In terms of censorship, will setting chat names to initials only be sufficient?

Initials only should also suffice, that's likely how we'll treat video submissions given the herculean task of trying to censor footage.

I appreciate this transparency, and the opportunity you provided to discuss this ahead of time in the previous sticky post. I also appreciate that you are taking the time to explain your rationale to people still posting comments in disagreement, even though you already provided ample time for people to voice their views and make arguments in the afore-mentioned previous sticky post. Good moderation most often goes unseen, but this is a nice exception. Kudos!

Wonderful, now we just need a sticky telling people how to turn on color coded/class icon chat and ideally how to make FFlogs hide the names too and everyone can easily follow these.

Once Dawntrail goes live, that's on the bucketlist! Forgot to snag those necessary screenshots before the maintenance, d'oh.

Can we also teach people how to filter all the crap from their chat log (loot rolls, fc chat etc) before taking screenshots? 😁

That'll be covered under the new sticky as well! Thanks for the reminder, I'd neglected to note down things like how to toggle Timestamps and how to clean up your Party chat, that'll be very helpful.

Awesome! I think people don’t realise that you can change the filters afterwards and then just put them back to normal once you’ve got your screenshots.

Or, just create another chat tab only for chat channels (whisper, party, and alliance being the main three relevant for TFDF).

idk if its pro tip or not, but i have one extra chat tab that ONLY shows party chats and stuff in case i do need to screenshot. so people dont have to nuke their main one if they still like that stuff

Now playing: xxx rolls 99 on need the door opens you don't pay my sub vote dismiss initiated vote dismiss failed now playing: yy you roll 1 on need

X has completed a venture! (x9)

with a reference to [my last TFDF post](https://old.reddit.com/r/TalesFromDF/comments/1dio5i7/welcome_to_the_sirensong_sea/): it's not that hard to use the: [view in anonymous mode](https://i.imgur.com/UhScqYY.png) in fflogs. the result is something like this: [https://www.fflogs.com/reports/a:cpAk9FrJN6M2fBW7](https://www.fflogs.com/reports/a:cpAk9FrJN6M2fBW7) where you only see job icons and "player 1" edit: I presume in that specific post, the one random user in [Novice] not being censored is an issue too?, even though that person is unrelated?

Thank you muchly! And yes, under the new rules you'll also need to censor out peoples unrelated: it's a blanket blackout.

I have mixed opinions about this

There are far, far, far too many posts on this sub with weird behavior that doesn't deserve a witch hunt. Like, yeah, it's easy to say all the "you don't pay my sub" ypyt room-temperature-iq morons deserve to be banned from the game, but drawing an actual line is really hard and shouldn't be up to some random "literally who" mods. If you have a problem with a player's behavior - report them to SE, the game has a button for that.

How common were witch hunts though?

Literally the most recent post before this message had some pretty poor censorship - when I first saw the thread the top comment was someone who had looked up the person’s logs to proceed to bash them. Still one of the highest voted comments on the thread. I didn’t even realize the censorship was insufficient until I looked again after seeing the logs claim. Some people really just get off on the superiority feeling, and I understand why the mods want to stop enabling those people.

That's not really a witch hunt though. That would involve people going out of their way to harass or otherwise interact with the individuals

TBH, if they weren't talking shit to the SMN for being a "newbie", I wouldn't have bothered. Despite what you think about "those people", being bad alone isn't enough to warrant looking up logs or other info for me; case in point my last expert roulette had a ultimate legend sage who reapplied euk diagnosis on me every time it broke and didn't do very much damage (9% of party over the course of the dungeon). I told them I can take a little more punishment than that, they remained silent and continued playing their way, end of story. Nothing worth looking up further or bringing up here. Talking down to other players, as the person featured in that post did, makes me curious to see if they can back up their smack talk. Turns out they couldn't.

You and the other comment are just describing goalposts. I and many others didn’t feel the need to hunt down their logs - the post made it clear they were unpleasant and that was that. But it only took one person - you - to look them up and trigger a dogpile. It would only take one more person to take the next step. Where you draw the line deciding whether to take those steps or not is irrelevant. The mods simply don’t want to foster a community that caters to those actions. Simply put, you can justify it all you want but you are one of the “bad apples” the mods referenced. This change was made to specifically stop you from doing what you did before. If you think it was justified, take it up with them.

I actually commented just now in another post below saying the rule change is fine, and probably for the best to avoid enabling the (hopefully small percentage of) people looking to stir up in-game drama they aren't directly involved in. I'm not being disingenuous here when I ask what dogpile occurred beyond some people talking indirect shit in a subreddit, which has been traditionally been the purpose of it - vent frustration, maybe point out hypocrisy, move on. I didn't name names, link logs, or DM the OP for the name to find them. Anyone who wanted to take it further had all the information available to do so from the post itself as is. Now, if someone started sending them in game /tells as a result of the post here then that's certainly out of line and serves as an object lesson to support the course of action the mods have taken - which again, I think is a perfectly reasonable stance.

