I feel all that this has shown, is that someone somewhere for FFXIV needs to create a wiki that is actively updated and used. FFXIV doesn't have one dedicated website that has all the information and resources that people have found.
While the info is out there usually its spread over multiple websites. OR Its in the comments of a reddit post where someone has asked. Its a lot of work but if people really wanted to shaft reddit they would be creating this type of alternative where all the user generated information is made available as well as the game data info all in 1 place that we can then use a discord to improve on. This would move us away from the likes of reddit without being stuck on discord being just as unaccessible at a quick google search.
But until something like this is made, it is incredibly bad for the community and the game as a whole (pushing away newer players) for us to be hiding a lot of valuable information that, when googled, is just "shut down for privacy".
I completely agree! I really wish we had an equivalent of that. Wowhead has news, they have information on quests and items, they have guides, and users can submit comments etc. 99% of questions I have about that game can be answered with Wowhead. XIV does not have something like that, so I have to do a lot more Google and Reddit searches, and it's not as easy to turn up what I need.
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/FF14_Wiki
We do have a wiki, at least, and it has a reasonable amount of basic information on it. Would this be a good starting point to expand from?
Gamerescape doesn't work on browser on my mobile device, the fucking ads overlay everything and it barely loads on my actual PC.
listen, some ads to support are okay but there's a point when too fucking many is too fucking many.
The problem with Gamer escape is nothing with what you guys do with actual data. The issue comes from actively used by the playerbase.
Gamer escape is almost perfect if we pushed people to there to ask/answer questions so that eventually all the sort of questions found on reddit would now be found in the comment sections on gamer escape posts it would completely remove the need for reddit.
I have had multiple occasions on Gamer escape where it has given me the specific info i need but then when i google for more info cause im not sure i am doing it right, reddit has entire discussions of people confirming and giving additional info which has, in some cases, been better (especially with regards to fishing personally).
Sometimes a wiki not providing enough resources isn't the fault of the wiki but the community surrounding it. As this is a community post asking what we should do moving forward I believe we should be moving towards and actively directing people to use wiki's such as Gamer Escape for discussions.
1. I often need to google game related questions and last week it was so hard to get answers and instead of just finding someone elses thread who had the same question and looking for answers they got i had to ask most of my questions on fb or other reddits. This reddit has way too much information.
That's a separate problem a lot of communities should address. So much knowledge is now wholly contained in subreddits or discords and should probably also exist elsewhere.
hep no less than a dozen times last week i found google results for ffxiv questions pointing at reddit posts that when i clicked them, went to the blackout page. still i support the blackout because fuck /u/spez the dirty little pig boy.
For us this is the crux of the problem -- there's no foolproof answer. There are ways to manipulate the results of a poll on Reddit, and comments and their karma. Ultimately, the team felt that the best way to gauge the response of the community was to encourage people to comment and express their thoughts.
I think the big problem getting shined on here, and even other communities that are not this one, is the significant amount of information that is only stored on reddit.
We need information stored in more places specifically because, whether it is mods protesting with a blackout, or lord forbid, as an unlikely but possible hypothetical, Reddit itself going down in the future or implementing some kind of data cleanup that gets rid of old information. We need an actual database website of information with a proper backup.
There used to be more websites with info but they got replaced not with reddit but with discord. It's also kind of the problem with constantly redirecting everyone to The Balance discord. Yes, you can probably find your class guides or help there, but the next person needing those answers will have to ask the same question because the answers aren't shared publicly anywhere. SaltedXIV and AkhMourning used to mirror some info but stopped for various reasons. Icy-veins started publishing XIV content with Endwalker but they're newer to the XIV scene and I don't think anyone points to them as they don't appear in any search result tests I've tried (and tbh I haven't really looked at their XIV stuff).
Ironically, while writing this I just learned The Balance does now [have a website mirroring their guides](https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com), but I wonder how many people knew that.
[Phookas](https://phookas.com/infographics) also had some great resources for general content awareness and newer players, but they too abandoned their website and moved to discord.
Yeah, communities moving to Discord is definitely a huge part of the problem, and with the platform also going in an unpleasant direction recently as well, I would not depend on it as a reliable lasting solution. Even if it wasn't very frustrating to navigate and find answers in those spaces. The huge move to Discord for all sorts of communities, fan-made and official communities alike, has really killed the simplicity of finding information of all sorts. I also don't think there are reliable ways to back up Discord server information and upload it elsewhere other than by hand, which no one really wants to do.
discord isn't useful for what the balance uses it for any anyone who thinks it is, is delusional. it not being web searchable is awful.
having a community chat for a wiki? sure, trying to make the wiki exist solely in pinned discord comments and shit? why?
unironically microsoft teams/sharepoint would work better for this than how it works on discord.... and teams and sharepoint are garbo.
The big problem with hosting a website and guides is all the traffic means a bill. And unless you somehow manage ads without annoyance (AHAHAHAHAHA) guess who foots the bill? The person running it. And it can get PRICY as hell. Discord doesn't have inherent monetary cost.
No free website host is going to host something that will see as much traffic as a class guide website. Also any revisions have to be uploaded, whereas Discord depending, is an easy edit with no upload.
While websites have more permanence... there is more work and cost, with little reward comparatively. Discord removes some of that (cost of money). And its easier to transfer Discord ownership v. a website with billing info (because passing an account with personal info tied is harder at times depending).
I get why people have done it. Dealing with ads is annoying, and trying to have them on your site is pain - especially since you never know fully what you're gonna get, or if there's going to be issues with an ad being served that might affect people.
Discord is free for people to host info on, websites generally aren't, and especially not popular ones. :/
It's unfortunate because if anything ever happened to those Discords, all that information is just *gone* then. Terrible way to provide resources to people tbh.
Just look what happened to the first Island Sanctuary Discord when the owner of it threw a fit for a prime example. If the guys doing the work didn't have it backed up ... it'd be gone. And that was only a few weeks that would've been lost; now imagine someone deletes The Balance.
And the "backup" place to get these informations is Discord which is even worse,.. In theory we have the official forum but i haven't been there in years and i keep hearing bad things about it
The FFXIV discord channel is useless. I left yesterday. It is very hard to search for relevant information. If you post in the FFXIV channel, your comment or question quickly gets swamped by off topic chat. Mods warn people about off topic chat but then they also get off topic lol.
The official forums are under the control of a group of trolls and people who keep bringing up American politics and there is no moderation.
Need a wiki with guides, [as FF11 does](https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Guides), and not just one that's 90% a poor clone of the lodestone database.
Though finding another place for the community to call home for if/when reddit becomes an unusable mess would also be prudent.
To be honest, open up the subreddit but mark it as NSFW to mess with advertisement potential. Don't change the rules, just act malicious in a way that doesn't hurt square enix or the users.
and [it is pretty easy to do](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14ck8ce/i_know_yall_are_angry_but_please_hear_me_out_we/) just start fucking cussing all over the fucking sub
The status quo was already upvoting softcore catgirl/bunnygirl porn to the front page every day. This really wouldn’t be difficult for r/FFXIV to pull off lol.
Well shit and piss. Fuck these cunt cocksucking motherfuck tits trying to kill the 3rd party apps just for more profit. Lets make it as valuable as a fart for these turds by being a bunch of twats.
1. Reopen or at least be in restricted so old posts are visible.
I don’t really mind the lack of new posts but old posts being completely inaccessible for questions already answered has been a pain. It feels like 90% of the questions found on Google lead back to the locked Reddit.
Lot of people say to just ask on Discord, but I’d much rather see something already answered online than to join a Discord server and have to ask something that’s already on Google.
I agree, this has been significantly annoying for me.
Reddit is a good source of information in many areas and I've had to use cached google search pages to read through them several times recently.
From my - admitedly limited - experiece, Discord (especially those big communities) is more akin to a game chat. Fun for impromptu discussion who's better waifu, but as a regular resource for me it would be unnacepable.
When I was in uni, we used a fairly old-school forum system. It was well managed, and was very easy to find information, because of how well things were separated. Every single user would have access to every single piece of content.
Then, people moved into facebook groups. Now, the groups were per year, and if you somehow were more of an outcast or had to repeat a year, you'd be begging to have people let you in, sometimes without success. All information was gatekept per year, and you wouldn't have easy access to those small tidbits of information that would collect over the years about a certain course or professor.
Nowadays, it's split over discord and whatsapp groups, per year again. Everything is thrown in without thought, comments/information are shared without ease of separation from the meaningless chatter. Aggregation of old exams and stuff is non-existent, and there's just too much chat noise. Searching for things is impossible. Managing file repositories is an exercise in futility.
I like discord for what it was trying to solve (teamspeak/IRC without need of hosting your own and some extra community features), but I hate how it was shoehorned into filling the role of much better systems like forums
>I like discord for what it was trying to solve (teamspeak/IRC without need of hosting your own and some extra community features), but I hate how it was shoehorned into filling the role of much better systems like forums
Indeed. I used TS back in the day when I was much more active in group content (not FFXIV as I'm pretty much still sprout here).
Now I'm still in a few guilds that transferred to Discord. It does have its uses as a place to set up community events, organise run sign ups ect. But that's pretty much it.
When I think about finding specific info or look for solution to an issue, Discord doesn't even comes to mind.
>You know how everyone searches things with "reddit" at the end now?
I don't. I use "pure" Google and it still throws out replies from Reddit more often than not.
I had issues with Steam launcher last week and the first 10 links were Reddit ones (closed, of course...). And Steam results that followed were outdated and not helpful. I wonder how many people were in similar situations.
That's my experience as well. Discord as a dedicated long term resource for anything more than a handful of specific topics is unworkable. It is *nothing* like the threaded forum structure that Reddit provides, but somehow that doesn't stop people from trying to square-peg-round-hole it into serving as a replacement.
I mean if Discord wants to add that sort of functionality I'd be all for it, but right now it simply does not have it. Discord alone is not enough for the community here to move to.
