Rules for the "Ask SquareEnix" section.

[AKosygin]

The FFXIOnline.com Moderation and Administration Team would like to announce changes to the "Ask SquareEnix" section in order to improve visibility and further continue in our efforts to open communications with the SquareEnix FFXI Community Relations Team.

These changes include re-implementation of the intentions of the section, in which I am going to emphasize now.

• All thread headers MUST be in the form of a question, and the details of the question in the body of the post (if the question needs to be explained in detail the situation). If it is not even in the form of a question, your "question" may not even be selected and maybe deleted or removed.
• One question per thread, any questions not at the first post of the thread will not be considered. If the questions are inter-related you may include them together. For example: Are you going to do anything about RMT? If so, what would you do?
• The Moderation and Administration Team of FFXIOnline.com at the end of each month will lock all threads for that month and archive it into the archive sub-forum.
• The Moderation and Administration Team of FFXIOnline.com will select 9 questions to be compiled on to a list. The last remaining one is reserved for the moderation and administration team.
• The list will be compiled and submitted to the FFXI Community Relations Team, and the submitted list will also be posted on the news section for discussion, and if the FFXIOnline.com team find later that we missed any questions, we will tack it onto the next month's list.
• If you feel that a question should have been included on the list but was not, it is likely that you did not follow the formatting guidelines and/or it did not receive the appropriate support from other members.
• Inane questions, questions with obvious answers, questions with little thought, questions that are not legible, or questions that are not understandable, are unlikely to be included. Please make sure that you spell correctly and that your grammar is correct. Please take your time in posting your questions.
• Questions that are rude, offensive, full of profanity, or in bad taste will not only be omitted, but will be deleted and infraction points handed out as appropriate.

The due date to submit your questions for March 2007 is March 31 at 23:59:59 Pacific Time. After that, your question will be included in the next month's list if it qualifies.

The FFXIOnline.com Moderation and Administration Team will re-compile February's list and will post it in the Site News section once it is available. Please submit your questions here: http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/ask...questions-400/

Thank you,
AKosygin
FFXIOnline.com Moderation and Administration Team

[Wise Donkey]

• Inane questions or questions with obvious answers or questions with little thought or questions that is not legible or understandable is unlikely to be included. Please make sure that you spell correctly and that your grammar is correct. Please take your time in posting your questions.

Emphasis mine. Oh teh irony!

Ok, this thread is serious again. Nothing to see here, move along. :P

[neighbortaru]

wise guy eh? how's about a ban stick for you? :evil:

[AKosygin]

Emphasis mine. Oh teh irony!

Ok, this thread is serious again. Nothing to see here, move along. :P

BTW, I did say the questions, not my announcement.

[Idun_Midgardsormr]

Are the posts already made safe from this new rule, or should we delete them and start over?

There are several posts that have been made prior to this announcment, my own among them, where the topic header is NOT phrased as a question; as 'normal' users, we can't edit the headers once posted, so should we simply delete them and start over?

Also, we no longer have the ability to search previous questions that may have already been answered - how about creating an viewable archive of these instead of just deleting them and saving a lot of duplication of questions??

If a question is not submitted to SE, can it be re-entered for reconsideration? It strikes me that 9 is a pretty restrictive number - today is only the 6th of the month and there are already 6 posts in there! At that rate, we may be looking at a question per day - what are the criteria that the review committee will be looking for to decide if a question should go forward or not? Number of replies? Or simply based on the gut feeling of the reviewers at the time?

If you feel that a question should have been included on the list but was not, it is likely that you did not follow the formatting guidelines and/or it did not receive the appropriate support from other members.

This would infer that popularity is the key, but I would like to confirm this - FFXI is enough of a guessing game as it is (unless you read through the cheats and spoilers) - please don't make this forum the same!!

[AKosygin]

Are the posts already made safe from this new rule, or should we delete them and start over?

There are several posts that have been made prior to this announcment, my own among them, where the topic header is NOT phrased as a question; as 'normal' users, we can't edit the headers once posted, so should we simply delete them and start over?

It is safe from the question rule, but you still have the option of remaking the thread. Alternatively, please PM me with the change in the thread title and I can change it for you.

Also, we no longer have the ability to search previous questions that may have already been answered - how about creating an viewable archive of these instead of just deleting them and saving a lot of duplication of questions??

I did archive all the previous questions. If you go to the "Ask SE" section and click on the "Archive" thing at the top, you will find the forums listed where things are archived.

If a question is not submitted to SE, can it be re-entered for reconsideration?

Yes, you may resubmit it. What may not be a good topic this month may be next month if there were changes that changes the situation.