I had someone in here pull my logs once somehow, and started talking to me about my performance in duties I'd never talked about. It was super weird and I felt crossed a line...but admittedly, it made me go back to the job guide and reread tooltips - which improved how I played the job. But it still felt gross that they pulled my logs unprompted.

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Something doesn't need to be common for a change to be made. They can just be proactive. I figured the change was more of a cya than as a response to anything happening in the sub

It's both a proactive change _and_ a reactive change. I'm a bit sad I'd even need to say it, but of course there's no visible trail, because Bun and I have scrubbed out offending comments on the regular. Nothing to say of cases handled solely within modmail from non-TFDF regulars/users who became aware of posts.

I mean a witch hunt leaves a trail outside of reddit. Regardless I don't care one way or the other about the rule change. It doesn't change the content. I was just wondering how common actual witch hunts were happening. People seem to through it around for just about anything. Same with personal information. Some subs treat usernames as personal information now lol.

You have literally no evidence to there even being any

Because the offending comments have long since been scrubbed, and a good portion of the alarming behaviour that warranted this discussion happening were in the confines of modmail. Unfortunately both are what we can't be wholly transparent about due to the very obvious concerns of privacy to those affected.

I've legitimately never seen a true witch hunt in posts here. Usually if someone tries they get called out on it pretty quick. Think that rule was always followed pretty well

> I've legitimately never seen a true witch hunt in posts here. Witch hunters very rarely announce their intent. The particularly emboldened ones? Yes, we've had a rare few examples from big egos that have long since been lost to the automod. It doesn't have to be seen to happen. Which is- eugh, I'm going to sound like a broken record about modmail, but even without that in mind, there is the not-zero factor about people who are unaware of TFDF's existence who wind up getting contacted by someone who has taken information here. Which is _extremely disappointing_ but it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that at least one person with enough free time would.

Sure of course that will happen there will always be unhinged people that will reach out and try to witch hunt. But honestly I think those kind of people will always find way to do that regardless of what rules are in place, so it seems backwards to try to account for those people. That's all I mean.

Measures that objectively protect users are better than absolutely none. I think someone put that in more layman's terms either in here or the original sticky? An anecdote about how silly the idea of "people steal anyway so why have laws about stealing" can be. The problems were predominantly stemming from a lack of censoring, as mentioned.

Completely understandable, it wasn't an easy decision to come to and neither way would make everyone happy. Through the last week of discussions both through the thread and internally, we both felt the positives of protecting identities heavily outweighed the positives of leaving names uncensored. Too many bad apples spoiled the bunch and lead to the decision at the end of the day.

> Too many bad apples spoiled the bunch and lead to the decision at the end of the day. Can you give types of cases that warrant the change? Have there been cases you've seen of people going out their way to harass individuals for example?

I can't go into specifics due to privacy concerns for those recently affected, given it's as easy as process of elimination/text clues if those responsible are regulars. Yes, there have been individuals going out of their way to incite harassment. Offending comments have been removed. That should have been enough to warrant this discussion happening quite a bit earlier, in hindsight.

I have mixed feelings because I believe that the people causing problems deserve to be called out, but I also fully understand and respect the decision to require full censorship of names in posts. If the people here can't behave when names aren't censored, I suppose it only makes sense to require full censorship.

Posts where we think it will be of benefit for people to actually know someone's character names can be granted exceptions. Those are likely to be exceptionally rare, hopefully, as I'm thinking of [cases like this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromDF/comments/10pljzf/ffxiv_player_plans_to_bring_guns_to_fanfest_he/) though that is a very extreme situation and it doesn't have to be quite as bad for us to consider it. It is very much a case by case type of thing.

Here I was expecting the guy who went out of their way to find my discord to continue harassment, only to find much worse clicking that. That’s a moment.

I don't really think calling people out does anything in most situations. Blacklist won't stop then from appearing in your DF. And many is not most don't even know TalesFromDF exists so it's not a forum for them to get feedback.

If they had a case they could go to a GM or to discord Most harassment happens in discord and not the game. Reason is simple. Gm cannot access the discord logs or voices. So cowards like to abuse it.

I think this is fine. If someone sees a bad players from their server and wants their name it's not like they can't just DM the OP of a post to get it if they really wanna add to em to a blacklist or just to have the name on the off chance they see them. Didn't see anything about that in the rules so I'd imagine that's ok. As long as whoever gets the name doesnt drop it in the requisite thread. I think these changes are good. Based mod team.