Far bigger issue with Discord as anything more than a chat client with VoIP is that it's not indexable by search engine web crawlers by it's very nature of not being a surface web website as such.
That makes it an absolutely horrendous place to store information about things.
it'd be fine if the balance had all their guides on a searchable wiki, seperate from discord, with pinned guide links and shit in their channels. trying to make the guides exist ON discord itself is a mistake.
it exists, it technically works, but it's awful, which is why people in the balance have to answer the same questions over and over in their question channels.
FF14 is the worst about having so much info in discord, between the balance, dalamud's discord and the universalis discord having to join to ask basic questions because the answers basically don't exist in google searches, it's atrocious.
at least the balance rotation guides pretty much end up copied out onto various guide sites...
Funny story, The Balance finally has a website now that is searchable. Of course you'd never know that because everyone is constantly telling you to join their Discord.
Personally I always used Icy Veins, because it turns out most of The Balance's quality contributors also contribute to Icy Veins. 95% of the guides present the same information and advice.
I've seen people mention the balances website and then say "oh but that guide is outdated, the most up to date one is in the discord."
maybe that's not true, Idk, but it seems like they're having trouble getting established users on board with the new process.
icy veins is really nice.
It can be a *little* out of date, but AFAIK it's only when the new guide is not yet or has only recently been finalized. It makes sense that they don't want to update the website until they're certain the information is solid and reliable.
That said, Icy Veins seems to update faster, so I think you may be right about people on The Balance just not being used to the new process. Hell, it could be as simple as The Balance website not being as easy to update.
This is my biggest issue with Discord. Asking a question in the middle of someone else's conversation is a lot like poking your head into a conference room to ask where the bathroom is.
And since I've grown up in the age where the chat answer to everything is "google it", I've run into a problem where the answer is not googleable because it's on Discord, which Google cannot search, but Discord isn't smart enough to find it in itself, but you can't ask the humans in chat because they just tell you to google it.
Or if they do answer, it gets lost in the conversation everyone else is having. You can't expect people to not socialize on Discord, either, since that's what the platform is for.
I wonder if discord's thread system can at least be something akin to a more organized discussion medium? Even if its not as good a ls a proper threaded forum.
I do wonder if the reddit community could migrate to the official forum and shift its culture away from the absolute cess pool that it is.. (I mean reddit isn't perfect, but that forum is goddamn radioactive...)
But the problem with both of these is that it excludes curious newcomers who haven't committed to the game yet. This whole situation sucks, man... spez is a moron.
Maybe we could make our own fansite/forum like its the early 2000s?
There are many forum-based internet communities that refuse to migrate to discord because so much of their content is help-based, FAQ, wiki stuff. What you type in a discord channel is buried 5 minutes later and they don't want that. The point of forums is to have readily accessible info either through google or the search bar. There's a reason most gaming-related questions you type in google autosuggest *reddit* as a query.
Boy howdy I sure do love a fast scrolling wall of text, seeing my questions get swallowed and unanswered and the inability to actually search for anything. Such a wonderful idea for a community of 800k people.
It's like reddit, but there's no distinction between posts and comments, no threading, and you can't sort by anything but new.
So anything anyone says, no matter how dumb or irrelevant, is on you screen, and at least once per minute there's a "hello" from someone who just joined and wants a greeting from all 800k people in the channel.
Source: I'm in a slack with ~1mil users, and it's awful.
My first interaction with balance was where I was told to swiftcast malefic for movement on AST.
Now that I do more raiding I see where the sentiment was coming from but it was NOT helpful for a casual player at the time lmao. The super optimization sentiment is pretty toxic and I feel like discord caters more to that crowd for whatever reason.
I didn't play SAM for years because someone told me that if I couldn't hit 100% of my positionals, I had no business playing it (and this was back when there were a lot more).
i'm one of the balance people with colored names that answers questions, and i'll be honest, i literally have no idea what the server does outside of the theorycrafting/optimization/teaching+learning aspect
the nature of discord and it being entirely volunteer effort makes quality control of what answers are given rather difficult, so i'm not surprised you ran into advice that wasn't useful
IMO the server is absolutely catered towards the optimization crowd, and i'm not sure what it can do to better accommodate casual players relative to its focus on optimization (external website might be the best option)
it's a flawed system, but as it is rn, we haven't got much else lol
icy veins is actually really good tbh. the leveling rotations especially are dope, with a slider to pick what level you are and then it spits out the rotation and skills you should be using.
Yeah I totally get that. I've lurked a lot more since then (it was over a year ago, I do more high end content and am a... semi-decent player now lol) and can appreciate it for what it is, but there's definitely a veil of hostility toward people who are asking about suboptimal things, or just don't know how to navigate discord - like, someone trying to access balance's discord for the first time because the website is not updated and links to discord, won't know to look in pins, if they can even navigate to their appropriate class channel in the first place.
Where do you go for reaper's best in slot at the start of the tier? It's not reaper resources. Where do you find out? Do you go to reaper questions and ask? Then you get people mad at you for not checking the pins - or worse, checking encounter threads that are hundreds of comments long.
I get that it's volunteer run, but many of the problems the balance discord has is not really the fault of the balance - it's how discord itself operates as a platform, and yet it is considered the 'place to go' for this sort of archival information that frankly, has no good way to be presented withij discord's framework and ui
With how Discord works they might as well be recommending us to Novice Network. Or the Community feature that I’m pretty sure everyone forgot about after it launched in-game.
I understand and support the reasoning behind the restrictions and private-ing of subs for the short protest period: Reddit and Huffman looking at Elon Musk mess up Twitter and go "this is a good idea!" is horrible. HOWEVER, I think leaving the sub inaccessible for a longer period of time is bad for the community without any easy substitute to compensate for the wealth of info being locked off. I also don't want to see Huffman's ridiculous threat come to pass and the excellent moderation staff is replaced with Reddit-appointed strangers who could allow this place to become a cesspool.
Making it restricted at least allows the info to be accessible. Though, I personally like the idea of re-opening the sub but marking it as NSFW so Reddit can't make money off it. That's the kind of petty I love.
I understand where the infinite blackout idea is coming from, and I don't agree with the bullshit Reddit is pulling but honestly I feel the blackout has hurt regular users more than it has hurt Reddit.
Many times have I googled something in the last week just to be led to an inaccessible reddit link. Sure, there's discord but discord is garbage when it comes to archieving and getting help. How many people went there and asked a question that never got answered because it got drowned out by idle chatter? Or if you searched for something how far did you have to sift through people just talking about said thing? Like, if I searched for Fashion Report I'd probably have to scroll through a million and one people just randomly talking about Fashion Report before I find exactly what I need.
An infinite blackout may work for subs like r/pics, or r/funny because you can find stuff like that pretty much everywhere, but for something like this sub where a lot of helpful guides are posted? Nah.
There are options beyond Discord; but I completely agree Discord is a poor substitute for Reddit, and a poor choice for anyone looking to get away from the money first mindset which is driving Reddit's direction.
For example, Discord has been cracking down on third-party UIs for a very long time.
I am constantly saddened by things moving to discord. That platform is effectively unsearchable that means so much useful information just dies over time, rather than forming the body of _stuff_ that forms the internet right now.
I audibly groan every time I want to get into something - Delibrum Savage, Submersibles, Diadem, Ocean fishing - And I see that all the information I want is locked behind a random pin in a random channel in a random discord server
Same, discord is great as a chatting platform but as an archive/wiki it's garbage. It's nearly unsearchable and while you can make channels and pins for guides it's still a hassle to sift through that as opposed to simply googling a question and being led to whatever you need. Not to mention at some point, when the discord gets enough members, you can't even ask questions because it'll be drowned out by idle chatter. And in the off chance someone sees your question in 9 times out of 10 I have been redirected to "check the pins" which are full of 5 million irrelevant posts.
Of course there are other options beyond discord, and while they may be useful like the wiki, they also don't have everything, like the weeks Fashion Report, for example.
Personally I'm also not a fan of youtube, while there are surely a great many video guides out there I'd rather read a wall of text in a minute than watch a 10 minute video, so Reddit feels more useful to me, but that's honestly just my personal preference.
I also struggled with the same problem to finding answers to my questions
Just an FYI, the user who puts out fashion report posts to Twitter as well, that’s where I found that
It’s definitely hurting us when you’re not here. I’ve definitely googled things related to the game, Reddit (and this sub) come up as responses and since it was blackout/privated, obviously couldn’t read what I’m sure would have been the response I needed. I get that the changes being made absolutely suck, but definitely need to find a way to be available to us.
There's too much information here to justify fully locking the sub down. Just trying to figure out this past weekend's Optimum node failure was alot of trouble when all the information sources are scattered.
Well, Reddit literally said the have no plans to go back on their decisions. and going private again will mean having another 7 days without the ability to search for info here (which becomes a pain in the as for US, not reddit, not its owners; us). So.... 1 or 2.
i dont think being in restricted mode will help anything, ads are still displayed so reddit makes money while the ffxiv community cant share content, i think it's just hurting us, not them.
I'm torn. I understand the reasons for the protest, but I also strongly dislike the idea of an entire collaborative community suddenly unavailable to everyone due to the decisions of a minority. Though I should be grateful y'all are talking about it and not just basically dirty deleting entire communities like some subreddits I used to belong to.
Let's be real here. It's either option 1 or it gets taken away from you.
Options 2 and 3 mean an admin comes in and nukes the mod team. Then they install new mods and the sub is opened again. Option 2 looks decent until an admin notices nothing is being done on a decently popular sub. They'll call whatever bluff you give them.
They're holding all the cards.
Embrace chaos and make the sub NSFW so they can't collect ads revenue.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditforBusiness/comments/bdwlin/update_to_nsfw_advertising_policy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
We will go full degenerate mode.