It strikes me that 9 is a pretty restrictive number - today is only the 6th of the month and there are already 6 posts in there! At that rate, we may be looking at a question per day - what are the criteria that the review committee will be looking for to decide if a question should go forward or not? Number of replies? Or simply based on the gut feeling of the reviewers at the time? This would infer that popularity is the key, but I would like to confirm this - FFXI is enough of a guessing game as it is (unless you read through the cheats and spoilers) - please don't make this forum the same!!

It is a combination of the following (and this is not all inclusive as this is more of a guideline than a rule):

Presuming that the question meets the syntax and rules specified previously and is a pretty good question in general....

• Is the question frequently asked by the community that can only be answered by SE, but was not addressed recently?
• Is it a reoccuring "hot topic" discussed in the community?
• Does the question lend itself to possibly an interesting answer?
• Is the question generally popular with the community in which the community collectively wonders about the answer?

The first one might cover questions like: "Are we going to get a Windowed Mode?" or "Could we search under multiple jobs?"

The second one might cover questions like: "What are you doing about RMT?"

The third one might cover questions like: "Who is [GM]Dave?" or "What does the Dev Team have in mind for the near future?"

The last one is generally a popularity contest, based upon the "ratings" people give to the thread, and the activity of the thread in views and replies.

We actually plan to submit 10 questions, the last question being reserved for use by the Mod/Admin team to put in a question that may be missed, off the wall, rephrased, or one deserving to be asked that did not fall within the normal guidelines.

Most questions should not be repetitively asked of SE, and should be current. No point in asking about last year's update this year.

I hope that answered most of your questions.

[neighbortaru]

old rules are still valid, but thanks to IfritnoItazura for reminding us to clean up some of our posts :P

[IfritnoItazura]

Isn't it about time to close off the "Ask SquareEnix Questions" sub-forum? The questions aren't being sent to S-E, and the company isn't interested in answering.

Having this sub-forum is misleading. Lock it and bury it somewhere, please.

[Icemage]

Isn't it about time to close off the "Ask SquareEnix Questions" sub-forum? The questions aren't being sent to S-E, and the company isn't interested in answering.

Having this sub-forum is misleading. Lock it and bury it somewhere, please.

It's mostly there as a feedback tool. We DO actually get responses, when there's actually enough meaty questions to submit.

With the impending release of Wings of the Goddess, I foresee a lot of questions popping up; as such, I think it's a good idea to leave this section open to give people somewhere to vent about how stupid Dancer is. ;)


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Just because SE doesn't answer these questions directly or right away does not mean these questions aren't looked at or considered. As such, I think this forum is worth keeping around.

[Idun_Midgardsormr]

Lack of feedback from SE would seem to infer lack of interest on their part. Perhaps if they were to take a more active part, it might lend a bit more credibility to the forum, but there again they don't even respond to questions or requests on the POL site, so perhaps that's a bit much to ask?

[Icemage]

Lack of feedback from SE would seem to infer lack of interest on their part. Perhaps if they were to take a more active part, it might lend a bit more credibility to the forum, but there again they don't even respond to questions or requests on the POL site, so perhaps that's a bit much to ask?

We do have a contact at S-E where we can forward the questions, but there has to be enough interest beyond the occasional "Why doesn't this work?" to make it worth the time to do so.

Square-Enix doesn't monitor this forum; we do. The intent is that we distill the best questions and forward them on, but many questions have already been answered, and there aren't (quite) enough good questions to send another request to them as yet.

Bear in mind that they're doing us a favor by answering any questions, so we can't just rapid-fire bombard them with just any question every few weeks. That's why the rules in this subforum are set the way they are - they're designed to filter out needless questions where the answers are either already known or are moot.


Icemage

[Feba]

they're designed to filter out needless questions where the answers are either already known or are moot.

If only there was a way to force people to pass a test on the subject before they could post here.

[IfritnoItazura]

We DO actually get responses, when there's actually enough meaty questions to submit.

How are you managing a reply when you're not sending questions to someone who can answer them?

However, as I have said, the way for the questions to make it to the appropriate people and back isn't complete and we are still in the middle of ironing it out.

i.e. We never got replies back from first set of questions, since it was sent to the wrong person. Not that the existence of the semi-mystical "right person" has been confirmed, as of yet.

* * *

With the impending release of Wings of the Goddess, I foresee a lot of questions popping up; as such, I think it's a good idea to leave this section open to give people somewhere to vent about how stupid Dancer is. ;)

The existence of this sub-forum is still misleading. At least, lock it until DiV can actually deliver questions with assurance of reply.

Don't think so? Then, post the replies to the first (and only?) set of questions sent. =b

[Ziero]

No one is being hurt by this sub-forum, the mods and admins do not need to prove anything and SE *is* listening to the fan base on many many things and the proof can be seen in game.

I see no reason to "Lock it and bury it" at all. All that's needed are questions that can't be answered by other players or simply waiting a week or two to find out in game.