Bun considered dropping in a note during post creation about folk coming in to their DMs and asking for names, but we felt it wasn't necessary to do. The main issue comes from third parties - Reddit users or not - who take names and an excuse to harass the person(s) involved in that Tale. Witchhunters rarely announce intent. If the only way to get a name is by directly going to OP, that means the matter has wholeheartedly split away from TFDF, and those individuals then out themselves in a vaccuum against that player, rather than others getting involved - an unwitting OP providing that information to a bad faith actor was one major talking point, as it's happened quite a few times already.

yeah that scenario is definitely outside the scope of your mod powers and would be a gentleman's agreement at best. unfortunately some people are absolute bastards and I believe that someone dm'ing an op to witch hunt them and then the op giving them the info make them both worse people than someone being shit at their rotation or being an annoying YPYT player.

I thought ive seen people claim multiple times now, that blocking someones Name ingame isn't going to prevent them from being matched with them again? Correct me if im wrong please, but incase it is true then there is literally no point to ask for names so one can "block them". I like the changes honestly and always felt icky about posts that didnt censor names. Ive played a lot of games that were insanely toxic in terms of harassment and witch hunting so it always made me a little worried about what good can come out of naming and shaming.

Blacklisting doesn't prevent you from being matchmade with that person, no. That's something actually specified in the new Blacklist changes with Dawntrail: > Characters registered to the blacklist will be hidden. > When joined in a party or alliance, their character will be displayed; however, their name will display as "Unknown" in the party list and on their nameplate. Additionally, it does prevent them from _seeing_ any of your Party Finder listings, but it doesn't prevent them from joining a party you're a part of that's hosted by someone else.

Then i really dont see the point of asking for names with the intention to Blacklist someone. Its a positive rule change in my book.

Yeah. Blacklisting a shitter you saw here but didn't personally interact with only mattered in a PF situation where you or they were the host, but you get tired explaining it to people who are on hopium that blacklisting a crappy YPYT who gets posted here would avoid them in roulettes 

Blocking someone keeps them from being able to join your PFs, so if you spend significant time in PF it's definitely worthwhile when the stories are of people doing dumb shit in PF. Tl;Dr - yes, this was wrong.

Good that way no more witch hunts and no more cowards sharing the victim name but not their own.

These changes are awful, I love drama you guys suck. That is all I wanted to say.

"Name and shame them" and "What is their name so I can block them" players in shambles rn

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> where people might as well make up fake stories and situations for the updoots While a fair concern from a new user, I'd encourage a quick look into how many posts already censored out names entirely. Just over the last couple months, doesn't have to be years. I don't think it's wholly unfair to say most regulars to TFDF would prefer the lesser evil of having potentially fabricated stories, if it means an objectively lowered chance of bad actors trying to ruin the fun for everybody.

Except that they named their targets but not themselves. That is supporting cowards witch hunts.

Is it allowed to leave your own name uncensored?

No, you'll need to censor everyone. Half measures will not be allowed.

Understood. Asked because I've had positive in game experiences from people recognizing my name. But I'll fully censor all names from now on o7

I've only had one experience of someone recognizing my name in a duty and it was fucking Firemage >.<

Lol ouch. I'm assuming you were called out for being 1 ilvl below max

I saw that post and no. It was even worse. They joined a duty FM had previously kicked the Tank from, and FM was like "oh I know you! You're the dude from Tfdf!". Then FM posted the video here, got absolutely mauled in the comments for what they were up to before kicking the Tank. (The Tank, although slightly undergeared, was carrying their weight a lot better than the resident socio.) But not before FM @pinged them on the damn post. It just reeked of desperation for approval and narcissism.

Nah, I was a replacement for someone whom got kicked by Firemage. I actually gave the bastard a commendation since I didn't know who he is or what he's done.

Apologies as I am being a bit nitpicky here but how is leaving your own name uncensored a half measure? People could identify your in game name by just checking your other posts on reddit right? (or people whos in game names and player names are the same)

it's probably for the best anyway, since sometimes the thread turns on OP and that would just leave them the target. alternatively looking up OP by logs and thus finding the right team comp in the right dungeon and finding the offenders name (or worse, the right dungeon but the wrong person entirely if it's the wrong log), etc. it leaves too much wiggle room.

I'm curious, were people that were being assholes and uncensored coming here and saying they were being harassed or something? How do we know it was happening? Legit question, I know how psychotic this game's playerbase can be, I'm curious if I missed something, as I was part of the "who cares about censoring assholes' names" crowd (mostly because if someone was dumb enough to go harass them they deserve the bam they're inviting).