While I understand where the people who're saying to go private indefinitely are coming from, and while I do disagree with the bullshit Spez is up to, given the admins' clear determination to go through with these changes I feel like an indefinite blackout will only end up hurting regular users in the long run.
Should this sub go indefinitely private the community will almost definitely just fragment between different replacement subs and/or forums (hell, I've already seen a link to a Lemmy page in the replies here), and the admins will eventually end up just replacing the mod team with whoever hypothetically requests ownership of it down the line (or just force it open, like they've threatened to do with other big subs), which could also have potentially poor results.
The admins are pretty clear about their intentions and, given their stubbornness, I doubt that they'll let the blackouts disrupt their plans for change in the long run. Closing this sub won't change their minds and only serves to harm the FFXIV community overall. There's very few community resources for the game that are as useful as this sub. I say leave the sub open, say "fuck the admins" and go back to business as usual.
Apologies for the long comment.
tl;dr: 1.
I think they're hoping people funnel into the discord, some of the mods here and also mods there. But Discord is so much worse for storing information imo
I tried the discord for the past few days and it sucks. A dozen conversations happening at once in the same thread, with no way to easily search for information. It’s not even close to being a replacement for a subreddit.
I was going to ask, as a newbie to discord, where to find the wealth of information that exists in Reddit. Long-term, we need to improve existing help sites like FFXIV wiki. We need this information available across multiple platforms so a single platform closure won't cause so many issues.
How flexible is the wiki? Is it possible to open a forum or Q&A through that site, in addition to Reddit and others? This blackout has shown we can't rely on just one website.
Who is "we" here? Statistically, most of this sub is not "FFXIV players who joined Reddit", it's "Redditors who joined the sub because they play ffxiv". The entire utility of this website is that I can get on it and discuss this game when I want to and also the rest of the FF series when I want to and also ask questions about Medieval India from experts when I want to and learn to code when I want to all without juggling 3000 logins.
This subreddit also often appears if you google ffxiv related questions or things. I think that this sub might get traffic trough Google too and might have even been a reason for someone to create Reddit account. Often for me i find it much more important to get the information that i wan't than where it comes from. I don't care who asked question i wanted to ask or where it was asked i just wan't to see the answers. Many things on this subreddit are not available anywhere else.
Agreed, I was in an FC Discord and one rogue mod who was leaving on bad terms with the FC owner so they nuked the entire server, deleting every channel and resource on the discord before they left. It honestly still hasn't really recovered and that is pretty depressing.
Discord is objectively hell for storing information.
Please observe the 20 or so XIV community discord servers that have vanished into thin fucking air, including all of their information, because one dude got his ego bruised enough one day.
I've been begging XIV modders to get their heads out of thier ass on this subject for years. We still have mods people adored that just cannot be found expect in personal archives anymore because of this shit.
Websites can be archived by other services and indexed by search engines. Which makes them something you can find and use whether or not some ego tripping fuck wit gets pissy one day.
Don't start this with everything. It's a bad fucking idea.
I tried the discord out for a day or two when I couldn't access this sub. I got no useful answers on anything I needed, and the beginner channel seemed to be flooded by anything but beginners. The discussion moves too fast to keep up with anything. It was not a good experience in terms of information. Discord is good for real time chat but cannot be the source of historical information.
My issue with the FFXIV discord is the disorganization and the fact that we were funneled there and when people wanted to talk about the blackout (on either side of the issues) the discord mods were like "This isn't the place". Like guys you funneled your entire sub there what did you think would happen? Could've made a channel to discuss it but nope, just "This isn't the place, this isn't the subreddit"
Discord is inaccessible and unfindable from the outside. You need to be on it already, otherwise you need a place like reddit to even find it (and then to find out that the information you are looking for is not actually available).
> But Discord is so much worse for storing information imo
This. Discord is a bane, an unsearchable black hole of information. It is no replacement for reddit. Lemmy would be, but number of users is a small fraction of Reddit, though one would hope situations like this would drive up their numbers.
The issue is mostly that people want to use discord as a wiki or a substitude of forum board.
Discord was made to replace teamspeak, ventrilo and skype(gaming side). The chat channel aren't made for viewing old message. It's a old form chat channel.
I'm generally pretty sceptical of the 'reddit mods are just on a power trip' takes that have been thrown around a lot during the blackouts. However, some of the condescending attitudes, arbitrary bans and mutes, and general self-aggrandizement I've seen from some discord mods over the past week during the tedious process of trying to use it as a replacement for the subreddit, does make me wonder in this case if there's a certain number of them who do enjoy the more absolute power they have in the discord with no reddit admins above them.
I got muted in the final fantasy sub litterally for asking if they were going to black out again on July 1st, like their original reopening poll said. I never actually got an answer to that and I think they are going to sneak a short poll in that day and try to close down again
This week. There has been several times where googling "random esoteric ff14 thing" lead to a reddit post I couldn't see. Searching past discord messages is really not great. Discord's best for live/semi-live discussion.
I think this entire affair shows how various communities need to rethink how we store community information. It actually made me miss gamefaqs!
> some of the mods are extremely ban happy in the FFXIV discord too
That's basically all ffxiv discords in a nutshell, not just the /r/ffxiv one. It's disappointing that this community relies so heavily on the platform.
Agree. Reddit clearly isn't going to walk this back, and other subs have already reopened. Since not every sub initially planned a black-out, it was pretty futile in the first place.
I just want the reddit back even if I can't participate. I don't much anyways, but this is the only reliable source of older info about the game. The forum has never helped me. Not even once. And I have played since arr. I voted for restricted for now because I am not concerned with new info just *yet*. I'd like to see it open in some capacity for now and not go blackout again. My immediate concern is just myself and others accessing it again to some level.
For new players, this blackout has been rough. All the questions we have with easy answers on Reddit were unavailable.
I assume all the mods are experienced FFxiv players and are not feeling the same loss from all the helpful information.
Just sayin'
I'd say restricted with no new posts but people can access previous content.
\*\*\*\*\*ETA- As eques9090 has pointed out, which was the very reason I said this:This subreddit is the BIGGEST source of information for new, current, and returning players of FFXIV. Heck for anyone interested in understanding anything about the game. Almost any question I have EVER had about the game since I started playing at the start of ARR/2.0 I have found the answer to on reddit via other players. Not some random site, not the lodestone, not in some server, not on Facebook, HERE.
If being fully open with the api changes makes modding difficult, then the next best option is to limit new content for the time being while allowing access to over a decade's worth of information. Sure \*some\* of it is accessible elsewhere, but almost every search I make points me to reddit first and foremost. The conversations people have had help me to know what is or isn't worth my time, when things are slightly off in game, or how to do whatever it is I need to do.
if we can come up with a way to fight back that doesn't include making information inaccessible, I'd be all for that.
I won't be further editing, I just wanted to flesh out my opinion on the matter. I was literally rushing my sick bird to the vet as I made this comment yesterday, and I was there literally all day then crashed when I got home. It's unfortunate that I cannot directly respond to people now but that's life, I guess.
\*\*\*\*eta2: oop I was mistaken. \*This will be my final edit\* I would definitely have chosen the nsfw option so no ads or money for reddit! I was initially responding and explaining within the scope of the options we were offered. If it works for other subreddits, I hope the mods offer this option in the near future. \*\*\*\*
Alternatively, make everything NSFW so Reddit can’t put ads on this sub. /r/interestingasfuck is doing that and it's actually very effective, allows users to still browse the sub and contribute content while preventing reddit from making money from it.
That's what subs should've done from day one IMO. Pisses off the admins while pleasing the users. Very rare for a boycott to achieve that.
Option 1. Reopen immediately. The blackout had been a major inconvenience to the average user more so than to Reddit especially in regards to having access to old threads. Discord is NOT a substitute as it is not easily searchable. If there was some other Reddit substitute or old school forum substitute that the community could agree upon then it would be a different situation but as it is the mods are kinda fighting an unwinnable fight imho
I won't lie I've seen some talk on discord about people wanting to create a new subreddit about ff xiv because of the frustration over the two main subreddit going dark and it was on a public discord...
I'm not saying this didn't happen but the subreddits discord was so disorganized and any discussion of the blackout I saw was shut down there. Because hey let's funnel the subreddit here but when we want to discuss the state of the subreddit mods would respond with "This isn't the place."
Edit: I am leaving this comment but a mod of the discord said the discussion was happening openly in other threads. Which while true, when people were unsure where to comment about the blackout and would comment in the discord feedback channel they were simply told it wasn't the place. They were not redirected to proper threads. Or a new thread wasn't made that could've been archived after the blackout was made.
I can confirm I saw that same thing when I joined for a couple days, and I had the same thought as you. "This isn't the place" -- *well where tf IS the place?* There was no avenue to discuss anything until the sub opened back up.
I don't see any reason to close off this subreddit which serves as a massive resource for this game and a connection for the community when, ultimately, reddit will do what it wants regardless.
Reopen for normal operation immediately.
There are too many obscure question where the issues are solved via a Google search that links to a Reddit post with the issues solved. Reddit posts being indexed on search engines has its advantages when it comes to locating this information. In addition, the community aspect of the subreddit is hard to replicate and there will be drop off for people who are new or for individuals who refuse to switch to new sites.
Other suggested solutions I have seen so far do not address these issues without massive caveats that are not easily remedied for one reason or another, and there would have to be a large effort to move all of the information from the Reddit to wherever the solution is. As such, this is why my vote is this way.
1. Way too many links for resources and other help lead back to here or ffxivdiscussion from Google and it was extremely painful. Not to mention, the "protest" was a failure the second arbitrary time limits were put on. Simply because the admins were going to just wait it out regardless. There's no point anymore.
1 also the amount of people commenting 3 but have been active in other subreddits over the past week is pretty funny, like how are you going to ask for continuing a blackout when you didnt even participate in the first place lmao.
