Japanese FFXIV streamer receives a suspension for using add-ons.

[BrokentoothMarch]

What are you talking about [186 posts June 2021]?

If you knew who I was or followed me on this forum at all, you would see I have been in favor of the ToS across the board.

What, if anything, has ever been vague about “don’t do the thing, but if you do don’t get caught.”?

I assume you attempted to quote me.

My, that's a poor amount of words for what amounts to deflecting your support of witch-hunting and only paying attention to the rules you personally like. After all, what I emboldened in your quote is LITERALLY UNTENABLE when considering your support of mob reporting. This is defined as harassment and I think it's rather universally acknowledged as, at the very least, looked down upon.

[kaynide]

I did not. I was referring to you as not a forum regular, who joined fairly recently and doesn’t have much activity on the forums and therefore maybe not worth engaging seriously.

I also don’t see how mass reporting breaks the ToS. Did you read it?

[BrokentoothMarch]

I did not. I was referring to you as not a forum regular, who joined fairly recently and doesn’t have much activity on the forums and therefore maybe not worth engaging seriously.

Oh, I see. So because your number bigger, your words mean more. Because your age older, your words mean more. Did I stumble on Twitter or something?

Such wisdom. I suppose this solidifies you as little more than a troll. Good job though. Had me going. I'll give you that.

[kaynide]

Lol. If that’s how you wanna take it then yes, I’m a scawwy twoll.

[Skiros]

I did not. I was referring to you as not a forum regular, who joined fairly recently and doesn’t have much activity on the forums and therefore maybe not worth engaging seriously.

Same kind of energy as someone bragging about their Reddit karma. I can't

[SwingLifeAway]

People using disingenuous arguments turn out to be disingenuous people, shocking.

More on this at 11.

[Jaquan]

Maybe consider the suspiciousness of a wave of reports on someone when report-brigading is clearly described as also against the ToS, mayhaps?

Right let me get it straight. You're basically saying that because the reports were "suspicious" SE was supposed to do nothing? It's GM's job to check what happened and if the report is true or not. At this point we do start to be arbitrary. What constitutes for a "suspicious" reports? Quantity? Wording? So what is say 23 people report someone after alliance raid should their claim be automatically dismissed? Is it the notoriety of "reported" which would mean any streamer/known player would be automatically off the hook? Also we only know one end of the story - the streamers. Were there any actions taken against the report brigades? We don't know that for sure l.

[Sebazy]

Right let me get it straight. You're basically saying that because the reports were "suspicious" SE was supposed to do nothing? It's GM's job to check what happened and if the report is true or not. At this point we do start to be arbitrary. What constitutes for a "suspicious" reports? Quantity? Wording? So what is say 23 people report someone after alliance raid should their claim be automatically dismissed? Is it the notoriety of "reported" which would mean any streamer/known player would be automatically off the hook? Also we only know one end of the story - the streamers. Were there any actions taken against the report brigades? We don't know that for sure l.

There are well documented reports of FCs going after botters and such throughout this game's run. Every single last thread and post I've seen about it has gone the same way.

'We had 20 people in our FC report this obvious bot and they are still there a month later!'

I wouldn't be surprised if these streamer reports numbered in the hundreds given how swiftly action was taken.

With a bit of common sense this whole affair never needed to happen.

Pull the streamer out of their DSR duty. Slap them in jail for 12 hours with a stern warning about their mod usage.

As for the mass reports, personally I'd be inclined to attempt to correlate the first report with the initial post on whatever chan was doing it to see if you could find the person that initiated it all. If that's confirmable? Good, give them a warning and 12 hour jail stint for harassment as well.

It's fair to say that SE needed to be seen to be acting. But they should have done so in a much more measured and fair manner.

With the approach they took, everyone has lost out and they've unleashed an absolute hornets nest of a situation now.

[Shurrikhan]

What are you talking about [186 posts June 2021]?

If you knew who I was or followed me on this forum at all.

I could see asking someone at level 60 who is suggesting job changes whether they have an alt account on which they've actually leveled the job in question, but this...

("Didn't you know?~ You don't actually start generating thoughts worthy of discourse until your 1000th post.~") ???

It's only one step less comical than an indignant "Do you know who my father is?!"

[Shurrikhan]

That's the problem, though. The current ToS, both then and now, is incredibly subject to interpretation. And the dev's in-practice interpretation of it has newly changed.