> There are many other instances that are confined in modmail that, for obvious privacy reasons, I won't give specific details on. There was a slowly rising pattern of reported/documented/shown behaviours of varying sorts over the last few months, that lead into a sharp rise of incidents in the weeks prior to the first sticky, that lead to the discussion happening, and has culminated in these changes. Bad apples in the bunch.

Good lord people are dumb. Why would you be so dumb to go harass someone who's name was posted here, I don't fucking get it. Maybe we should be naming and shaming the harassers lmao (I'm kidding of course)

I think it's stupid and counterproductive but I can see why it's happening. The kind of poeple here who see the game as a battle between GCBTW toxic casuals and the noble tryhards of TFDF want to be an angry mob together so they can make their views heard in the face of everyone saying "its only a dungeon who cares". Personally I think thats a shitty way to change anyone's mind compared to like, giving a couple tips in a non-dickish way in dungeons or explaining what weaving is to that one super-casual person in your FC who's never heard of the balance. But it seems totally predictable from all the "urgh they're on my server" / "give names to blacklist pls" types. Yeah obviously there are gonna be crap players on your server, there's thousands of people, what are you getting out of being performatively outraged about it.

Off-topic but what is "GCBTW" and "TFDF"? Assuming those are abbreviations for something but don't know what exactly.

TFDF is just the acronym for this sub. GCBTW is memey people saying "great community btw", meaning, like, people who are very invested in being friendly to the point of never criticising anyone. obviously im making sweeping generalisations here, but the fact there's a voice in this community that's got that very absolutist stance is kinda what I'm gesturing at. someone here literally told me not to be patient with bad players because "any trash player you've encountered or YPYTer that you didn't try to correct or yeet with a kick kinda negates any good you think you've done" like... eh, nah, that's not how I wanna behave in a game we're all playing for fun.

Thanks for the reply. The way I see it though, I'm not opposed to the idea of correcting someone if I find their gameplay very poor, and the opposite is true, I'm open for criticism if someone else would want to give pointers and advice. The sweet spot is the way one can go about it, don't be rude about it but also don't overly sugarcoat it. A game is for everyone to have fun at(or at least thats the intention), but I personally wouldn't be having fun if there's one person in my team dragging down the entire team because they don't know how their toolkit works. Additionally, if you just hard carry that person throughout the dungeon and didn't want to help them out, that same person thinks they are probably playing correctly and continue playing like that UNTIL they meet that one person calling them out and it often doesn't end very well because they bring up the "But my previous parties were fine with it and everything was fine" or something among those lines. Some people are open to criticism, others are not, even if you were to choose a gentler approach. I personally just try my best to help them out and point it out, if they clearly don't like or appreciate the help then I just switch to my "It is what it is" mentality and try to get through the dungeon, if we can.

Yeah, I honestly think people overcomplicate this shit a lot. I'm sure there ARE people who flip out no matter how you phrase advice, but I normally just say something that's simple and specific like "hey X does more damage than Y in boss fights" or "do you have (cooldown) at this level? it will help a lot with healing". I've only had someone get mad at me maybe once or twice in a year or so of knowing the game well enough to make suggestions.

>“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” Same as it ever was since Huxley first said it.

>How do we know it was happening? We don't.

Thank god. The swarm of "uncensor their name" in censored posts was cringe and obnoxious 

Not sure the purpose of keeping names censored... Seems a little irrelevant. Was good to see names for scenarios where there were truly unhinged or hateful individuals. Was good to know who to avoid.  No witch hunting rule made sense because obviously no one should do that, but to have to censor at all times?? Who are we trying to protect here? And you already touched on one of the issues with this cause. This will mean no videos anymore and no fflogs. Cuts out a lot of the content and context for posts on an already small subreddit... Very strange decisions... I only see this hurting future interaction for this subreddit. Just sharing thoughts, not being hateful or rude.

I appreciate your concerns, and wanted to address some of it real quick. > Was good to see names for scenarios where there were truly unhinged or hateful individuals. Was good to know who to avoid. This was talked about in the original sticky - I'll pin it at the top of this post if you're curious to have a read - but for the positives of IDing actually horrible players, it was vastly outweighed by the risks involved. We had an uptick of alarming and problematic behaviour here which indicated to us that we could no longer trust all individuals to be responsible about having names available. > No witch hunting rule made sense because obviously no one should do that, but to have to censor at all times?? Who are we trying to protect here? There was an uptick in logposting, general witchhunting behaviours, _and most importantly_ people coming forward to modmail about issues I can't specify due to privacy concerns. The fact we've had a verifiable uptick was cause for the discussion happening in the first place, the concern wasn't from thin air. > This will mean no videos anymore and no fflogs. Cuts out a lot of the content and context for posts on an already small subreddit. Video content makes up a surprisingly tiny crumb of all content submitted as it is, but will still be accepted if your recording is either manually censored (which I personally don't recommend, trying to track nameplates in editing is a nightmare) or has names as Initials Only. FFLogs _will still be allowed,_ and that's covered in the new rules, you'll just need to set them to Anonymous, or capture screenshots without names that feature the specific details highlighting your Tale.