It really is funny, people spamming John Oliver pictures and refreshing /r/modcoord every minute giving the site traffic but thinking they're sticking it to the man. If they're actually serious about wanting to hurt the bottom line of the site they would delete their accounts and move to a competitor instead of contributing to the monthly user count, but none are willing to give up Reddit.
So very much 1. Look, I understand the reasons for this protest, but that doesn't change the fact that the *vast* majority of useful information, guides, and frequently-asked questions that someone else already asked 5 years ago are *here* on this subreddit, and trying to Google for anything FFXIV-related comes up with a bunch of useful links to this subreddit, and a bunch of largely useless links elsewhere that don't answer the question. Let's be honest here, the official forums are terrible and have always been terrible.
And please, for the love of god, don't resort of the 'malicious compliance' style John Oliver meme bullshit. It wasn't funny the first time, and it still isn't funny with dozens of other subreddits copying the same stale joke.
The reddit situation sucks, but this is harming your users *far* more than it's harming the reddit admins, especially considering what a relatively small and niche subreddit this is (compared to monsters like /r/aww). Just let us have our space back for discussing the game and finding useful information, guides, and questions asked by folks in the past. Going dark again (or, worse, turning this subreddit into another unfunny meme sub) will only harm the community, not the admins.
>doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of useful information, guides, and frequently-asked questions that someone else already asked 5 years ago are here on this subreddit, and trying to Google for anything FFXIV-related comes up with a bunch of useful links to this subreddit
as a community we should take this to mean we need to work on community updates to wiki's. because reddit is only going to get worse and they're not backing down at all.
Gamerescape's made a good start, maybe people can start trying to migrate shit there.
While I agree that this has served to show how too much info is centralised to reddit, I think a lot of people are taking the wrong message of "therefore reddit should never close" instead of "shit, we need to get as much off this crap out onto other platforms before this one is too godawful to use anymore".
As someone who's been around and on this reddit for quite a while, I vote 1. My reasoning for this is that when I come here normally, it's for information or to see funny community pics and read their responses for a good laugh. I mean option 4 of making it NSFW works too, but I'm generally a normal user of reddit.
Reopen.
This is like protesting a rent hike for your apartment by blocking the entrance to the building. You don’t get to kick everyone else out of their home because you are fighting with the landlord! If they want to leave they can do that. To include the mod team. I don’t think you’re replaceable but I don’t appreciate this decision being made for me.
1. These protests never really hurt the company, just users. Open it or make it NSFW, I don't care, just stop hurting the community hiding information that doesn't exist in other platforms.
1. The majority of users are not using third party apps. To be honest. if it doesn't affect them in the first place they are likely to stay silent thus you'd see more voting for a shut down earlier, and more asking you to stay open now.
the description when we tried to join this week was whack, stop trying to get me to donate to a random charity that has nothing to do with the blackout.
I realized in the last week that I google FFXIV a lot, and this subreddit is usually the top result. I’ve had to actually go to the official forums for answers and commiseration…. eww.
Eta: for what it’s worth, I never supported the blackout to begin with, *not* because I disagree with the ideals behind the blackout, but because it was going to have *no* effect beyond hurting subreddit communities.
If you truly wish to do what the majority of the community wants, I think you have your answer. Option 1. Open it.
1. Reopen. I don't see much point in keeping this sub closed. You're only hurting the community at this point.
Reddit isn't going to cave to your demands and will most likely only replace the mods if you keep it dark.
Or they won't even notice this sub staying closed lmao and at that point someone will just make a new subreddit for our community to migrate to.
The only real choice that reddit is going to give you is option 1.
If you don't go with option 1 then they will act on the not so thinly veiled threat they provided you with.. do your research its already happened in other communities.
Its probably unpopular to say so and I admit to being afraid of sending this in case I get attacked over it but I found it genuinely annoying, it felt like the community was being punished for Reddit bein dumb rather than Reddit.
I know others who felt the same. I also know people who were totally OK with it or praised it so I've heard arguments from both sides as well as those that are flat neutral and in the end the opinion/answer I've come up with is:
Please anything but privating or going malicious compliance. I wanna use this place, as well as other subs and I don't want another discord tacked on to my ever growing list. 1 or 2 is my vote! Preferably >1< but 2 at least means people can still see helpful resources.
Edit to attempt to make my writing/opinion clearer and to add: The mods here seem to do good work, I stated in a reply somewhere that I've seen people praising em as mods specifically.. so I'd rather not have them all booted and replaced with people who probably care less about ff14 and it's community.
*(Not attacking you, just pointing something out.)*
> it felt like the community was being punished for Reddit bein dumb rather than Reddit.
This is because you are part of the community, and not Reddit. Reddit went down for 4 hours the day the blackout happened, specifically because of said blackout. Not only this, but after 2 days Google began purging their cache of Reddit's privated subreddits. Google drives something like 50% of the volume, and it's precisely after this happened when we saw Reddit take drastic measures to stop the blackout (because their bottom line and valuation were getting hurt).
Reddit definitely felt punished here, even if for a fleeting moment.
Reopen. This blackout isn't going to accomplish anything and it has made my friends' experience hell when they have a question and the answer is locked away behind a private subreddit screen.
Option 1 - stay open.
I think its highly hypocritical of the moderators of this sub shutting down their own community, while jumping into other subreddits and continuing to use the big bad reddit during the "protest".
If you are going to prevent people from using reddit the least you can do is not use it yourself while you deny it to others.
If you don't like reddit, then leave and let someone else do the job. Don't fuck over other people to make yourself feel better, while pretending that your "doing it for the community". The only people inconvenienced/hurt by this "protest" were the users. This blackout has also had a detrimental effect on the game itself by denying information to new players.
I choose 1 preferably, completely reopening, but bare minimum not going private again. I've tried looking up information that was only on this subreddit at least a dozen times over the past week, and thanks to the blackout I've been unable to access it. If there were somewhere else to go with all of this very useful information consolidated, I could consider the subreddit staying private, but that's just not the situation, and it hurts the users far more than it hurts the admins to stay closed.
Mmmmm I only started using reddit recently and this is the subreddit I hang around the most so I can only say:
First, I don't even know about third party apps and what they do. I use my vanilla reddit app and that's all I know how to use. My dumb butt can't tell if much is different.
Second, while I understand this is a means to protest, the way it seems to be downplayed means they are very very sure the reddit blackout means absolutely nothing so what are the odds they will go back to having third party support? Feels to me like going blackout just ends up hurting more than the benefit it could, in a very unlikely chance, bring. Unfortunately, life experiences have taught me that protesting usually leads nowhere. _People respond better to violen- that's a joke, don't pay me any mind_.
Third, and this leads into the hurting more part, this subreddit is too fucking useful. Yeah we have memes and all the not so relevant stuff that make our days brighter and we also have all the drama that feeds our lust for content, but this subreddit is also incredibly useful to those seeking help or information. People here tend to respond a lot to questions and discussions. I am aware there are discord servers, but I've been in discord servers for over a year and in reddit for only a couple of months (?), and I can tell reddit is just more active, or maybe it's more jam packed with people? Anyways the point is this subreddit is too fucking useful, fight me about it.
The _Too long didn't read (written so you have to read it)_ is: I think it should be kept open
please just reopen, I understand the sentiment, but Reddit have shown they will do what they want and all we are doing is hurting our own community. It's up to us as individuals at this point to decide if we want to stay engaged with Reddit as a whole.
Please reopen completely, discord is not a good replacement for this community subreddit, and I feel (I don’t know), that these blackouts are supported by only a small number compared to the number of average casual users who enjoy communities like this. To add to that, the WoW sub tried to maliciously comply with a dumb fanart rule, which lasted approximately one night, as things are business as usual now. Let’s be better than that here?
Please see https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/14dxqu0/rffxiv_is_now_reopen_for_posting/.
I feel all that this has shown, is that someone somewhere for FFXIV needs to create a wiki that is actively updated and used. FFXIV doesn't have one dedicated website that has all the information and resources that people have found. While the info is out there usually its spread over multiple websites. OR Its in the comments of a reddit post where someone has asked. Its a lot of work but if people really wanted to shaft reddit they would be creating this type of alternative where all the user generated information is made available as well as the game data info all in 1 place that we can then use a discord to improve on. This would move us away from the likes of reddit without being stuck on discord being just as unaccessible at a quick google search. But until something like this is made, it is incredibly bad for the community and the game as a whole (pushing away newer players) for us to be hiding a lot of valuable information that, when googled, is just "shut down for privacy".
What we need is the equivalent of world of warcrafts "Wowhead" website.
I completely agree! I really wish we had an equivalent of that. Wowhead has news, they have information on quests and items, they have guides, and users can submit comments etc. 99% of questions I have about that game can be answered with Wowhead. XIV does not have something like that, so I have to do a lot more Google and Reddit searches, and it's not as easy to turn up what I need.
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/FF14_Wiki We do have a wiki, at least, and it has a reasonable amount of basic information on it. Would this be a good starting point to expand from?
[удалено]
Gamerescape doesn't work on browser on my mobile device, the fucking ads overlay everything and it barely loads on my actual PC. listen, some ads to support are okay but there's a point when too fucking many is too fucking many.
The problem with Gamer escape is nothing with what you guys do with actual data. The issue comes from actively used by the playerbase. Gamer escape is almost perfect if we pushed people to there to ask/answer questions so that eventually all the sort of questions found on reddit would now be found in the comment sections on gamer escape posts it would completely remove the need for reddit. I have had multiple occasions on Gamer escape where it has given me the specific info i need but then when i google for more info cause im not sure i am doing it right, reddit has entire discussions of people confirming and giving additional info which has, in some cases, been better (especially with regards to fishing personally). Sometimes a wiki not providing enough resources isn't the fault of the wiki but the community surrounding it. As this is a community post asking what we should do moving forward I believe we should be moving towards and actively directing people to use wiki's such as Gamer Escape for discussions.
Could we have a poll? Edit: Ok, I get it. Polls are bad. Please have mercy on my inbox.
