Forum Comparision: Japanese forums versus the English ones.

[Catharsis]

This information is correct as of 10/03/2011.

Someone asked me yesterday why I spend more time reading the Japanese forums than the English ones. In order to explain, here's the view count of the forum stickies (The thread topics are identical):

Sticky: Welcome to Forum: General Discussion!
* Views: 412
Sticky: フォーラム：ジェネラルディスカッションについて
* Views: 2,058

Sticky Thread Sticky: Welcome to the official FINAL FANTASY XIV forums!
* Views: 3,643
Sticky Thread Sticky: ファイナルファンタジーXIV フォーラムにようこそ！
* Views: 10,678

Now let's take a look at the top five forum threads by viewcount in the Japanese and English forums:

English forums:

[dev1008] About Jumping
* Replies: 254
* Views: 6,554

Aggro Icon
* Replies: 196
* Views: 4,554

[dev1033] Class name changes
* Replies: 124
* Views: 4,223

Chocobos, airships, and the main city
* Replies: 116
* Views: 3,550

New Classes
* Replies: 144
* Views: 3,490

Japanese forums:

現状の無駄に広いコピペマップについてどう思いますか？
(What do you think about the currently implemented unreasonably large copy/paste maps?)
* Replies: 192
* Views: 30,879

私はFF14を続けるよ！1拝目
(I'm gonna continue playing FF14! First Worship)
* Replies: 84
* Views: 12,387

アクティーブモンスターの見分けアイコンは必要？
(Do we really need that icon for Aggressive monsters)
* Replies: 160
* Views: 10,668

ＦＦ14サービス休止して作り直した方がいい
(It would be better if FF14 suspended its service and fixed the game)
* Replies: 69
* Views: 9,336

PKシステム実装希望
(I want a Player-Killing system)
* Replies: 109
* Views: 8,934

The inference I make from this is that although the forum threads topics might be equally silly or inflammatory, Japanese people are more prone to actually reading stuff (like you know, the stickies, existing threads and forum guidelines) and less interested in listening to the beautiful sound of their own opinions.

[Rjain]

The Japanese are a high context culture which holds less value on words and more value on actions and respect. North America on the other hand is a low context culture which focuses on the written word above action, and are a lot more direct with each other. Nothing new.

[AtryxEtair]

Amen to this. I wish i could read Japanese. I look for something I can post in and only if i don't find it i will begin a new thread. I have started one thread in battle content and read close to a hundred due to this approach.

[Abriael]

The inference I make from this is that although the forum threads topics might be equally silly or inflammatory, Japanese people are more prone to actually reading stuff (like you know, the stickies, existing threads and forum guidelines) and less interested in listening to the beautiful sound of their own opinions.

Or, there may be many more people reading the Japanese forums. Which is very probable considering that this is a Japanese game and Japanese players seem to be a vast majority in game as well.

Those counters only show you how many people read a thread, not what percentage of the total, so while I'm sure the average Japanese is a little more considerate of the average westerner, I'm afraid that your conclusion is flawed.

[Kirith]

Moral: lurk more.

Or, there may be many more people reading the Japanese forums. Which is very probable considering that this is a Japanese game and Japanese players seem to be a vast majority in game as well.

Those counters only show you how many people read a thread, not what percentage of the total, so while I'm sure the average Japanese is a little more considerate of the average westerner, I'm afraid that your conclusion is flawed.

It's enough to look at the dev POLL results, the japanese make for more than 50% of the population... and we got german and french forums, separated from the english ones.

OP, why don't you come back lecturing us after you do your math?

[Xzen]

So what I got from OP was same shi- different language.

[Marious]

I was looking at both forums as well, while it seems that there is a total of 11 pages there might be more and anything after 11 is being dumped but I dont think so. There seems to be a lot of the same types of post in both engrish and japanese. At least we all agree on the state of the game is bad and that it needs work.

Both of us want more then what is being offered, for me it sure would be nice if we got chocobos.

Can anyone post something about the other forums as well?

Babelfish is your friend.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Pretty much they have dicussion while we have mindless debating rants. I should learn to read japanese. I think i fit better with them. : /
ps i'm all for a pk system if done correctly.

[Abriael]

Pretty much they have dicussion while we have mindless debating rants. I shpuld learn to read japanese. I think i fit better with them. : /

And you know that without knowing how to read Japanese? My, the marvels of the internets...

A little piece of advice for the ones idealizing the Japanese internet behavioir. Spend a few hours on 2chan.

(mind you, I love Japan, I have quite a few Japanese friends, but I know the Japanese internets enough to know that they have their flaws and quirks. Plenty).

[Exand]

The inference I make from this is that although the forum threads topics might be equally silly or inflammatory, Japanese people are more prone to actually reading stuff (like you know, the stickies, existing threads and forum guidelines) and less interested in listening to the beautiful sound of their own opinions.

You can't make an inference using direct view counts because you don't know the population of Japanese vs English speaking players viewing the forums! For all you know there are only 7000 English readers on the forums and 10,000 Japanese readers, which would imply the English readers are doing more reading than Japanese readers.

You'd need to use percentages, but you don't know how many of each language speaker is on the forums to calculate percentages. Thus you can't infer anything...