That's completely fair. I still don't see how there would be risk involved in the subreddit's end, Because witch hunting was always discouraged and not accepted. If individuals sought to do that on thier own that's on them. I guess we'll just agree to disagree here. I'll still continue to browse this subreddit, but I may end up stopping depending on the quality of the content now. We'll see. I do appreciate the telling us the update, and the transparency though.

Will this include the servers at the end of the names too? Like "Userdude@Cactuar", would you censor the cactuar? Or can you leave that part uncensored?

That may be left to personal discretion, I'm not sure. As long as every player's _full name_ is properly censored, or turned to initials-only in chat settings, that should be sufficient enough. The vague language is intentional. We'd rather you censor everything relating to their name completely, but if you'll stop the buck at the first name+surname alone, that's probably fine too.

NGL, I hope people will censor the world too, if just because it invites so much self-flagellation and insults that Do Not Matter to the point of the post. "Ugh, it's always [world]" or "I apologize for all the awful [world] players", wherein every single world with an english-speaking majority has been mentioned at any point.

>for the rare PSA-style posts about **well-known** problematic community members, we're introducing a Modmail Approval System as a special case tool. So, while they're not "**well-known**" yet, they are free to harass other players through their intentional time-wasting in-game actions, without anyone being able to know their name to avoid wasting time on grouping up with them?

Well-known is vague language on purpose, as it can encapsulate a spectrum of how "well-known" someone is. You can still submit cases to us irrespective of widely known public status - as Bun said, it's for special cases like that one-off dude who was planning to bring something special-and-not-good to LA FanFest.

What were you going to do to stop them anyway? Add them to your ignore list and be satisfied that you'd never group with a person you wouldn't have statistically met anyway?

Wow, considered me surprised. I didn't think y'all would push for it this fast, I'm actually really happy with the change. Reading through your replies, it seems like, yeah people were getting harassed by not censoring names. Who woulda thunk.

With Dawntrail literally around the corner, we didn't want to put it off for too long. New posts are gonna start flooding in and the increase with the current rules would likely only further open the proverbial gates for trouble. I hope a week felt like enough time for everyone to give it a thought. In the grand scheme it was probably nowhere near enough, and ideally we would've brought this up a month in advance, but it was very much a discussion born of rapidfire bad actors and the consequences coming to light.

Honestly, better late than never.

>Bun and I recognize this won't fly with everyone, but it felt like a necessary step forward insofar as protecting as many users as possible, while continuing to enjoy our daily injections of sugar and salt. Does this actually protect said users? There are 47k+ members here, how many users have been found to be negatively affected? This just feels like one of those "think of the children" things where there isn't really anything affecting the children but the adults just want to ban it anyway. Feels like a good way to lower the amount of posts here but 🤷‍♂️

The vast majority of posts through the years had been following unspoken censoring rules, so that wasn't really a concern when discussing changes. Besides the one documented case of someone receiving an account action, years back as it was, as I mentioned in the thread prior, there had been a verifiable uptick in users coming to modmail for several months - particularly spiking in the last few weeks - of people who had either been harassed by players who had found their names through a post here, or who were seeking post removals due to skewed or otherwise unfaithful information. Ultimately, the rules changing are as a precautionary measure. Ignoring those warning signs would likely lead to us being in boiling hot water; more people being unjustly brigaded by less-than-stellar individuals being one facet, but too much heat can very easily attract Reddit Admin attention. Removing an avenue for harassers-to-be to collect information to act in bad faith on objectively protects users, to what exact extent isn't the important part.

This whole vague stance of "but it doesn't solve world hunger and bring about world peace so is it *really* worth bothering with any rules whatsoever? :/ Feels like censorship to me..." has been repeated so many times in response to this proposed change and every time, *every single time,* it has *conveniently sidestepped* explaining what, *in no uncertain terms, plainly, out in the open,* we gain from leaving people's name's uncensored. This is a venting sub, not a blacklisting sub. This is a sub to share wacky encounters you have, *not* a sub to throw out people's names in an even more public manner than they wanted their name to be known. Atop this, there is the downright hilarious habit y'all have of censoring ***your own name*** while leaving the person who bothered you uncensored, meanwhile the horrible thing they did worthy of being met with the same outright venom and witch burning level of hostility as an artist charging $500 for a commission and then scamming people is they said something like "you pull you tank :)" and were just generally annoying. This sub is not the judge, jury, and executioner for people that annoy you. You'll live, and so will the sub, without being able to *more easily* witchhunt people that said something that annoyed you enough.