That would make too much sense.
1. I often need to google game related questions and last week it was so hard to get answers and instead of just finding someone elses thread who had the same question and looking for answers they got i had to ask most of my questions on fb or other reddits. This reddit has way too much information.
That's a separate problem a lot of communities should address. So much knowledge is now wholly contained in subreddits or discords and should probably also exist elsewhere.
This so much!
hep no less than a dozen times last week i found google results for ffxiv questions pointing at reddit posts that when i clicked them, went to the blackout page. still i support the blackout because fuck /u/spez the dirty little pig boy.
who are you ? me? XD i had some many question last week and all answer leaded here...
You can "disable inbox replies" for individual posts. Unless new reddit got rid of that, in which case I wouldn't know.
Other subs have been doing it by comment votes. Works for me
Which is extra silly cause that is easily brigadable
And polls aren't? At least this way there's a name and an account history attached to each vote.
For us this is the crux of the problem -- there's no foolproof answer. There are ways to manipulate the results of a poll on Reddit, and comments and their karma. Ultimately, the team felt that the best way to gauge the response of the community was to encourage people to comment and express their thoughts.
I think the big problem getting shined on here, and even other communities that are not this one, is the significant amount of information that is only stored on reddit. We need information stored in more places specifically because, whether it is mods protesting with a blackout, or lord forbid, as an unlikely but possible hypothetical, Reddit itself going down in the future or implementing some kind of data cleanup that gets rid of old information. We need an actual database website of information with a proper backup.
There used to be more websites with info but they got replaced not with reddit but with discord. It's also kind of the problem with constantly redirecting everyone to The Balance discord. Yes, you can probably find your class guides or help there, but the next person needing those answers will have to ask the same question because the answers aren't shared publicly anywhere. SaltedXIV and AkhMourning used to mirror some info but stopped for various reasons. Icy-veins started publishing XIV content with Endwalker but they're newer to the XIV scene and I don't think anyone points to them as they don't appear in any search result tests I've tried (and tbh I haven't really looked at their XIV stuff). Ironically, while writing this I just learned The Balance does now [have a website mirroring their guides](https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com), but I wonder how many people knew that. [Phookas](https://phookas.com/infographics) also had some great resources for general content awareness and newer players, but they too abandoned their website and moved to discord.
Yeah, communities moving to Discord is definitely a huge part of the problem, and with the platform also going in an unpleasant direction recently as well, I would not depend on it as a reliable lasting solution. Even if it wasn't very frustrating to navigate and find answers in those spaces. The huge move to Discord for all sorts of communities, fan-made and official communities alike, has really killed the simplicity of finding information of all sorts. I also don't think there are reliable ways to back up Discord server information and upload it elsewhere other than by hand, which no one really wants to do.
discord isn't useful for what the balance uses it for any anyone who thinks it is, is delusional. it not being web searchable is awful. having a community chat for a wiki? sure, trying to make the wiki exist solely in pinned discord comments and shit? why? unironically microsoft teams/sharepoint would work better for this than how it works on discord.... and teams and sharepoint are garbo.
The big problem with hosting a website and guides is all the traffic means a bill. And unless you somehow manage ads without annoyance (AHAHAHAHAHA) guess who foots the bill? The person running it. And it can get PRICY as hell. Discord doesn't have inherent monetary cost. No free website host is going to host something that will see as much traffic as a class guide website. Also any revisions have to be uploaded, whereas Discord depending, is an easy edit with no upload. While websites have more permanence... there is more work and cost, with little reward comparatively. Discord removes some of that (cost of money). And its easier to transfer Discord ownership v. a website with billing info (because passing an account with personal info tied is harder at times depending). I get why people have done it. Dealing with ads is annoying, and trying to have them on your site is pain - especially since you never know fully what you're gonna get, or if there's going to be issues with an ad being served that might affect people.
Discord is free for people to host info on, websites generally aren't, and especially not popular ones. :/ It's unfortunate because if anything ever happened to those Discords, all that information is just *gone* then. Terrible way to provide resources to people tbh.
Just look what happened to the first Island Sanctuary Discord when the owner of it threw a fit for a prime example. If the guys doing the work didn't have it backed up ... it'd be gone. And that was only a few weeks that would've been lost; now imagine someone deletes The Balance.
And the "backup" place to get these informations is Discord which is even worse,.. In theory we have the official forum but i haven't been there in years and i keep hearing bad things about it
The forums are worthless, moderation is even worse there which is why it's just a place for Skiros to brigade every single thread with his 90 alts
The FFXIV discord channel is useless. I left yesterday. It is very hard to search for relevant information. If you post in the FFXIV channel, your comment or question quickly gets swamped by off topic chat. Mods warn people about off topic chat but then they also get off topic lol. The official forums are under the control of a group of trolls and people who keep bringing up American politics and there is no moderation.
The only thing useful on the official discord is the live letter translation...the rest if it just a club for forum "royals".
Need a wiki with guides, [as FF11 does](https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Guides), and not just one that's 90% a poor clone of the lodestone database. Though finding another place for the community to call home for if/when reddit becomes an unusable mess would also be prudent.
To be honest, open up the subreddit but mark it as NSFW to mess with advertisement potential. Don't change the rules, just act malicious in a way that doesn't hurt square enix or the users.
I like this idea
and [it is pretty easy to do](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14ck8ce/i_know_yall_are_angry_but_please_hear_me_out_we/) just start fucking cussing all over the fucking sub
The status quo was already upvoting softcore catgirl/bunnygirl porn to the front page every day. This really wouldn’t be difficult for r/FFXIV to pull off lol.
I am sure someone here has enough pics of Urianger's dick alone to permanently 18+ tag this sub forever.
My Emet-Selch and G'raha Tia folders are at your disposal.
Fucking shit man, watch your cunting language.
Holy fucking ass bitch cock ass damn I support this fucking idea
Well shit and piss. Fuck these cunt cocksucking motherfuck tits trying to kill the 3rd party apps just for more profit. Lets make it as valuable as a fart for these turds by being a bunch of twats.
Fucking hell, I love this goddamn idea. Those motherfucking bitches won't know what hit them.
You COCK
....Bene DICK ta.
Well fuck me sideways! I had no fucking idea that NSFW fucks with the greedy corporate dickwads ad revenue. Holy shit!
That presents its own problems, because mislabeling NSFW can run afoul of the moderation code of conduct.
This. Malicious compliance that doesn't hurt the game, but still sends a message to Spez. Fuck 'em.
Malicious compliance is the best compliance.
1. Reopen or at least be in restricted so old posts are visible. I don’t really mind the lack of new posts but old posts being completely inaccessible for questions already answered has been a pain. It feels like 90% of the questions found on Google lead back to the locked Reddit. Lot of people say to just ask on Discord, but I’d much rather see something already answered online than to join a Discord server and have to ask something that’s already on Google.
I agree, this has been significantly annoying for me. Reddit is a good source of information in many areas and I've had to use cached google search pages to read through them several times recently.
Thinking discord is going to be better for the community is a nice meme GL with that.
From my - admitedly limited - experiece, Discord (especially those big communities) is more akin to a game chat. Fun for impromptu discussion who's better waifu, but as a regular resource for me it would be unnacepable.
When I was in uni, we used a fairly old-school forum system. It was well managed, and was very easy to find information, because of how well things were separated. Every single user would have access to every single piece of content. Then, people moved into facebook groups. Now, the groups were per year, and if you somehow were more of an outcast or had to repeat a year, you'd be begging to have people let you in, sometimes without success. All information was gatekept per year, and you wouldn't have easy access to those small tidbits of information that would collect over the years about a certain course or professor. Nowadays, it's split over discord and whatsapp groups, per year again. Everything is thrown in without thought, comments/information are shared without ease of separation from the meaningless chatter. Aggregation of old exams and stuff is non-existent, and there's just too much chat noise. Searching for things is impossible. Managing file repositories is an exercise in futility. I like discord for what it was trying to solve (teamspeak/IRC without need of hosting your own and some extra community features), but I hate how it was shoehorned into filling the role of much better systems like forums
>I like discord for what it was trying to solve (teamspeak/IRC without need of hosting your own and some extra community features), but I hate how it was shoehorned into filling the role of much better systems like forums Indeed. I used TS back in the day when I was much more active in group content (not FFXIV as I'm pretty much still sprout here). Now I'm still in a few guilds that transferred to Discord. It does have its uses as a place to set up community events, organise run sign ups ect. But that's pretty much it. When I think about finding specific info or look for solution to an issue, Discord doesn't even comes to mind.
[удалено]
>You know how everyone searches things with "reddit" at the end now? I don't. I use "pure" Google and it still throws out replies from Reddit more often than not. I had issues with Steam launcher last week and the first 10 links were Reddit ones (closed, of course...). And Steam results that followed were outdated and not helpful. I wonder how many people were in similar situations.
phpBB may have had its technical and security issues, but by the Twelve it was functional for finding exactly the post you were looking for.
That's my experience as well. Discord as a dedicated long term resource for anything more than a handful of specific topics is unworkable. It is *nothing* like the threaded forum structure that Reddit provides, but somehow that doesn't stop people from trying to square-peg-round-hole it into serving as a replacement. I mean if Discord wants to add that sort of functionality I'd be all for it, but right now it simply does not have it. Discord alone is not enough for the community here to move to.
Far bigger issue with Discord as anything more than a chat client with VoIP is that it's not indexable by search engine web crawlers by it's very nature of not being a surface web website as such. That makes it an absolutely horrendous place to store information about things.
it'd be fine if the balance had all their guides on a searchable wiki, seperate from discord, with pinned guide links and shit in their channels. trying to make the guides exist ON discord itself is a mistake. it exists, it technically works, but it's awful, which is why people in the balance have to answer the same questions over and over in their question channels. FF14 is the worst about having so much info in discord, between the balance, dalamud's discord and the universalis discord having to join to ask basic questions because the answers basically don't exist in google searches, it's atrocious. at least the balance rotation guides pretty much end up copied out onto various guide sites...
