Lore Forum Decorum - Just What is Meant by Good/Bad Faith?

[Rulakir]

This is some serious conspiratorial nonsense just because people don't agree with you about a story in a video game. Loathe as I was to unblock you to read this absurdity in its full context, I now feel compelled to respond.

Influencing popular opinion is another. One individual posting or upvoting across different accounts might give the impression that a view is much more popular than it actually is. In some cases, you might be bombarded with responses from the same person across different accounts to pressure you into backing down.

How's that been working out? I'm willing to bet I haven't changed a single mind here about anything. It's been 'faction wars' ever since I joined back in November. Likewise, there have been many times I've posted something and been 'dogpiled' by the same people, it goes both ways depending on who's available and interested in engaging. I've also seen the most inane things here with a dozen upvotes likely because someone linked it on another site or a discord. Straight up headcanon gets upvoted here. Point being: upvotes are meaningless.

Some people might feel that posting on a throwaway alt account is a free ticket to being openly abusive and insulting to others without putting their main posting account at risk of punishment.

This is rich coming from you seeing as how the reason I blocked you was because you were routinely being abusive to Ancient fans.

There are plenty ways to judge this for yourself as well, though. It's extremely difficult for someone to disguise their 'writing voice' for an extended period of time, so you'll see them slip in and out of it. It's also difficult to maintain uniquely different personas, and you will frequently see recurring patterns, themes, signature styles, and obsessions spill out across several alts.

If I see someone say something better than I did or phrase something I'm thinking that I couldn't put into words, I'm stealing it. :P I may also paraphrase another poster because either I don't have the link handy to directly quote them or I figure people don't read quoted material that often (at least I don't). This is especially true with cross forum posting as I've noticed several lore posters rarely venture into general discussion and vice versa.

I also may get short with people if I'm low on patience for the day or hangry (which I am right now), so even my own posting patterns aren't consistent.

What first caught my attention was a copy-pasted in-game quote. There was a text line featuring the player character's name, except that it did not match up with the poster in question. This was very quickly edited, but the original post was fortunately permanently snapshotted in a reply quote. That gave me the first link that I needed.

Do you have any idea how many screenshots I trade with people, especially in different languages? I've had people send me screenshots of content I haven't done/can't do because it's locked behind prerequisites I haven't fulfilled (the curse of not doing side content). While I doubt I'm the person in question here, if I did screw up and post one of those screenshots without censoring the name then of course you'd see it wasn't my character. What difference does that make other than to add fuel to your conspiracy theory?

Two male Hyur characters who use the same face option

You mean the most popular male Midlander face? This is like my saying that everyone who uses Y'shtola's face is an alt (which is like 80% of all female Miqo'te players at minimum).

Ultimately, the place that this topic needs to be discussed and resolved is higher up, ideally in one of the live letter Q+A sessions.

Lol, yeah, they're going to waste their time entertaining your wild conspiracy theories just to confirm we're all actually individually owned accounts. Then what excuse will you have that more people than you'd like to believe didn't enjoy the EW MSQ?

That in turn deters them from posting in here, which limits its effectiveness as a community feedback tool.

Ah, no, it's the general atmosphere in here that does. Anyone trying to debate in good faith is going to quickly realize no such thing exists here. Good luck arguing against people who craft elaborate headcanon around things like Venat's summoners all being learned scholars, who independently arrived at the same conclusions she did, and were avid environmentalists being presented as fact with such little basis it's truly laughable.

This whole thing is so ridiculous I almost have second hand embarrassment from it.

[Teraq]

(snippy snip)

Look at Lauront's obvious female sockpuppet go, with the Elidibus fan art and quote in signature too! Utterly shameless.

[SentioftheHoukai]

Look at Lauront's obvious female sockpuppet go, with the Elidibus fan art and quote in signature too! Utterly shameless.

It's almost as if people can have gasp! similar or the same opinions about fictional media.

....I won't apologize, there's no stopping this bullet train.

[Lyth]

Oh dear.

The concepts around pseudonymous or 'sockpuppet' posting have existed before the internet itself, and anyone who has been on online forums for long enough will be well acquainted with the term. It's not really a conspiracy theory to hold a discussion around its impact to increase awareness.

I'm always surprised when someone would "deign" to provide the rest of us with unsolicited information, to borrow a particularly quaint turn of phrase. Sometimes perceptual errors have a way of playing tricks on us. Have a very careful look at my post again. What might strike one individual personally as "obvious" or "significant" might not be true for anyone else at all. That's what makes us all unique.

Either way, I think the average observer has enough information to formulate their own opinions around this.

...

It was an in-game quote, actually, taken directly from the game itself. Normally there's a text line with a variable <player firstname> <player lastname> that gets personalized to your own specific character when you play it. If I was copying out the quote, for example, it would say 'Lythia', not any other name. There are a few possible explanations for this error, some of which are innocent enough, but it did made me question what was happening in here, among other several things.

Mind you, I'm not really here to pass judgement, however eyebrow-raising this reaction was. It's not my job. I just want to see a better posting environment where people are freely able to actually discuss lore in here. My hope is that the individual in question will realize that none of this is really worth the effort in the long run. It achieves nothing. It convinces no-one. Especially when everyone now knows what to look for.

Either way, here's looking forward to patch 6.2, a fresh story direction, and a brighter horizon.