Suspended for Otter Nonsense

[SturmChurro]

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.

I've been banned twice, trust me I know what you mean. I have studied the ToS several times, and have come to the conclusion that anything not positive is literally bannable, at the sole discretion of the mod, in my opinion. At the very end the ToS includes:

Taking any other actions that are deemed inappropriate by Square Enix in our sole discretion.

In so many words, my interpretation of this line is, anything is bannable. What do you consider "inappropriate", and what does the next person consider equally "inappropriate"?

These are the lines of the ToS that I think can (and is) broadly interpreted, and leads to bans. Considering the context of my last ban for reference:

Posting that constitutes discrimination against another forum member or group (also including forming groups for the purpose of discrimination), insults, slander, libel, harassment of a group or individual.

You can be banned for simply making a claim against another user, it doesn't matter how severe said claim is. My suggestion is, to make sure you don't get misinterpreted, include "in my opinion", "I think".

Use of inappropriate or aggressive language.

You don't actually have to swear, aggressive can mean a lot of things, stay positive!

Posting aimed to create a negative impact on the community or its members.

How broad of an interpretation can you take for that you think?

Posting seeking to damage or disparage Square Enix, the forum, FINAL FANTASY XIV, or others.

Again, in other words, anything negative can apply here.

Posting content with the intention of criticizing either Square Enix staff or specific individuals.

MUST criticize only the idea.

And to finish this off, I assume this is what the otter posters were hit by:

Posting content that does not follow the theme of the category or thread.
Posting content that deviates from topics concerning FINAL FANTASY XIV.

[SaberMaxwell]

Use of inappropriate or aggressive language.

You don't actually have to swear, aggressive can mean a lot of things, stay positive!

Posting aimed to create a negative impact on the community or its members.

How broad of an interpretation can you take for that you think?

Congrats on surviving two bans. Dual says he's jealous.

These two are the ToS guidelines Dualgunner was permabanned for. Literally for a three letter word that refers to either a donkey, or the human posterior.

You're right, nobody has to swear. Dual certainly could have avoided doing so and probably wouldn't have been banned. That said, a permanent ban for an instance of swearing, especially when the only other infraction was two years ago for something entirely different? Seems like absolute overkill to me.

EDIT: not saying you'd disagree, and I'll admit bias. Dual is a very close friend of mine.

[SturmChurro]

EDIT: not saying you'd disagree, and I'll admit bias. Dual is a very close friend of mine.

I do not disagree. I disagree with the way I think the ToS can be interpreted, I disagree with what I think is a seeming lack of moderator interaction (silent mass deletions one-minute, straight up bans the next), I disagree with how I think some users may or may not weaponize reports, I disagree with the severity a ToS violation may be handled.

With the way the ToS can (and is, in my opinion) interpreted it completely removes the option of discourse, and certainly makes many users nervous to post here. If one side feels like it they can claim any one of the ToS lines I posted above, I think they can get you banned. You might feel confident, but trust me, if it is negative it is breaking the ToS. There is no consistency, because in my opinion, it is so broadly interpreted. That is why, in my opinion, a "review" of any ToS violation may be a farce, because it can be interpreted as a true violation, and in the end, a justified ban.

[Kallistra]

If enough people report your post, the forum moderators will look at it (they also seem to look at posts in threads that blow up). All you need to do is be come off too firmly and/or include swearing and/or seem like your antagonizing someone and you will probably get slapped with "being a negative effect on the community".

The biggest flaw with the forum moderation is that it's not very consistent--which isn't surprising considering how many posts are published daily...but there are a lot of incredibly minor things that have gotten some people suspensions/bans while others haven't gotten any punishment at all. This makes it really difficult to gauge how you can interact with other uses and what you can say, especially in a confrontational manor (such as a debate or disagreement).

I'm going to use swearing as an example because it would be the easiest thing to fix and it's something that is incredibly hit or miss in terms of punishment.

Say you're in the massive Duty Finder thread and you see someone post about how an anonymous player in their party was being a 'female dog'. It's there, the whole word. This person's post gets 10 Likes and people agree that their situation was awful and that anonymous player was indeed a 'female dog'. A few months later you see a thread praising a villain in the MSQ for being a complex and interesting character. You write a long and civil reply respectfully disagreeing with the OP. However you got carried away and the post is long so you decide to leave a TL;DR at the bottom. And so you say, "TL;DR: I think he/she has potential, however right now we don't know enough about them and they just come off as a 'female dog' for the sake of being a 'female dog'." Some people agree with your post and some people disagree with it. Some people don't even read your post and just see the TL;DR. People from all sides decide to report you. After a couple days you are met with a notice of a 10-day suspension and the reason being for strong, vulgar language that is creating a negative effect on the community. Why did you get in trouble for using a word when talking about a fictional character, but someone else used it when describing another person and received no punishment? Is it because you said it more than once? Is it because you used it in a TL;DR section, so that made people more drawn to it? Was it the context? Is swearing allowed or is it not allowed? There's just no way to tell because the rule isn't followed consistently.