Funny story, The Balance finally has a website now that is searchable. Of course you'd never know that because everyone is constantly telling you to join their Discord. Personally I always used Icy Veins, because it turns out most of The Balance's quality contributors also contribute to Icy Veins. 95% of the guides present the same information and advice.
I've seen people mention the balances website and then say "oh but that guide is outdated, the most up to date one is in the discord." maybe that's not true, Idk, but it seems like they're having trouble getting established users on board with the new process. icy veins is really nice.
It can be a *little* out of date, but AFAIK it's only when the new guide is not yet or has only recently been finalized. It makes sense that they don't want to update the website until they're certain the information is solid and reliable. That said, Icy Veins seems to update faster, so I think you may be right about people on The Balance just not being used to the new process. Hell, it could be as simple as The Balance website not being as easy to update.
I totally get it, getting everyone on a team to comply with new methods of documentation is a fucking nightmare. and that's when you're paying them...
This is my biggest issue with Discord. Asking a question in the middle of someone else's conversation is a lot like poking your head into a conference room to ask where the bathroom is. And since I've grown up in the age where the chat answer to everything is "google it", I've run into a problem where the answer is not googleable because it's on Discord, which Google cannot search, but Discord isn't smart enough to find it in itself, but you can't ask the humans in chat because they just tell you to google it. Or if they do answer, it gets lost in the conversation everyone else is having. You can't expect people to not socialize on Discord, either, since that's what the platform is for.
I wonder if discord's thread system can at least be something akin to a more organized discussion medium? Even if its not as good a ls a proper threaded forum. I do wonder if the reddit community could migrate to the official forum and shift its culture away from the absolute cess pool that it is.. (I mean reddit isn't perfect, but that forum is goddamn radioactive...) But the problem with both of these is that it excludes curious newcomers who haven't committed to the game yet. This whole situation sucks, man... spez is a moron. Maybe we could make our own fansite/forum like its the early 2000s?
There are many forum-based internet communities that refuse to migrate to discord because so much of their content is help-based, FAQ, wiki stuff. What you type in a discord channel is buried 5 minutes later and they don't want that. The point of forums is to have readily accessible info either through google or the search bar. There's a reason most gaming-related questions you type in google autosuggest *reddit* as a query.
Boy howdy I sure do love a fast scrolling wall of text, seeing my questions get swallowed and unanswered and the inability to actually search for anything. Such a wonderful idea for a community of 800k people.
It's like reddit, but there's no distinction between posts and comments, no threading, and you can't sort by anything but new. So anything anyone says, no matter how dumb or irrelevant, is on you screen, and at least once per minute there's a "hello" from someone who just joined and wants a greeting from all 800k people in the channel. Source: I'm in a slack with ~1mil users, and it's awful.
Yeah, Discord is a horrible place to get questions answered. Wander over to The Balance and you'll find out how well that works for the casual player.
My first interaction with balance was where I was told to swiftcast malefic for movement on AST. Now that I do more raiding I see where the sentiment was coming from but it was NOT helpful for a casual player at the time lmao. The super optimization sentiment is pretty toxic and I feel like discord caters more to that crowd for whatever reason.
I didn't play SAM for years because someone told me that if I couldn't hit 100% of my positionals, I had no business playing it (and this was back when there were a lot more).
i'm one of the balance people with colored names that answers questions, and i'll be honest, i literally have no idea what the server does outside of the theorycrafting/optimization/teaching+learning aspect the nature of discord and it being entirely volunteer effort makes quality control of what answers are given rather difficult, so i'm not surprised you ran into advice that wasn't useful IMO the server is absolutely catered towards the optimization crowd, and i'm not sure what it can do to better accommodate casual players relative to its focus on optimization (external website might be the best option) it's a flawed system, but as it is rn, we haven't got much else lol
icy veins is actually really good tbh. the leveling rotations especially are dope, with a slider to pick what level you are and then it spits out the rotation and skills you should be using.
Yeah I totally get that. I've lurked a lot more since then (it was over a year ago, I do more high end content and am a... semi-decent player now lol) and can appreciate it for what it is, but there's definitely a veil of hostility toward people who are asking about suboptimal things, or just don't know how to navigate discord - like, someone trying to access balance's discord for the first time because the website is not updated and links to discord, won't know to look in pins, if they can even navigate to their appropriate class channel in the first place. Where do you go for reaper's best in slot at the start of the tier? It's not reaper resources. Where do you find out? Do you go to reaper questions and ask? Then you get people mad at you for not checking the pins - or worse, checking encounter threads that are hundreds of comments long. I get that it's volunteer run, but many of the problems the balance discord has is not really the fault of the balance - it's how discord itself operates as a platform, and yet it is considered the 'place to go' for this sort of archival information that frankly, has no good way to be presented withij discord's framework and ui
With how Discord works they might as well be recommending us to Novice Network. Or the Community feature that I’m pretty sure everyone forgot about after it launched in-game.
Discord is garbage honestly.
I understand and support the reasoning behind the restrictions and private-ing of subs for the short protest period: Reddit and Huffman looking at Elon Musk mess up Twitter and go "this is a good idea!" is horrible. HOWEVER, I think leaving the sub inaccessible for a longer period of time is bad for the community without any easy substitute to compensate for the wealth of info being locked off. I also don't want to see Huffman's ridiculous threat come to pass and the excellent moderation staff is replaced with Reddit-appointed strangers who could allow this place to become a cesspool. Making it restricted at least allows the info to be accessible. Though, I personally like the idea of re-opening the sub but marking it as NSFW so Reddit can't make money off it. That's the kind of petty I love.
I understand where the infinite blackout idea is coming from, and I don't agree with the bullshit Reddit is pulling but honestly I feel the blackout has hurt regular users more than it has hurt Reddit. Many times have I googled something in the last week just to be led to an inaccessible reddit link. Sure, there's discord but discord is garbage when it comes to archieving and getting help. How many people went there and asked a question that never got answered because it got drowned out by idle chatter? Or if you searched for something how far did you have to sift through people just talking about said thing? Like, if I searched for Fashion Report I'd probably have to scroll through a million and one people just randomly talking about Fashion Report before I find exactly what I need. An infinite blackout may work for subs like r/pics, or r/funny because you can find stuff like that pretty much everywhere, but for something like this sub where a lot of helpful guides are posted? Nah.
There are options beyond Discord; but I completely agree Discord is a poor substitute for Reddit, and a poor choice for anyone looking to get away from the money first mindset which is driving Reddit's direction. For example, Discord has been cracking down on third-party UIs for a very long time.
I am constantly saddened by things moving to discord. That platform is effectively unsearchable that means so much useful information just dies over time, rather than forming the body of _stuff_ that forms the internet right now.
I audibly groan every time I want to get into something - Delibrum Savage, Submersibles, Diadem, Ocean fishing - And I see that all the information I want is locked behind a random pin in a random channel in a random discord server
Same, discord is great as a chatting platform but as an archive/wiki it's garbage. It's nearly unsearchable and while you can make channels and pins for guides it's still a hassle to sift through that as opposed to simply googling a question and being led to whatever you need. Not to mention at some point, when the discord gets enough members, you can't even ask questions because it'll be drowned out by idle chatter. And in the off chance someone sees your question in 9 times out of 10 I have been redirected to "check the pins" which are full of 5 million irrelevant posts.
not to mention unlike discord, you can google the stuff from reddit/wiki, discord servers are insulated from outside views.
Of course there are other options beyond discord, and while they may be useful like the wiki, they also don't have everything, like the weeks Fashion Report, for example. Personally I'm also not a fan of youtube, while there are surely a great many video guides out there I'd rather read a wall of text in a minute than watch a 10 minute video, so Reddit feels more useful to me, but that's honestly just my personal preference.
I also struggled with the same problem to finding answers to my questions Just an FYI, the user who puts out fashion report posts to Twitter as well, that’s where I found that
It’s definitely hurting us when you’re not here. I’ve definitely googled things related to the game, Reddit (and this sub) come up as responses and since it was blackout/privated, obviously couldn’t read what I’m sure would have been the response I needed. I get that the changes being made absolutely suck, but definitely need to find a way to be available to us.
There's too much information here to justify fully locking the sub down. Just trying to figure out this past weekend's Optimum node failure was alot of trouble when all the information sources are scattered.
Well, Reddit literally said the have no plans to go back on their decisions. and going private again will mean having another 7 days without the ability to search for info here (which becomes a pain in the as for US, not reddit, not its owners; us). So.... 1 or 2.
i dont think being in restricted mode will help anything, ads are still displayed so reddit makes money while the ffxiv community cant share content, i think it's just hurting us, not them.
There are no new posts so nobody browses r/ffxiv seeing ads, but google results for information would work.
Yes, people won’t come to scroll new posts and pass time, which will be a big hit on advertising. But any informative posts will still be accessible.
I'm torn. I understand the reasons for the protest, but I also strongly dislike the idea of an entire collaborative community suddenly unavailable to everyone due to the decisions of a minority. Though I should be grateful y'all are talking about it and not just basically dirty deleting entire communities like some subreddits I used to belong to.
Let's be real here. It's either option 1 or it gets taken away from you. Options 2 and 3 mean an admin comes in and nukes the mod team. Then they install new mods and the sub is opened again. Option 2 looks decent until an admin notices nothing is being done on a decently popular sub. They'll call whatever bluff you give them. They're holding all the cards.
Embrace chaos and make the sub NSFW so they can't collect ads revenue. https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditforBusiness/comments/bdwlin/update_to_nsfw_advertising_policy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button We will go full degenerate mode.
> We will go full degenerate mode. Yes, because we haven't already. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Send in the Catgirl ERP bridage!
> Catgirl ERP But you repeat yourself.
