Extreme over correction in ToS? New ToS is going to kill pugging

[Nothv13]

100% Agree with this. "What do you mean, I can't be toxic anymore!!!"

Treat people nice, kind, and politely.

Nice kind and politely varies with culture. Shit man, it even varies from town to town.

[KOPF]

Nice kind and politely varies with culture. Shit man, it even varies from town to town.

Anecdotally I gave some of the acceptable phrases to couple of my friends who share my nationality and they thought them as condescending and passive aggressive. Also I can say that in EU there are very different interpretations on what is perceived as the polite way to give and receive advice. And of course if someone insults or acts deliberately belligerent, it should be worthy of a report.

I haven't had a warning or ban to my knowledge in 8 years, so most likely nothing will change, but these clarifications do seem to be directed to Japanese and their culture. This coupled with some very disheartening allegations of how Square Enix EU customer support seems to enforce these rules (Sorriow case) makes it ripe for exploitation from all sides. Hopefully it does not happen, but I'd rather not had the option for that occurring in the first place.

[Jijifli]

Anecdotally I gave some of the acceptable phrases to couple of my friends who share my nationality and they thought them as condescending and passive aggressive. Also I can say that in EU there are very different interpretations on what is perceived as the polite way to give and receive advice. And of course if someone insults or acts deliberately belligerent, it should be worthy of a report.

I haven't had a warning or ban to my knowledge in 8 years, so most likely nothing will change, but these clarifications do seem to be directed to Japanese and their culture. This coupled with some very disheartening allegations of how Square Enix EU customer support seems to enforce these rules (Sorriow case) makes it ripe for exploitation from all sides. Hopefully it does not happen, but I'd rather not had the option for that occurring in the first place.

Not to mention, sometimes that context... it's so important.

I had to look over every example a few times, but I believe I finally understand what gave me my recent suspension for "griefing" despite my lack of content being done for a pretty long time. You cannot threaten someone with a kick, which I had an incident of relation in Novice Network. We had a player, a mentor no less, forcing an unwanted topic in the newbie chat about whether calling people the R word is a perfectly acceptable and normal thing to do (they were arguing for it too...) and everyone was telling them to stop. I told them if they continued that behavior, because this is not the chat to argue this, and everyone is telling them to stop, they would be kicked. To which they removed me instantly since, well, they were a mentor.

But I still threatened to kick them for their behavior. To quote an example of "Don't do this" ... "I can have you kicked from this group at any time." Arguably, I fit that catagory, as I showed a threat that I could remove them from the chat at any point over what they were doing.

... Except if look at the context, I was warning them that their behavior was completely not okay. At all. And I took the punishment for it. How does that tell me to do anything different from just removing them instead of trying to communicate. You know... The POINT of these?

[SturmChurro]

...

Take my advice people: don't chat! Not like I haven't been saying this for years. Also, SE, bandaid fixes like DC bans aren't going to fix this, let's just remove the system (mentorship) altogether - including the NN.

[IDontPetLalas]

Anecdotally I gave some of the acceptable phrases to couple of my friends who share my nationality and they thought them as condescending and passive aggressive. Also I can say that in EU there are very different interpretations on what is perceived as the polite way to give and receive advice. And of course if someone insults or acts deliberately belligerent, it should be worthy of a report.

I haven't had a warning or ban to my knowledge in 8 years, so most likely nothing will change, but these clarifications do seem to be directed to Japanese and their culture. This coupled with some very disheartening allegations of how Square Enix EU customer support seems to enforce these rules (Sorriow case) makes it ripe for exploitation from all sides. Hopefully it does not happen, but I'd rather not had the option for that occurring in the first place.

Couple of points



1- Regarding the EU - that's an interesting point, there could be a concern in some cases for localization, personally I don't see that here, but I don't play on the EU servers so theer could be a very good reason to adjust the examples for them.

2-The tone of those phrases may seem a bit stilted however I also believe that many people tend to be very quick to use or interpret words like "passive aggressive" or "toxic" way too easily, which in term terrifies people to the point that they won't go beyond a simple "hi" or "/".

I believe that SE was forced to provide these example because a certain element simply does not know or care how to communicate to other people, nor would they care to correct the behaviour otherwise. Which is a pretty sad commentary on that element, however it is what it is. For many players, they are not affected .

[Somnolence]

Anecdotally I gave some of the acceptable phrases to couple of my friends who share my nationality and they thought them as condescending and passive aggressive. Also I can say that in EU there are very different interpretations on what is perceived as the polite way to give and receive advice. And of course if someone insults or acts deliberately belligerent, it should be worthy of a report.

I agree. For me as non-native English speaker direct and to the point advice sounds normal, while overly polite language sounds passive-aggressive and insincere.

[Reinha]

I agree. For me as non-native English speaker direct and to the point advice sounds normal, while overly polite language sounds passive-aggressive and insincere.

Especially if it's about mistakes. "Some people seem to have trouble staying on the platform" is very passive aggressive. If instead someone told me "you seem to have trouble staying on the platform, Reinha", I would see it as an opportunity to ask how everyone else is doing it.

[KOPF]

Especially if it's about mistakes. "Some people seem to have trouble staying on the platform" is very passive aggressive. If instead someone told me "you seem to have trouble staying on the platform, Reinha", I would see it as an opportunity to ask how everyone else is doing it.

But that will be a ban according to the examples, since that is singling out someone's mistake. But I guess the examples do not matter, since some of them will be okay with context according to Foxclon. From the "Follow Up Regarding Updates to Prohibited Activities in FINAL FANTASY XIV":

Rest assured, we do not issue penalties solely based on the fact that a report was filed and will thoroughly investigate the logs for context as necessary before making a decision.

Except they do since they were examples given as a way for people to realize why they got banned?

Based on our experience, there have been many cases where penalized players didn’t understand what they did wrong or what the issue was, so we added many examples to the prohibited activities in hopes of lowering the number of such cases.

Now English isn't my first language, so I might be misunderstanding it. That's how I read it though. Overall I am way more confused about the examples now than I was before.

Like I have said before in this thread, cultures can have very different perceptions what is considered polite and impolite. Some of the tamest examples they showed weren't even that impolite in my opinion and my country(wo)men, who I talked to agreed with me.

To me for example, if someone said straight up that: "Hey Dolo, you screwed up with lions. Do I need to repeat the mechanic for you?" would be a-ok. Not overly polite, but certainly not impolite either. But from what I gathered some of the examples, that kind of tone would be very much against the rules. Compared with the accepted terms, some of them feel very condescending and passive aggressive to me.

I know though that I am very much culturally on one side of the scale on straightforwardness, so I can and will be more courteous when I speak or write in English and people usually can talk misunderstandings through, but to me some of these rules (now given concrete examples to show what it is) feel too strict to the point that it will be unfair especially in a multicultural and lingual setting.

[Iscah]

Especially if it's about mistakes. "Some people seem to have trouble staying on the platform" is very passive aggressive. If instead someone told me "you seem to have trouble staying on the platform, Reinha", I would see it as an opportunity to ask how everyone else is doing it.

That phrasing is definitely passive-aggressive but something like "be careful not to move when the boss is casting Slippery Ice" is more of a friendly reminder while still not calling anyone out.

[Reinha]

That phrasing is definitely passive-aggressive but something like "be careful not to move when the boss is casting Slippery Ice" is more of a friendly reminder while still not calling anyone out.

Do people actually feel like they are being accused of something when someone directly addresses them person to person? To me that sentence was about as neutral as "you seem to have gotten wet in the rain, Reinha" or "wait, you dropped this".