Hello,

Earlier today I submitted the following report against a player harassing another player (name edited to protect the guilty):

During a Duty Finder run of Praetorium, XXXX repeatedly asked a new player to skip cutscenes. While this by itself is not reportable, he then attempted to vote dismiss one of the players watching cutscenes as being "AFK" even though said player was present. XXXX then proceeded to engage bosses beyond that point without waiting for the rest of the party.
I received the following response:

Hello and thank you for your GM call.

We understand that you are contacting us for another player and we commend you for assisting them. Regrettably, we cannot take calls on behalf of others. If the player you are assisting is unable to place their own /supportdesk call, please have them contact us via our Support Site at http://support.na.square-enix.com.

Thank you for your patience, and best wishes to you.
FINAL FANTASY XIV Game Master Team
Now, first off, I've reported others before for harassing other players, and received responses indicating that the report was actually being acted upon, so I'm not sure I even believe this response. That said, the response itself is troubling. To see why, look at it from the vantage of the person being falsely dismissed.

They're in a party with 3 (or 7) other people doing a dungeon, when suddenly they get a loading screen to where ever they queued from.
They know it wasn't a Vote Abandon, because no vote ever appeared on their screen.
Therefor, they know it was a Vote Dismiss.
They were not AFK, Offline, Harassing, or Cheating.
Therefor, the Vote Dismiss feature was abused.
Abuse of Vote Dismiss is a reportable offense.
However, they do not know who initiated or approved the Vote Dismiss.
As such, there is 0-1 (or 0-3) innocent players.
The options at this point are to either report everyone, assuming they even remember the character names, or report no one, which allows the behavior to continue without repercussion.
Of course, the issue with reporting everyone (beyond having to track down names) is that you potentially slander 3 people. Needless to say, slandering others is something that should be avoided.

Of course, if the vote dismiss fails, the person who just narrowly avoided being kicked isn't even aware anything's happening unless someone mentions it. Of course they aren't going to report it if they don't even know it happened! Meanwhile, the other people in the party just watched someone try to abuse the Vote Dismiss, which is reportable, but are told that they can't report it on behalf of the person who doesn't even know something wrong is going on. To say that this is troubling is something of and understatement.

In summary, please allow the submission of harassment reports on behalf of other players. Removing undesirable players from the community is of interest to us all, and, in that sense, there is no "on behalf of others."