two years apart from one another, and Cassandra's bans were four years apart from one another.

The otter everyone got tempbanned for? That's gonna be there forever. If most of these people ever see another ban, that otter will add to their likelihood to make it permaban.

[Joven]

Since I'm sitting here at work bored out of my gourd, I figured I post about some ideas I've had to possibly improve transparency:

1: If a moderator has to delete a post, then they should have to list the reason why. It doesn't have to be anything detailed, just something as simple as 'this post violated X portion of the ToS'.

2: If a post is reported or deleted for any reason then the poster should be notified either by email or through a pop-up text the next time they log into the forums. This doesn't have to be anything fancy either. A simple 'one or more of your posts have been flagged/removed' should do.

3: If it seems like a thread is about to take a turn to The Otter Limits or has already reached that point and moderator action is required, whether it's to lock the thread or potentially ban members, then a warning should be issued on said thread and the participance would have *at most* 24 hours to either abandon the thread or course correct before action is taken. The contents of the warning can be left up to the moderator.

I don't know how feasible any of these are, but it's just some things I've been thinking about since starting this thread.

[SturmChurro]

-Snip-

When I was a moderator on that large fan site a few years ago, we would issue an official thread warning with something along the lines of, "remain on topic", "further action may be taken". Depending on severity. we would issue official warnings to users, that actually would be a mark on their account, but were just a warning so not an actual strike against that specific user's account. These warnings would include why they are receiving this warning. Users had an actual appeal process similar to a tribunal. I think I said this before yesterday. This was a fan site, with volunteers. I think the lack of warnings for even minor "violations" you get bans that, as users have said, can lead to your account being terminated is really too much.

I don't think it would be feasible, considering the amount of posts get deleted on a daily basis, for them to issue a reason, not to mention the thread would probably be littered with these. However, I do agree with official warnings, and actual interaction is what is sorely needed. Even a moderator just stepping in and saying "stay on topic" would be enough to keep the discussion in line, in my opinion. The fact that there is no interaction, and even when you get banned there is still no interaction, even in the "appeal" process there is no interaction. All that is said is this has been "reviewed as correct" or something along those lines.

Another thing we used to do was edit out portions of a users post with a small thing like, again, "stay on topic", "refrain from personal attacks", but if the bulk of the content was on topic, and added to the discussion we would leave it. If any portion of a user's post on this forum is deemed "delete worthy" even if the bulk of said post is on-topic and adds to the discussion, I think it gets entirely deleted.

[Joven]

-snip-

I just figured that if a moderator had to give a reply for every post they deleted then they'd take more notice of what they were actually deleting and determine if that post was reeeeeaaally worth the effort to delete it in the first place. It just seems like they're deleting the posts to avoid directly addressing the problem and if the post was flagged by someone out of spite then that wouldn't be fair to the one who posted it. There's been at least one post deleted from here that I know of and I have no idea why. Everyone on here has been polite and on topic the whole time.

[SturmChurro]

I just figured that if a moderator had to give a reply for every post they deleted then they'd take more notice of what they were actually deleting and determine if that post was reeeeeaaally worth deleting in the first place. It just seems like they're deleting the posts to avoid directly addressing the problem and if the post was flagged by someone out of spite then that wouldn't be fair to the one who posted it. There's been at least one post deleted from here that I know of and I have no idea why. Everyone on here has been polite and on topic the whole time.

In a perfect world, giving a manual reason for a post's deletion would be a great thing. I do not disagree with that, but considering the carpet-bombings that happen, I just do not think it is feasible. In a perfect world, I would like to see deletions lessened, and edits happen instead. Using a swear word as an example means an automatic deletion (and ban), even if you included 6 paragraphs of a quality post.

Keep this in mind:
Posting content with the intention of criticizing either Square Enix staff or specific individuals.

[Joven]

In a perfect world, giving a manual reason for a post's deletion would be a great thing. I do not disagree with that, but considering the carpet-bombings that happen, I just do not think it is feasible. In a perfect world, I would like to see deletions lessened, and edits happen instead. Using a swear word as an example means an automatic deletion, even if you included 6 paragraphs of a quality post.

Keep this in mind:
Posting content with the intention of criticizing either Square Enix staff or specific individuals.

Sorry, I haven't had much sleep today and I tend to get a little too serious about things when I'm tired. Thanks for keeping me in check .

[SaberMaxwell]

Keep this in mind:
Posting content with the intention of criticizing either Square Enix staff or specific individuals.

Note: I'm not arguing whether that's in the ToS or not or anything, just sort of venting incredulity with the fact it is in the ToS.

I personally think that's the biggest joke on the ToS. Why have official forums if critique is bannable?

Sure, "critique the game not the individual" and I can see why they'd have a notion like that.

I should be able to defend myself by saying "I'm not criticizing the moderating team or anyone on it, just the policies that the moderation team follows." but there is no real appeal process (they tell you there's one, but more often than not your appeal is directed to the person who banned you, and ofc they're gonna say the punishment is correct. That's if they don't just hit you with a boilerplate response, which of the people I mentioned above, I've seen three of them get boilerplates) so I know that defending myself like that would fall on deaf ears.

[Shinklet]

Professional internet janitors have killed any form of message board or forum.