Quote Originally Posted by Aexnidaral View Post
While I'm sympathetic to this view -- it's a problem of their own making, frankly. I don't think they can have their cake and eat it too, here, really.
Not entirely. Because even things that aren't bad enough to moderate are still likely to be something that drive them down a rabbit hole discussion that spans 100 pages... arguing with points that are ultimately selfish and don't consider other types of players. They would end up having to try to explain basic fundamental concepts such as "not being selfish" to many people, essentially a lot of the things I've done in my posts, when they have more productive things to do and more useful ways to approach their role.

The moderation on these forums is flatly, comically abysmal.
It is possible for there to be the opposite problem. Most moderators of any forum over-moderate things that are just not that bad, to the point people feel suppressed or like it's not worth posting at all.

My personal perspective is that most things should not be moderated at all. Just really extreme things, such as discussing subjects that are not welcome anywhere on the internet, topics not related to the forum category, topics that are not FFXIV-related, discussing individuals (such as streamers), etc.

Heated discussions can actually be good and very productive in some cases, so moderating anything that gets slightly heated can be a bad thing or misinterpreted as being heated by a moderator.

For all these reasons it's a good thing that they take this approach. I think they do it in response to reports like they do in the game, so ultimately it's probably because nobody bothers to report much.

wound up staying up for like... 16? or so hours despite multiple reports.
It is true that they are really slow with it. Although I can certainly understand the forums being the lowest priority for them when it is only used by a tiny fraction of players.

I think being a little more directly engaged here would be very appreciated!
I think the main ways they could do it different is to create their own topics with questions of their own, and a summary topic of pressing issues in each forum that the replies can steer.

But they could just as easily ask such questions elsewhere (such as in the game where nobody knows who they are), and keep such a list of issues they want to bring up private, which is all what I assume happens instead.