Can we talk about the elephant in the room - Permanent Bans from the Official Forums

[Rockette]

It's become a meme elsewhere in FFXIV communities, how many long term players are permanently banned from these forums.

When the game first started up and people were finding their way around the forums, the amount of permanent bans for the smallest misstep was crazy. I know people who got banned for offering to help a player transfer servers for a raid group. People in beta who got banned for grumbling that the frequent maintenance we used to have in 2.0 was seriously impacting being able to play.

There are literally thousands of players permanently banned from these forums. It got bought up again recently on reddit in discussion about Ultimate raiding. Those who really wanted to voice an opinion to SE about it can't.

Here is a small recnt thread on reddit discussing it:

Here's another

One example of permanent bannings:


There are players that got banned back in Beta for the weirdest things that have never been allowed back here. Hence why the reddit community in particular is so large with a broader range of topics and opinions.

To be clear: I'm not protesting the rules of the forums nor am I stating that all bans were undeserved. But I think some of these mass historical bans need to be addressed.

[Penthea]

Usually there is a way to appeal bans, if these forums have a way I don't know. Logically they should given you can appeal in-game bans, so I don't see why the forums should be any different.

Depending on the severity of the "offence" I do think some bans should be lifted especially if years have since passed. I'm sure a lot of people who got banned were stupid kids who said stupid crap and are by now adults who no longer act this way. Definitely if their subscription to the game has remained very active during the ban SE should entertain the idea of giving back their voices.

As for the perma ban of the player due to reporting their own thread after realising an error, that could have been an automated system that simply scanned for keywords as well as potential lodestone entries of characters. If a person did manually ban them then that certainly was a very stupid decision or it could be a simple case of not reading the report as a whole properly. I wonder if the player appealed the ban. It's not unusual for people to be unaware that you usually can appeal bans.

[Dualgunner]

So in other words #GetSelliBack2018?

[Istaru]

So in other words #GetSelliBack2018?

Yes! Bring her back please.

[Hakuro89]

Usually there is a way to appeal bans, if these forums have a way I don't know.

I tried to appeal to them to unban my main account about 2 years after it was initially banned via email, the response I got was 'this decision is final and cannot be overturned.'
If you're curious the "offense" was saying f*** in a thread about Paul Walker's death. Yes, THAT long ago.
It was especially unfair because I had already been handed a 14 day ban for language, and a couple days into that ban I got another email about the aforementioned post and the ban was just made permanent.

So in other words #GetSelliBack2018?

What was she even banned for anyway?

[Rockette]

I tried to appeal to them to unban my main account about 2 years after it was initially banned via email, the response I got was 'this decision is final and cannot be overturned.'
If you're curious the "offense" was saying f*** in a thread about Paul Walker's death. Yes, THAT long ago.
It was especially unfair because I had already been handed a 14 day ban for language, and a couple days into that ban I got another email about the aforementioned post and the ban was just made permanent.

This is an issue often reported. Multiple bans increasing in severity regarding the exact same offense.

[Hakuro89]

This is an issue often reported. Multiple bans increasing in severity regarding the exact same offense.

Often reported, then, how often is anything actually done about it?

[Fawkes]

I have never liked the idea of a permanent ban with no appeal process.

Especially when there's a lot of stories saying people don't know why they were banned, or they were temporarily banned for something and then before that ban expired it escalated to permanent. At the very least SE should improve their communication with their customers.

[SaitoHikari]

What was she even banned for anyway?

Going off of memory, she got perma'd for offensive language when she quoted someone and agreeing with said person she was quoting in the Tales from the Duty Finder thread, and she wasn't even attacking anyone in said post. It happened in such a way that it brings to mind a certain myth that is often said about these forums - that if someone is mass reported enough by a group of people with a grudge, something may stick and spiral into a ban.

Another prolific forumer, Ashkendor, got perma'd when she flew off at someone making racist remarks about EU players and how SE should have never given EU players their own data center (concern trolling about how it was a waste of resources that should be reinvested into content instead). It was like, worded in an unbelievably racist way. Almost everyone who fought said person got banned in some way, and as said earlier, Ashkendor got perma'd for it. Meanwhile, I believe I saw the offender still posting as of a month ago.

A bunch of guide writers got perma'd towards the start of HW for including videos/images in their guides with parsers in the background.

That said, it appears that the moderation has been very much relaxed in recent times, but it's far too late to help the public image of this forum. It would take a mass reversal of many bans from the early ages for that image to disappear.

[Kallistra]

What was she even banned for anyway?

She received a 12-day suspension when Heavensward dropped for saying "fan-****ing-tastic". That was her whole post. It was intended to be a joke. It wasn't a very successful joke.

From what I understand, 12 days is the maximum punishment you can get for a suspension. Even though it was her first offence, it meant that her forum account would be permanently banned on her next offence.

About a year later she was replying in the massive Duty Finder thread to a SCH who had a really unfortunate encounter in ARF with some real cruel pugs. She left a strongly worded post that can be tl;dr'd into, "The way those people treated you was absolutely disgusting. I hope they are ashamed in themselves and I hope you reported them for this extreme harassment". This landed her another 12-day suspension and thus the termination of her forum account.

She also had several spam reports filed against her for starting the "Please separate the Au Ra horns and faces" thread. If I remember correctly, the conversation she had with the GM said they weren't actually pinged against her account, but were taken into consideration when she tried to have the ban appealed.

Even though she can't post, believe me, she still lurks this place. Every night she's on her phone reading posts. She likes the FFXIV community very much.

(edit)I forgot to throw in that I'm her boyfriend in there somewhere just for those who don't know, so I don't come off sounding creepy for knowing all these things.