Agreed. If someone breaks the game rules they can be reported in game. The sub isn't a punitive option, no one needs to be exposed. Especially when so many of the "infractions" people get upset about are cultural norms and unspoken rules created by external subs like this, not universal rules enforced by Square Enix.

>This whole vague stance of "but it doesn't solve world hunger and bring about world peace so is it *really* worth bothering with any rules whatsoever? :/ Feels like censorship to me..." has been repeated so many times in response to this proposed change and every time, *every single time,* it has *conveniently sidestepped* explaining what, *in no uncertain terms, plainly, out in the open,* we gain from leaving people's name's uncensored. I'm guessing you meant to reply to someone else? Nowhere in my post says or even suggests this vague stance. All I asked is if it protects users because we've only heard of one issue with 47k users so, at least to us without mod mail visibility, this seems possibly unnecessary. The mod followed up and mentioned some of the in-flood they get in mod mail which sounds like maybe it is necessary. But, hard for me to know for sure. My initial post was based on the only information I had available. I'm still curious to know more context but I'm unlikely to ever get it, so trusting the mod's word I think my opinion changes a bit here.

"I'm guessing you meant to reply to someone else" It's very clear they were replying to you. This is just a passive aggressive way of dismissing what they are saying. You don't have to use conversational tricks like this to engage in conversation about your point. It makes you look like an asshole who's incapable of taking criticism.

If you read my post I worded it that way because their comment didn’t match with what I said. It had absolutely nothing to do with anything I stated in my post. Seems more gaslight-y from their end than passive aggressive from mine but whatever I guess 🤷‍♂️

From what I've seen, there's only been one instance of a player's post here being found and submitted in a report against them, but I've also heard tell the person was more likely actioned because of a different reason because they weren't exactly clean outside of the reddit post, so who knows if it even would.

There are many other instances that are confined in modmail that, for obvious privacy reasons, I won't give specific details on. There are also other instances where people simply don't report on it, or don't know that TFDF exists. One recent example in that other thread where a suspected brigading had occurred as a result of a post. Whether or not TFDF was the actual source, removing the possibility of it _being_ a source is also a gain. Point is that the concern didn't sprout from thin air.

I think the thing about people going to mod mail saying that they were harassed deserves to be in the opening post. The fact that people are playing this game enough in the off season and tracking people down is a huge yikes. Off season players really a different breed.

I didn't want to bring much attention to it due to the obvious concerns between privacy and attracting the attention of said individuals who'd know it was their fault based on context clues. That's the largely intended point behind the changes subtext: "hey, this is a mod decision". It should be obvious something has warranted it being a concern. c':

Honestly, the topic before was sharing how we feel but I feel like this should've been put into a proper vote or something so we know majority feelings and follow that...

I agree that a poll would have been nice, mostly because the note at the top of the thread made it seem like a decision wouldn’t be made solely from the thread alone, so I thought there might be another step to contribute to. Ultimately, either way is what it is, someone will be unhappy regardless because it’s all or nothing, and a big swing from the existing rule. I never liked people asking for names to blacklist, and I didn’t like people telling others in game that they were posting here. Why tell them they’re being posted on TFDF? They’ll just come here and be upset, and make grievances against the idea of the community. But, I’ve also seen situations where unreliable narrators were called out because of logs (usually not provided by the OP, but found from post details) or others recognizing them. In situations where we would have totally been on the OPs side if we didn’t see that, no, their tank/healer WAS actually using their kit, they’re just a player who doesn’t understand the game or who came here in bad faith for validation. But, I can see how those situations aren’t the norm. I was personally in favor the existing rules. But, I do think the mods still put in a lot of thought here, and are trying to get ahead of a problem that they’re recognizing on their end that we may not know the full scope of. This wasn’t all directed just at you, mostly just that I agree a poll as a follow-up would have been nice.

Majority feelings or no, it only takes one really bad instance to spoil the entire sub. There are plenty of dedicated weirdos like the dedicated no jobstone person who posts here, or the various infamous in-game people like Holy Terror. There's nothing that says someone with that level of narrow focus and seemingly infinite energy doesn't lurk or post here, and them putting that energy towards harassing someone posted here for whatever reason quickly becomes everyone's problem. I don't think the vast majority of people here are like that, but going with the "it's not technically [rule breaking infraction here]" is playing with fire. As long as it's evenly enforced, it's the safer play for the subreddit in the long term.

