The New Standard
This is a forum post from Blue Gartr which is one of the premier end-game forums on FFXI in the world. Recently there was a decision to merge Advanced and Standard together, resulting in a lot of questions about the reasons behind the move. Specifically the most major difference between the two forums is that Advanced threatens to ban or delete posts that are not “Advanced” while Standard protects posters from those same “Sharks”.
I felt the mods made a bad decision in maintaining the Advanced forum (and its entire philosophy).
Enjoy!
It’s my personal belief that the “BLM, INT, vs. MAB” thread somehow, shockingly, became the gold standard for Internet message boards with informative posts and lively discussion. For those of you that missed it because it was yet another retread about how magic damage formulas actually work in the game, here’s the short version: An honest, but fairly clueless, guy tried to match up his nuke results in Ronfaure with the way the game is supposed to work according to the wiki formulas and established knowledge.
I hope everyone reading realizes why that guy would never even think to post his thread in Advanced due to the realities of old OR new Advanced. Because no, it’s not Advanced. And therein, almost to a painfully palpable degree, lies the opportunity cost of Advanced’s “spam protection.”
This guy (Lahan) posts his question (along with some data showing how the numbers he’s getting don’t always line up with the information that posters point to as gospel) and he gets a response from someone named Suiram. I’ll be honest, I didn’t recognize Suiram’s name, though I’d like to think I’d recognize most of the people around here who have useful information to share, but if my ignorance kept me reading curiously, to others it was an invitation to offer their own opinions, informed or not. Again, this is important, because the Standard forum doesn’t discourage open discourse from its members with threats of banning or ridicule.
Some people respond, and eventually (stick with me, you’ll enjoy this) someone tries to win the argument by quoting someone else with a more recognizable name (specifically a blog writer of some repute). And the original responder questions the authority of such a source, to which the person responds with typical Internet logic something along the lines of he’s got a name, and you don’t, so you must be wrong.
And then the blog author shows up.
*shock* I know, right! Who knew these guys actually read the forums like the rest of us. I thought they had little smart people conventions and laughed at us and wrote blogs like that Robonosto guy where he makes fun of everyone all the time for being hideously stupid.
So blog author responds and says to his champion, “I’m sorry sir, but the person you’re arguing with is the true authority on this matter, and you should in fact heed their word not because of who they are, but because of the work they’ve done and the knowledge they possess.” Or something similar.
And what results is a fairly short, but rather amazing, little bit of elucidation as people hear very smart people explain how their formulas and understandings actually interact with how the game really works when we hit “/ma Thunder IV <Wild Rabbit>”. And maybe they learned something, and maybe they didn’t (or maybe they followed the cheat sheet which had been turned into an Internet app) but the point is very simple — this thread actually accomplished something.
A person without knowledge but with a desire to learn got into contact with the people who understood the game mechanics behind their issue, and learned a little bit about how their theories (which they had created, studied and mastered or some combination) interacted with the real game to produce the real results he was seeing in Ronfaure.
Someone actually learned something on the Internet.
—
That little story is why (in my opinion) the very next day or five we had a New Advanced, because that thread would NEVER, EVER have had a chance to exist, or blossom, from its <strike>newb</strike> innocent beginnings into the little treasure trove of information it became [in the old Advanced, the 'main' forum].
And now I get to read this frustrating thread (“so we have to be nice now?”) in which mods argue what is and is not Advanced all over again all the while knowing that the New Advanced would kill that thread just as dead as the old. And I fear that even the honestly frustrated people like Cadsuane are missing the forest for the trees at this point so I wanted to explain very simply what the mods are missing (again, imo):
The main forum of this website shouldn’t be the New Advanced, it should be the New Standard.
Advanced is the last vestige of the elitism that has choked the life out of this forum. And though it has been earned with the successes of those years, it results in a forum that does not encourage discussion, but rather stifles it. It results in cliques, and bans, and trolls, but worst of all, it results in stagnation and a dwindling membership, and a complete absence of the Game Designers in their new found attempt to reach out to the playing public. That should be the ultimate proof of failure, however lofty the ideals, that Zam in all its mind shattering idiocy should house Elmer’s blog and get direct discussion from the Game Designers. That Zam should establish itself as a beacon for reasoned thought and open discourse is a travesty, but it is the ultimate validation of the democratization of information that is the ideal of the Internet.
tl;dr:
The reason Standard became more useful than Advanced was because it protected those who wished to voice their opinions, ask their questions, post topics, or give answers that were wrong only to be proven right by the very people that are intellectually curious enough to have researched the answer adequately.
The “New Advanced” is a sad, almost pathetic, vestige of an elitist attitude that is perceived negatively by almost all and serves no real purpose except to occlude information behind a veil of “Been there, done that” ennui. Instead the “New Standard”, with a complete rescinding of the awful question of “Is this Advanced?” and its entire attitude, should become the flagship forum of this website in order to encourage more threads like “BLM, INT vs. MAB”; a shining example of the ultimate function of this forum and others like it.
Filed under: FFXI, Forum Posts | 3 Comments
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I don’t think I could have honestly put it into better words myself. I for one though am glad that BG has finally done away with the distinction between “advanced” and other topics.
To keep this short and not be a windbag, for every thread that you think was actually informative there was always a load of no-content “critical hit vs. haste” B.S. This sycophantic exercise somehow ignores the reality that Event was the only thing of any enduring value to the extent that ultimately anyone should care only about doing things in the game rather than playing with hypothetical numbers and themselves.
I’ve learned a lot from reading your blog (that’s why I referenced it). I just wish you’d apply that blazing intellect to even more issues and establish reliable and permanent understandings that can be easily found, and applied.
I read some of your analyses and though I trust your findings, I definitely do not understand them. But there are others as well versed in mathematical theory and learned enough to do so. I’m not sure BG with its history could ever become a haven for the truly great thinkers playing this game (ala Elitist Jerks at its best for WoW), but I think it’s a goal that’s well worth the effort.
Regardless, I hope you didn’t take my comment in anything but the way it was meant — I am not smart enough to follow your articles fully, but I am smart enough to study and attempt to apply their findings. So for that, a heartfelt thanks along with my hope that you continue to write more articles and attack other “Well Understood” theories.