The 3-Strikes Policy - Is it really a good thing?

[Awha]

That's also a good suggestion. Having frequent "minor" infractions add-up to an actual strike instead of just counting them outright would be a good addition.

While I've never been warned or jailed, I do understand that humans are humans and we cannot always be completely TOS compliant especially when the terms are so vague. I hear a lot of people complain about how when they do get strikes they have no idea why and while I understand the reason for not being able to reference the exact infractions, when you have such nebulous guidelines to work from, you should get a few chances to refine your behavior as well as forgiveness if you manage to comply for an extended amount of time.



People grow but there are infractions out there that have no excuse. They are blatant and easily distinguishable from "passionate" or "accidental" infractions. Hatespeech, Targeted sexual harassment, hacking/cheating/exploiting.

People can say or do things they often regret. Tolerance of forgiveness should cover everything. I personally operate on a simple principle every action is forgivable or no action is. Seems silly how people pick and choose what is a tolerant mistake over and unforgivable one.

[Vaern]

I know nothing about the Law in real life, but does your record get cleaned every X years/set amount of time for minor offenses ?

[Saefinn]

I feel it should depend on the offense. People are human, they mess up and learn and can be different people entirely in the space of a few years. Sometimes they do something without realising it was wrong.

For sure they should be warned but I think it's better as a probationary thing.

Serious rule breakages for sure keep them there.

For some reason I doubt that. Not sure why.

I mean he showed admission of guilt in using FFlogs, which I am pretty sure Yoshi P once clarified as using third party tools.

[Krotoan]

People can say or do things they often regret. Tolerance of forgiveness should cover everything. I personally operate on a simple principle every action is forgivable or no action is. Seems silly how people pick and choose what is a tolerant mistake over and unforgivable one.

.. So murder is just as forgivable as jaywalking?

[Kaurhz]

The 3-strike policy is a good thing yes. You shouldn't be in a position where you have broken the Terms of Service in 3 different instances. You should've learned your lesson after the first time, and most certainly after the second.

[Awha]

.. So murder is just as forgivable as jaywalking?

Yeah, a person should face punishment but to say that someone who has committed murder is not possible seems. If someone does change I do not think actions of the past after they did their punishment should follow a person. Just like in IRL once a person serves their time I do not think they should be forced to state they were ever locked up, or their sentences should be viewable through a background check. The government can have a record but as everyday people I do not think we should really know. They did their time being as they are saw fit to be free they should be viewed as everyone else not as a person with a negative label for the rest of their life.

As I mentioned I live by a simple view everything can be forgiven and made amends for. Life is too short to hold grudges and carry anger around. I also say this as someone who has been victim of some horrendous acts with lengthy legal battles as a child but that is just me. I get for many it is hard to let go. Do not get me wrong I still remember the horrible things done to me, but outside that it is water under the bridge.

In short I do not base my own view of forgiveness around the type of action or damage dealt so to speak.

[Darkmoonrise]

When reading such threads and noticing the difference between EU/JAP/US mentalities, I cannot prevent myself laughing when thinking about the mess that data center travel will introduce

[MagicAura]

It's hard to throw an easy judgement on the 3-strike system because so many of us are very different with varied backgrounds and emotional states.

I started playing June last year. I reached Titania sometime in my second month. I was a DPS, had already watched a very confusing video, my experience with the various AOEs the bosses used was super low (almost inexistent), my reflexes weren't up to scratch because I always did trials only once and never did daily trial roulette, and in general I was a very confused person throughout. So during that trial I missed the stack marker and stood very confused in the middle of nasty AOE trying to figure out what was killing me and how. Someone took to themselves to berate me about "reaching that point in the game and not knowing what a stack marker is". He continued until the end of the trial (yes I stuck through it because I didn't even know I could leave) until after the end he left. I guess it was giving him some satisfaction and/or he thought he was going to make me want to learn if he told me again and again how terrible I was.

Coming from an abusive childhood and being a survivor with myriads of different mental health issues, his tirade had the effect of reducing me to tears, me begging him to stop the abuse, and then wanting to quit the game forever. I didn't quit in the end (and I'm glad for that), but also I didn't report him because I recovered my wits a week later. He should have been reported though, if for nothing else for him to learn to be more tolerant towards other people and not treat humans as if everyone is exactly the same (aka the "I am fine, therefore you should be fine too" syndrome). And I don't believe that's something that should have been struck through after X amount of time, because we as people forget easily and it's easy to say "I promise this was the last time".

My argument here is that there is no objective way of categorising infractions because each of us responds in a different way and if you start categorising like this then you are sure to leave vulnerable people out or make them feel like they don't matter.

Take another example that happened to me in January this year. I always greet the group with a "hello" but say nothing else unless there is some discussion. One person decided it was okay to respond to my hello with the F-bomb. Is that a minor infraction? A major? Something in between? Some people shrugged and said "so what". And yet I was left shaking and unable to play (and also unable to initiate a vote kick as 5 minutes had not yet passed). If you judge this minor then you belittle my experiences and mental states.

In summary, I believe the 3-strike system works well as a deterrent and I choose to believe that the GMs don't blindly enforce it but take into consideration the context of each situation and long-term history. I also believe that treating the people one is grouped with respect and kindness and adapting one's own expectations is the only way to practice the "live-and-let-live" philosophy.

[Solarra]

I think it is overly-harsh to have every strike on your account permanent. Since a strike can be given for fairly innocuous actions like spamming emotes, using flashy abilities near other players or dropping a swear word into chat as well as more serious stuff, I would definitely like to see them expire after a reasonable amount of time, like the penalty points on your driving licence do.
Three strikes and you're out seems fair enough to me.

[Saefinn]

I too was strongly upset at the direction of that thread too. Heck, I was the one that started it and tried my best to keep it on track. Little did I know that there is a post limitation on the website and once I started getting the message telling me that I could no longer reply for the day... the thread spiraled out of control and there was nothing I could do about it beyond that point.

However, the mass and systematic actions of the one GM was in error and unjust for the players. Especially given the lack of reasoning that is provided when a player is pulled for whatever the reason may be. And while the other thread did get wildly out of control once I could no longer regulate it myself, the angry calls for the GMs removal or demotion were also uncalled for. We had no way of knowing what the source of the problem was or how it was caused and therefore we couldn't solely place blame on that one GM... however, the situation it produced was still utterly wrong and unfair and has been corrected as it rightfully should have been.

Whilst I contributed to the thread, I agree with the points here. My impression from the get-go was that this was a GM making an error, it just seemed very sudden and out of place where GM's have generally not stopped people doing the aforementioned things on PF. Whilst I get people think they should, that's a different matter. But I am happy with how it was settled.

Of course, not knowing the nature of why the GM got it wrong means calling for their removal is harsh. If we can make mistakes because we're human, so can they.

The important detail is to learn from them. Either way I think overall they handled things pretty well here. It didn't take too long to get an official response who clarified their position and they reversed the actions on accounts they found innocent of wrong doing and locked the thread as it was getting /too/ out of hand and started deleting inappropriate posts.

And it gives me confidence too that if you are innocent of wrong doing, you can contest it and it can be re-reviewed. Which I think make sense to when humans are not infallible creatures.