Fair thoughts. The first post was up for a week (technically 8 days), and essentially acted as a poll without being labeled as such. It wasn't _originally intended_ to be, but with the resounding feedback from both sides - and perspectives we hadn't considered - the overwhelming majority were pretty much in favour. A poll would have likely been redundant, and we felt a decision needed to happen before Dawntrail's inevitable surge of activity. And it would.. well. If it tells you anything of how a direct yes/no poll would have gone, I received a self harm report on this new sticky combined with the accompanying RedditCareResource message less than an hour after it went up. Not unexpected, but saddening, given the original thread was a healthy mix of friendly and adult discussion.

For my part, I greatly prefer the "discussion" format to a poll. Getting qualitative feedback is just as important as the raw numbers (and is often overlooked), and the ability to discuss these issues allows us all an opportunity to learn from each other's perspectives in a way that a poll does not. Not to mention the potential issues with vote brigading that you mentioned! If people are invested and engaged, they will take the time to read, vote on comments, and/or comment themselves in a discussion topic, and the post you made was available for an ample amount of time.

I think it should be mentioned if it's going to be used as a poll, I for one didn't go around upvoting and downvoting ideas, most don't, it tends to be those with strong opinions.

>The first post was up for a week (technically 8 days), and essentially acted as a poll without being labeled as such. Then it wasn't a poll.

The comments in mentioned postwere overwhelmingly in favour of censorship. And that's from people who engage in this place. Having a vote would just open it up to vote brigading and people who don't engage to vote.

Upvotes and downvotes are also engagement.

Huh, I understand wanting people to censor their party members names, but I’m wondering why we need to also censor our own names. Is there some way people could look up my in game name to find out who was in my party if I posted?

General CYA methodology: Covering Your Ass. Blanket censoring means the total removal of any and _all_ names any bad actor could use to contact anyone featured in posts here in-game. One aspect is consistency, another is avoiding the potential of edits for "self-callouts".

Yea that makes sense. I’ll probably just turn on everyone’s names to initials, so I don’t have to censor anything if I do post. Thank you for responding

Eh I have mine set to initials anyway woo

Thank God, this was sorely needed. This will also cut down on the amount of times shazzamon needed to condescending reply that "umm actually censoring isn't a rule" when people would talk about the ethics of witchhunting here.

I'll take that, it was my fault for being so anchored in to the old ruleset. Having stepped back and been mostly observing over the last few weeks* (not months!) in particular, my thoughts on the ethics behind what does or doesn't constitute a witch hunt have changed, and in retrospect this should have been a conversation we had a lot sooner. It's honestly sad; if it weren't for the sudden spike of issues - seeing that tangible change happening - I don't think I would have ever taken those concerns seriously.

I actually still have a comment where I was heavily downvoted after misinterpreting a rule and getting gently corrected on it. I think it reached -50 before it stopped. I honestly had thought until then that censoring names was required by the rules in a roundabout way. Now that it’s actually required, I’m pretty happy

What if it's a positive TFDF? Should we still censor?

The censor is for all posts. That's the unfortunate bit about covering all bases, but we feel we can no longer take that risk period due to bad actors.

Good changes. I understand the want to keep them uncensored for people to pre-emptively blacklist but a lot of people cannot be trusted with player information. There's always someone who will be the one who ruins it.

Much as I understand the want to name and shame, this is a good decision, kudos mod team

Good change

What about comments like "Please DM me his name; I want to blacklist him."

They'll be removed, in line with not sharing personally identifying information. Sharing also means asking to share. > If the only way to get a name is by directly going to OP, _that means the matter has wholeheartedly split away from TFDF,_ and those individuals then out themselves in a vaccuum against that player, rather than others getting involved (snip)

I'm glad for these changes, maybe now people are less likely to be quick to pull up redditors' unrelated logs just to "prove" someone's lack of credibility and gate-keep their ability to form an opinion on a discussion.

Good changes; I usually censored everybody's names regardless, and it's easy to slap some digital paint over everything. I'm curious though if you're fine with the OP's name being uncensored if they so choose, though? Perhaps make a note of that in the rule description. I am also very grateful for extending Rule 7 to include the names of duties/bosses/etc. It was frustrating tabbing over here before beating MSQ and, in this specific instance, seeing somebody say the boss name of the lv89 trial in the title rather than keeping it vague (without even marking the post as a spoiler, to boot).

I've mentioned it in another comment, but the censor aspect being a whole blanket is largely a covering-all-angles measure. Coupled with consistency in censoring other names involved, it also prevents the headaches relating to self-reports/impersonation. I understand there's the thought of being recognized in-game from TFDF in a positive light, but as the entire conversation surrounding whether or not to censor has been looking at a proverbial double-edged sword, the ultimate decision was that it had to be all or nothing, irrespective of benefits lost.