Nothing changed from their last statement.
FFXIV GMs don't go on the hunt - they react to reports. 5ch crowd weaponises it for their own amusement/satisfaction and they can't just leave it ingored since that opens another can of worms.

There's a wide, two-lane bicycle path that follows the river near my house. A fair number of bicyclists use the trail to commute to work. It is also separate from the pedestrian trail that runs parallel to it, split off, typically, by a line of trees and a 4-ft concrete barrier at each underpass.

4 years ago, the city put in signs that limited speeds along the bike trail to 10 miles per hour. Many wrote to the city council, protesting what seemed ridiculous to them. After all, the river bike trail itself had been constructed in place of bike lanes along major streets running the same direction, effectively shoving bicycle commuters onto these trails that were now, by law, too slow to fulfil their function; similarly, there had been no risk to non-bicyclists --as there were literally none sharing the path-- that would warrant the decrease in permitted speed. The city refused to take down the signs, noting that the change in policy, and the removal of the signs, would cost yet more money. (Nevermind that no one asked to have the bike's speeds limited.) The city's concession: to just ignore the signs, as they wouldn't be enforced.

For the most part, that held true. The unreasonable limitation was simply never enforced, except by people in the area, who would on stray off the pedestrian trail, crossing the tree-break, to take videos of the bicyclists and threaten to call the cops if the bikes dared to go above a lazy trod.

Most notable, though, was a middle-aged lady had made it her daily task to sit on the low wooden fence around the bike path and swing a long broom at the passing bicyclists, yelling at them for breaking the law. This, too, was ignored, until she hit a passing teen in the face, knocking her off his bike such that she cracked her skull on the pavement. When the teen was found an ambulance called, likely just minutes later, the lady had already fled. (Apparently, though, she didn't much feel guilty about it; she was arrested for assault the next morning, by which time she had already gone back to swinging her broom at "the lawbreakers" from her usual perch.)

Over that time, police were occasionally on the trail themselves, at least during the times the "river" was just a concrete basin, mostly crossing the 4-ish mile stretch between freeway-loading roads (with a business park, too, at each end), keeping to contextually safe speeds, but they made no fuss about or towards the bicyclists' speeds.

That is, until a few weeks ago. From what I saw out walking there, a cop car sits on either side of the aforementioned roads, covering probably the most commuter-dense portion of the trail, and another frequently patrols the bike route itself, ticketing bicyclists who go over 10 mph. This hasn't gone over well, as you'd imagine, with those I know who'd commute by bicycle, or even just want to enjoy a ride locally. (Those who bike may note that 10 is uncomfortably slow, bordering on the point where balance becomes an effort, while most commuters tend towards around 16-21 mph in no wind.) A couple of my friends have already switched back to driving, though it takes them longer than, just weeks ago, biking used to. (Both could still get there faster by bike, just by slowing only when in sight, but just having to do so apparently ticks them off enough to ruin their days, and so they'd rather avoid it entirely.) From what I've seen and heard, that whole community is pretty upset -- understandably so, I would think.

The city's response, though: The signs had been up for years; it was about time the bicyclists faced their dues.

Was there any harm done, or even doable, by the average cyclist going at a normal speed? No. Did that ultimately matter? No. And the fact it doesn't should be worrying.



And that's what I'm reminded of here, among all this talk about whether streamers using addons, regardless of type or effect, can/should be banned.

There's plenty of attention to the legal allowance to, and insistence that we can, punish these people for having so much as a UI mod, but little to either (A) the precedent of enforcement for the reasons given or whether benign additions should be punished at all. Nor, perhaps more importantly, what this is ultimately meant to accomplish.



In the case above, I haven't heard what, exactly, the city intended, or whose requests they were responding to, by putting a 10-mph limit on a separate bike path, so the anecdote doesn't match perfectly. But what reasons, in the end, make sense in enforcing limitations against benign practices as XIV policy is moving towards now, no matter whether those practices may be visible or not?

It certainly isn't to protect or improve the community; such time would be better spent dealing with bots; such is worsened by the witch hunts and dogpiling any such action typically produces. It certainly isn't to punish harmful behavior, or the enforcement wouldn't lean on an addendum -- instead just, as before, punishing players for harassment or cheating, directly.

Enforcing a rule that oughtn't be enforced anyways just to show that you retain that power... doesn't show strength; it just looks confused, if not petty.