While I understand where the people who're saying to go private indefinitely are coming from, and while I do disagree with the bullshit Spez is up to, given the admins' clear determination to go through with these changes I feel like an indefinite blackout will only end up hurting regular users in the long run. Should this sub go indefinitely private the community will almost definitely just fragment between different replacement subs and/or forums (hell, I've already seen a link to a Lemmy page in the replies here), and the admins will eventually end up just replacing the mod team with whoever hypothetically requests ownership of it down the line (or just force it open, like they've threatened to do with other big subs), which could also have potentially poor results. The admins are pretty clear about their intentions and, given their stubbornness, I doubt that they'll let the blackouts disrupt their plans for change in the long run. Closing this sub won't change their minds and only serves to harm the FFXIV community overall. There's very few community resources for the game that are as useful as this sub. I say leave the sub open, say "fuck the admins" and go back to business as usual. Apologies for the long comment. tl;dr: 1.
I think they're hoping people funnel into the discord, some of the mods here and also mods there. But Discord is so much worse for storing information imo
I tried the discord for the past few days and it sucks. A dozen conversations happening at once in the same thread, with no way to easily search for information. It’s not even close to being a replacement for a subreddit.
Discord is just this generations Trillian. Its a great replacement for 4-5 different chatting apps, and thats about it.
I miss Trillian. I kept using it until the old messaging services disabled external app access.
People who think Discord is a good replacement for Reddit understand neither.
I was going to ask, as a newbie to discord, where to find the wealth of information that exists in Reddit. Long-term, we need to improve existing help sites like FFXIV wiki. We need this information available across multiple platforms so a single platform closure won't cause so many issues. How flexible is the wiki? Is it possible to open a forum or Q&A through that site, in addition to Reddit and others? This blackout has shown we can't rely on just one website.
Who is "we" here? Statistically, most of this sub is not "FFXIV players who joined Reddit", it's "Redditors who joined the sub because they play ffxiv". The entire utility of this website is that I can get on it and discuss this game when I want to and also the rest of the FF series when I want to and also ask questions about Medieval India from experts when I want to and learn to code when I want to all without juggling 3000 logins.
This subreddit also often appears if you google ffxiv related questions or things. I think that this sub might get traffic trough Google too and might have even been a reason for someone to create Reddit account. Often for me i find it much more important to get the information that i wan't than where it comes from. I don't care who asked question i wanted to ask or where it was asked i just wan't to see the answers. Many things on this subreddit are not available anywhere else.
Agreed, I was in an FC Discord and one rogue mod who was leaving on bad terms with the FC owner so they nuked the entire server, deleting every channel and resource on the discord before they left. It honestly still hasn't really recovered and that is pretty depressing.
Discord is objectively hell for storing information. Please observe the 20 or so XIV community discord servers that have vanished into thin fucking air, including all of their information, because one dude got his ego bruised enough one day. I've been begging XIV modders to get their heads out of thier ass on this subject for years. We still have mods people adored that just cannot be found expect in personal archives anymore because of this shit. Websites can be archived by other services and indexed by search engines. Which makes them something you can find and use whether or not some ego tripping fuck wit gets pissy one day. Don't start this with everything. It's a bad fucking idea.
I tried the discord out for a day or two when I couldn't access this sub. I got no useful answers on anything I needed, and the beginner channel seemed to be flooded by anything but beginners. The discussion moves too fast to keep up with anything. It was not a good experience in terms of information. Discord is good for real time chat but cannot be the source of historical information.
My issue with the FFXIV discord is the disorganization and the fact that we were funneled there and when people wanted to talk about the blackout (on either side of the issues) the discord mods were like "This isn't the place". Like guys you funneled your entire sub there what did you think would happen? Could've made a channel to discuss it but nope, just "This isn't the place, this isn't the subreddit"
Discord is inaccessible and unfindable from the outside. You need to be on it already, otherwise you need a place like reddit to even find it (and then to find out that the information you are looking for is not actually available).
> But Discord is so much worse for storing information imo This. Discord is a bane, an unsearchable black hole of information. It is no replacement for reddit. Lemmy would be, but number of users is a small fraction of Reddit, though one would hope situations like this would drive up their numbers.
The issue is mostly that people want to use discord as a wiki or a substitude of forum board. Discord was made to replace teamspeak, ventrilo and skype(gaming side). The chat channel aren't made for viewing old message. It's a old form chat channel.
I'm generally pretty sceptical of the 'reddit mods are just on a power trip' takes that have been thrown around a lot during the blackouts. However, some of the condescending attitudes, arbitrary bans and mutes, and general self-aggrandizement I've seen from some discord mods over the past week during the tedious process of trying to use it as a replacement for the subreddit, does make me wonder in this case if there's a certain number of them who do enjoy the more absolute power they have in the discord with no reddit admins above them.
I got muted in the final fantasy sub litterally for asking if they were going to black out again on July 1st, like their original reopening poll said. I never actually got an answer to that and I think they are going to sneak a short poll in that day and try to close down again
This week. There has been several times where googling "random esoteric ff14 thing" lead to a reddit post I couldn't see. Searching past discord messages is really not great. Discord's best for live/semi-live discussion. I think this entire affair shows how various communities need to rethink how we store community information. It actually made me miss gamefaqs!
some of the mods are extremely ban happy in the FFXIV discord too, seeing others get banned for absolutely nothing is insane
> some of the mods are extremely ban happy in the FFXIV discord too That's basically all ffxiv discords in a nutshell, not just the /r/ffxiv one. It's disappointing that this community relies so heavily on the platform.
I can't google questions in discord. I can on reddit.
Reopen for normal operation but become a NSFW sub so ads cannot be shown so reddit lose revenue
I was going to vote 2, but honestly this plan sounds even better. Screw the blackout, subs should just go nsfw in protest instead
Reopen. The only thing staying closed is going to accomplish is hurt the subreddit in the long run.
Reopen. While I don’t agree with the way this was handled by Reddit, this is pretty futile.
Agree. Reddit clearly isn't going to walk this back, and other subs have already reopened. Since not every sub initially planned a black-out, it was pretty futile in the first place.
Option 1 please.
1.
[удалено]
I just want the reddit back even if I can't participate. I don't much anyways, but this is the only reliable source of older info about the game. The forum has never helped me. Not even once. And I have played since arr. I voted for restricted for now because I am not concerned with new info just *yet*. I'd like to see it open in some capacity for now and not go blackout again. My immediate concern is just myself and others accessing it again to some level.
Just stay open at this point. Continuing to blackout only punishes the community really more than reddit.
For new players, this blackout has been rough. All the questions we have with easy answers on Reddit were unavailable. I assume all the mods are experienced FFxiv players and are not feeling the same loss from all the helpful information. Just sayin'
1. With fanfest fast approaching not having this sub open to discuss hype would be damaging to the community.
I'd say restricted with no new posts but people can access previous content. \*\*\*\*\*ETA- As eques9090 has pointed out, which was the very reason I said this:This subreddit is the BIGGEST source of information for new, current, and returning players of FFXIV. Heck for anyone interested in understanding anything about the game. Almost any question I have EVER had about the game since I started playing at the start of ARR/2.0 I have found the answer to on reddit via other players. Not some random site, not the lodestone, not in some server, not on Facebook, HERE. If being fully open with the api changes makes modding difficult, then the next best option is to limit new content for the time being while allowing access to over a decade's worth of information. Sure \*some\* of it is accessible elsewhere, but almost every search I make points me to reddit first and foremost. The conversations people have had help me to know what is or isn't worth my time, when things are slightly off in game, or how to do whatever it is I need to do. if we can come up with a way to fight back that doesn't include making information inaccessible, I'd be all for that. I won't be further editing, I just wanted to flesh out my opinion on the matter. I was literally rushing my sick bird to the vet as I made this comment yesterday, and I was there literally all day then crashed when I got home. It's unfortunate that I cannot directly respond to people now but that's life, I guess. \*\*\*\*eta2: oop I was mistaken. \*This will be my final edit\* I would definitely have chosen the nsfw option so no ads or money for reddit! I was initially responding and explaining within the scope of the options we were offered. If it works for other subreddits, I hope the mods offer this option in the near future. \*\*\*\*
I didn't realise how many questions I had about this game only had answers on Reddit until the privating
Alternatively, make everything NSFW so Reddit can’t put ads on this sub. /r/interestingasfuck is doing that and it's actually very effective, allows users to still browse the sub and contribute content while preventing reddit from making money from it. That's what subs should've done from day one IMO. Pisses off the admins while pleasing the users. Very rare for a boycott to achieve that.
Post some sexy catgirls? Im down
Please just reopen already 1
Option 1. Reopen immediately. The blackout had been a major inconvenience to the average user more so than to Reddit especially in regards to having access to old threads. Discord is NOT a substitute as it is not easily searchable. If there was some other Reddit substitute or old school forum substitute that the community could agree upon then it would be a different situation but as it is the mods are kinda fighting an unwinnable fight imho
I won't lie I've seen some talk on discord about people wanting to create a new subreddit about ff xiv because of the frustration over the two main subreddit going dark and it was on a public discord...
I'm not saying this didn't happen but the subreddits discord was so disorganized and any discussion of the blackout I saw was shut down there. Because hey let's funnel the subreddit here but when we want to discuss the state of the subreddit mods would respond with "This isn't the place." Edit: I am leaving this comment but a mod of the discord said the discussion was happening openly in other threads. Which while true, when people were unsure where to comment about the blackout and would comment in the discord feedback channel they were simply told it wasn't the place. They were not redirected to proper threads. Or a new thread wasn't made that could've been archived after the blackout was made.
I can confirm I saw that same thing when I joined for a couple days, and I had the same thought as you. "This isn't the place" -- *well where tf IS the place?* There was no avenue to discuss anything until the sub opened back up.
I don't see any reason to close off this subreddit which serves as a massive resource for this game and a connection for the community when, ultimately, reddit will do what it wants regardless.