This is something that could be easily fixed with a few filters/catches. For example, the swears prevent your post from being published (similar to how going over the character limit works) and you are met with a warning like, "Vulgar language is against our ToS. Please remove/replace any swears contained within your post. Trying to bypass the filter and keep these words will result in a strike on your forum account." This stops the problem before it happens and makes it clear what their tolerance is. Or there could be a system in place that blocks the word(s) after the post is made. This would leave the site cleaner and leave it up to the poster to decide how/if they want to change what they said after the post is published. If they're reported, the emphasis should be more-so on how they used the censored words rather than the actual words themselves.

The way swearing is viewed on the forums versus how it's viewed in-game seems to differ quite a lot. In both cases, if you swear directly at someone for the purpose of attacking them, you're in trouble. In-game, context matters and if you say "That was [censored] crazy!" you're probably fine on that part even if you get reported for something else. On the forums, I think you're not supposed to swear at all and saying "That was [censored] crazy!" will get you in trouble (if you're reported/a GM sees your post). Again, this is followed inconsistently that it's hard to tell, but I'm inclined to believe the forums wants to have a zero tolerance for swearing because your post is searchable (both on the site and via Google) and is a lot more permanent than saying something in-game.

There is honestly so much more I could get into about this...there are a lot of things that puzzle me and aren't very clear. But I have gone on long enough and I'd like to hope this critique won't result in myself getting suspended if I leave it where it is now.

[SerLuke]

I've been banned twice, trust me I know what you mean. I have studied the ToS several times, and have come to the conclusion that anything not positive is literally bannable, at the sole discretion of the mod, in my opinion. At the very end the ToS includes:

Oh don’t worry they ban positive comments too while leaving up threads that call people morons #ottergate

[SerLuke]

I also got temporary banned for posting the otter pictures.

They stated it was off-topic.

Which baffles me that they would ban so many people over that, instead of the OP who was trash talking his FC in not one but two threads and used the whole cancer/autism thing as a cover up.

The mods on this forum are a complete joke.

He apparently got (temp?)banned for derailing my otter suggestion thread apparently but his post stealth baiting his old FC and calling them morons is still up

[Gula]

During the live letter, Yoshi, and do an extent Ms. Translator said "Pain in the [OMG CENSORED]" on stream. Had this been the forums, oops guess that's an offense.

[Lilseph]

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.

Mhm, I did. But I was also told by Hyo about that. With that being said: I stand corrected.

It's worse than I thought.

[Joven]

So I've been doing a lot of thinking on the drive home from work and I've decided that I've had enough of tip-toeing around this issue. I've already stated in a previous post that I'm willing to take a perma-ban for this so I need to back that up. I lit this fuse when I started this thread and now it's time to watch it burn. I'm done being polite.

I'm just gonna come out and call this for what it is: pathetic. When people are too afraid to say what they think due phantom moderators and an ephemeral Terms of Service then you know something isn't right. We shouldn't have to worry about having our posts sniped or being shadow banned due to a broken system where anyone can simply point a finger and make someone disappear. Where people can get banned for a simple slip-up while others blatantly disregard everything and face no punishment. To top it all off we only get silence and even silenced when asking for clarification or for even questioning the motives of the moderators.

That's all we really wanted: clarification.Transparency. A chance to correct our mistakes before any serious penalties can be incurred and we lose our ability to post on here, but I guess swinging the Banhammer is easier than actually moderating. We can't even get a canned response on here because I guess we aren't even important enough for that despite the fact that we're essentially paying to use this service...

I get that there are a lot of threads on here and keeping them up can be a nightmare, but at the same time we need some way to know that someone out there is actually listening to us. Instead it feels like we're just screaming into the void.

If anyone is interested, before I get the Orbital Banhammer, my Discord is Joven#3737. I'm terrible at starting conversations, but may chime in every so often in others.

Also, I apologize if anyone gets caught in the blowback of this.


Edit: Always remember #Ottergate

[Insertcoins]

Talking about abusing the report system and perma-bans reminded me of a user on here that I came across about two years ago. I encountered them in a crazy post they started about giving summoners animations similar to Pokémon trainers throwing a Poké-ball when they summoned their Egi. Every reply was hostile, calling them an idiot, saying they were going to report them and hoped they got banned.

I commented that I've never seen so much hostility towards anybody on these forums before and was told that the OP had a 'history of spreading negativity'. I made a point to go through some of the OP's post history and none of their posts were negative in any way. Silly and pointless yes, but not negative. They were never rude, insulting or used any profanity or derogatory language. It seemed like people were only mad at them because of all the silly threads they started. I replied later that if they didn't want those types of threads on the forums then they should just ignore them and that they themselves were the ones perpetuating the negativity. Some of the posters actually turned on me, calling me an idiot for 'defending a troll' and essentially proving my point.

Due to all the, in my opinion, unwarranted hostility from a group of users towards this person they eventually earned a perma-ban. I think this is a good example of the report feature being abused just because someone wasn't liked.

I would rather have a dozen pointlessly silly threads than a dozen pointless threads covering the same topics all the time.

HOLY SH.... I REMEMBER THAT LOL. Damn I feel bad for that person :c They got rushed :C.