That makes sense, good to know.

I'm neutral about this decision in all honesty. I do understand the whole fact that there have been some very stupid people who decide to go out and harass the people involved in certain posts on this sub. But I also think there are some cases of people who should be known for their very poor behavior when it's very bad, like that one person who wanted to sue reddit over people calling him out for griefing when he wasn't told how to do every single mech in every duty ever, only for him to harass the main sub about it and even end up getting a subreddit just about him and his actions. Even then, I wouldn't ever want anyone to go out of their way and harass someone, either IG or IRL, over someone just doing YPYT or being too lazy to gear up in content. After all, FFXIV is only a video game, and it's far worse to be an asshat to someone IRL over something stupid in a game than doing that something stupid in game. Hoping that maybe there can be some very rare and niche instances where we can uncensor names in posts, like for example if someone was sending legitimate death threats or actual hate speech or something that extreme, but I do think this is something in the end that was bound to happen at some point, and that doing it during the 48 hour maintenance was a good idea, give everyone a fresh start in the new expansion and the posts that will come with it.

> Hoping that maybe there can be some very rare and niche instances where we can uncensor names in posts As mentioned, we're introducing an approval system where you can submit posts under that very pretense. This is now detailed under Rule 4. Bun's example is self-admittedly extreme, but [highlights the behaviour we do _not_ want to censor, as there are genuinely some individuals others should know about.](https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromDF/comments/10pljzf/ffxiv_player_plans_to_bring_guns_to_fanfest_he/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=TalesFromDF&utm_content=t1_lahvmu7)

while I agree that dude has some screws loose, I think the subreddit people made to follow him around when he tried to get away from it was skeevy. I'm in the camp that he's just terrible at the game and very defensive about it and people were actively goading him in an attempt to get content out of the lolcow and the whole thing was super unnecessary.

Fair and good changes. If they are applied consistently and moderated consistently also, I am all for it.

Well, called that from deep. Good luck with this place in the future, bye.

The fact that you didn't make a poll to decide this is bullshit. Edit*: We are mainsubbers now, congrats.

Yup. The sub is gonna be featured on the mainsub sidebar soon, all because of random chance and someone noticing the old mods were inactive before a more reasonable person did instead. It sucks. It used to be a good place.

If you're that disappointed, go and make your own subreddit. I'm sure people will join

lol Reddit has no future. Besides that, It seems if /u/Zriatt doesn't like your opinion, you shouldn't express it.

You expressed your opinion, people disagreed. Being a pissbaby about it doesn't change that your opinion is still there for everyone to see. Don't be one of those idiots that complains about being censored while yapping away.

Bro I wasn't the dude trying to kick out someone from the subreddit. Like he's the owner. Are you the owner? And I'm true to my word, there wasn't any poll. Mods made their mind before the first thread even began.

You're free to your opinion, as is everyone else, but this may be a good time to mention that I was guilty of repeatedly doubling down in favour of no censorship not too long ago myself, particularly against someone who repeatedly pointed out the hypocrisy between Rules 3 and 5. It was not an overnight change, nor one wholly had internally. I can't make you accept that, so it's just saying it for what it's worth. Our reasoning behind no poll-specific post is that, given the messages I've already received in response to this one - and prior - it would have absolutely been brigaded by users who aren't regulars here, and in no small capacity. We had a mountain of unexpected feedback. Feedback worth while listening to, from people who frequented enough to care to give their thoughts. That was enough.

> I can't make you accept that, so it's just saying it for what it's worth. Not much since you already changed the rules. >Our reasoning behind no poll-specific post is that, given the messages I've already received in response to this one - and prior - it would have absolutely been brigaded by users who aren't regulars here, and in no small capacity. Sure, brigading happens everywhere, can't stop it, but there is also other passive users who are engaged in the subreddit. So, do lurkers count? Can you actually identify who upvoted what? Since we are excluding what must be the gist of the users, did you only take count of opinions made by users with original posts here? or was it every commenter? Like 100 ppl? How many DO post? I don't read/comment/participate on every thread, do I count? or I didn't have enough upvotes in my comment last week? Don't answer, at this point I don't care. Just wanted to make a point. Was it arbitrary? Since you already said you can't provide evidence and you already changed the rules. Yes, it was.

Thank you for your consideration.

So is an FFlog of an anonymous dungeon report not specific enough of an encounter? Cuz FFLogs treats the whole run as one encounter, of course the OP could crop it down to the timeframe of a boss or pull.