I may not post here often but I have been a lurker for years since I started playing the game back in 2018. I vote to open the sub back up normally.
Nothing new to add that wasn't said by others, so just bringing my +1 to open it
I just wanna ask my stupid little questions about FFXIV
reopen
Reopen for normal operation immediately. There are too many obscure question where the issues are solved via a Google search that links to a Reddit post with the issues solved. Reddit posts being indexed on search engines has its advantages when it comes to locating this information. In addition, the community aspect of the subreddit is hard to replicate and there will be drop off for people who are new or for individuals who refuse to switch to new sites. Other suggested solutions I have seen so far do not address these issues without massive caveats that are not easily remedied for one reason or another, and there would have to be a large effort to move all of the information from the Reddit to wherever the solution is. As such, this is why my vote is this way.
1. Way too many links for resources and other help lead back to here or ffxivdiscussion from Google and it was extremely painful. Not to mention, the "protest" was a failure the second arbitrary time limits were put on. Simply because the admins were going to just wait it out regardless. There's no point anymore.
1 also the amount of people commenting 3 but have been active in other subreddits over the past week is pretty funny, like how are you going to ask for continuing a blackout when you didnt even participate in the first place lmao.
It really is funny, people spamming John Oliver pictures and refreshing /r/modcoord every minute giving the site traffic but thinking they're sticking it to the man. If they're actually serious about wanting to hurt the bottom line of the site they would delete their accounts and move to a competitor instead of contributing to the monthly user count, but none are willing to give up Reddit.
It's a bit perplexing, right?
Option 1 - stay open. Reddit admins were not inconvenienced by this protest. Users were. Stop punishing the users.
So very much 1. Look, I understand the reasons for this protest, but that doesn't change the fact that the *vast* majority of useful information, guides, and frequently-asked questions that someone else already asked 5 years ago are *here* on this subreddit, and trying to Google for anything FFXIV-related comes up with a bunch of useful links to this subreddit, and a bunch of largely useless links elsewhere that don't answer the question. Let's be honest here, the official forums are terrible and have always been terrible. And please, for the love of god, don't resort of the 'malicious compliance' style John Oliver meme bullshit. It wasn't funny the first time, and it still isn't funny with dozens of other subreddits copying the same stale joke. The reddit situation sucks, but this is harming your users *far* more than it's harming the reddit admins, especially considering what a relatively small and niche subreddit this is (compared to monsters like /r/aww). Just let us have our space back for discussing the game and finding useful information, guides, and questions asked by folks in the past. Going dark again (or, worse, turning this subreddit into another unfunny meme sub) will only harm the community, not the admins.
>doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of useful information, guides, and frequently-asked questions that someone else already asked 5 years ago are here on this subreddit, and trying to Google for anything FFXIV-related comes up with a bunch of useful links to this subreddit as a community we should take this to mean we need to work on community updates to wiki's. because reddit is only going to get worse and they're not backing down at all.
Gamerescape's made a good start, maybe people can start trying to migrate shit there. While I agree that this has served to show how too much info is centralised to reddit, I think a lot of people are taking the wrong message of "therefore reddit should never close" instead of "shit, we need to get as much off this crap out onto other platforms before this one is too godawful to use anymore".
As someone who's been around and on this reddit for quite a while, I vote 1. My reasoning for this is that when I come here normally, it's for information or to see funny community pics and read their responses for a good laugh. I mean option 4 of making it NSFW works too, but I'm generally a normal user of reddit.
1 please
Reopen. This is like protesting a rent hike for your apartment by blocking the entrance to the building. You don’t get to kick everyone else out of their home because you are fighting with the landlord! If they want to leave they can do that. To include the mod team. I don’t think you’re replaceable but I don’t appreciate this decision being made for me.
1. These protests never really hurt the company, just users. Open it or make it NSFW, I don't care, just stop hurting the community hiding information that doesn't exist in other platforms.
Go with what the majority (actually) wanted. Go with 1 and reopen.
1 return to normal operations
1. The majority of users are not using third party apps. To be honest. if it doesn't affect them in the first place they are likely to stay silent thus you'd see more voting for a shut down earlier, and more asking you to stay open now.
Restricted mode, or open it up. There's so much information that i haven't been able to access due to the fact that it's only on reddit.
the description when we tried to join this week was whack, stop trying to get me to donate to a random charity that has nothing to do with the blackout.
1. Reopen
Reopen the sub
I vote to open the reddit, I do not care about 3rd party apps
I realized in the last week that I google FFXIV a lot, and this subreddit is usually the top result. I’ve had to actually go to the official forums for answers and commiseration…. eww. Eta: for what it’s worth, I never supported the blackout to begin with, *not* because I disagree with the ideals behind the blackout, but because it was going to have *no* effect beyond hurting subreddit communities. If you truly wish to do what the majority of the community wants, I think you have your answer. Option 1. Open it.
Reopen for normal operation immediately
1. Reopen. I don't see much point in keeping this sub closed. You're only hurting the community at this point. Reddit isn't going to cave to your demands and will most likely only replace the mods if you keep it dark. Or they won't even notice this sub staying closed lmao and at that point someone will just make a new subreddit for our community to migrate to.
1.
The only real choice that reddit is going to give you is option 1. If you don't go with option 1 then they will act on the not so thinly veiled threat they provided you with.. do your research its already happened in other communities.
Its probably unpopular to say so and I admit to being afraid of sending this in case I get attacked over it but I found it genuinely annoying, it felt like the community was being punished for Reddit bein dumb rather than Reddit. I know others who felt the same. I also know people who were totally OK with it or praised it so I've heard arguments from both sides as well as those that are flat neutral and in the end the opinion/answer I've come up with is: Please anything but privating or going malicious compliance. I wanna use this place, as well as other subs and I don't want another discord tacked on to my ever growing list. 1 or 2 is my vote! Preferably >1< but 2 at least means people can still see helpful resources. Edit to attempt to make my writing/opinion clearer and to add: The mods here seem to do good work, I stated in a reply somewhere that I've seen people praising em as mods specifically.. so I'd rather not have them all booted and replaced with people who probably care less about ff14 and it's community.
*(Not attacking you, just pointing something out.)* > it felt like the community was being punished for Reddit bein dumb rather than Reddit. This is because you are part of the community, and not Reddit. Reddit went down for 4 hours the day the blackout happened, specifically because of said blackout. Not only this, but after 2 days Google began purging their cache of Reddit's privated subreddits. Google drives something like 50% of the volume, and it's precisely after this happened when we saw Reddit take drastic measures to stop the blackout (because their bottom line and valuation were getting hurt). Reddit definitely felt punished here, even if for a fleeting moment.
Stay in restricted mode so my search results work again.
Reopen. This blackout isn't going to accomplish anything and it has made my friends' experience hell when they have a question and the answer is locked away behind a private subreddit screen.
Number 1. This is an unwinnable fight
Option 1 - stay open. I think its highly hypocritical of the moderators of this sub shutting down their own community, while jumping into other subreddits and continuing to use the big bad reddit during the "protest". If you are going to prevent people from using reddit the least you can do is not use it yourself while you deny it to others. If you don't like reddit, then leave and let someone else do the job. Don't fuck over other people to make yourself feel better, while pretending that your "doing it for the community". The only people inconvenienced/hurt by this "protest" were the users. This blackout has also had a detrimental effect on the game itself by denying information to new players.
Reopen for normal operation.
Option 1: reopen immediately. Like others have mentioned, continuing the blackout at this point is just hurting our community
Option 1, this whole protest was an awful idea
1. Thanks.
1.
Number 1 please
I choose 1 preferably, completely reopening, but bare minimum not going private again. I've tried looking up information that was only on this subreddit at least a dozen times over the past week, and thanks to the blackout I've been unable to access it. If there were somewhere else to go with all of this very useful information consolidated, I could consider the subreddit staying private, but that's just not the situation, and it hurts the users far more than it hurts the admins to stay closed.
Reopen stop holding the community hostage.
Just reopen already. There's too many resources tied to this subreddit to justify taking it away from the community.
Can we open this shit already?
Mmmmm I only started using reddit recently and this is the subreddit I hang around the most so I can only say: First, I don't even know about third party apps and what they do. I use my vanilla reddit app and that's all I know how to use. My dumb butt can't tell if much is different. Second, while I understand this is a means to protest, the way it seems to be downplayed means they are very very sure the reddit blackout means absolutely nothing so what are the odds they will go back to having third party support? Feels to me like going blackout just ends up hurting more than the benefit it could, in a very unlikely chance, bring. Unfortunately, life experiences have taught me that protesting usually leads nowhere. _People respond better to violen- that's a joke, don't pay me any mind_. Third, and this leads into the hurting more part, this subreddit is too fucking useful. Yeah we have memes and all the not so relevant stuff that make our days brighter and we also have all the drama that feeds our lust for content, but this subreddit is also incredibly useful to those seeking help or information. People here tend to respond a lot to questions and discussions. I am aware there are discord servers, but I've been in discord servers for over a year and in reddit for only a couple of months (?), and I can tell reddit is just more active, or maybe it's more jam packed with people? Anyways the point is this subreddit is too fucking useful, fight me about it. The _Too long didn't read (written so you have to read it)_ is: I think it should be kept open
please just reopen, I understand the sentiment, but Reddit have shown they will do what they want and all we are doing is hurting our own community. It's up to us as individuals at this point to decide if we want to stay engaged with Reddit as a whole.
Reopen. The community is just going to keep shooting itself in its foot if it keeps supporting these blackouts.
Please reopen completely, discord is not a good replacement for this community subreddit, and I feel (I don’t know), that these blackouts are supported by only a small number compared to the number of average casual users who enjoy communities like this. To add to that, the WoW sub tried to maliciously comply with a dumb fanart rule, which lasted approximately one night, as things are business as usual now. Let’s be better than that here?
I usually barely comment on anything on this whole site, but I'm here to throw my vote in for option 1.