First posted in April 2024.

Since I first started using Eorzea Collection and posting on it, the moderation team and its rules have evolved in bizarre ways.

Custom posing, which is done via third party tools and thus prohibited by the Terms of Service of FFXIV, is allowed here and very freely used by the community. At the same time, posts that are deemed to not comply with the website rules (or wrongly identified as containing mods, which happens way too frequently according to the Discord server) will arbitrarily get flagged by "The Moogle Police".

Being flagged by "The Moogle Police" will not always result in your posts being rejected or removed, which, in all honesty, makes things very confusing, because the user gets scolded for not abiding by said rules, but the website will still allow the post to exist and benefit from its existence. Likewise, posts that are much older than these new rules (or the existence of the moderation team), can also be flagged without warning. For example, I have an entry with more than 500 likes (and famous enough that people have recognized me in-game thanks to it) that was flagged 4 years after I originally posted it.

I genuinely do not understand why so much scrutiny is put on such posts when custom posing is so liberally used and abused on this website, and why this inconsistent moderating system is left entirely invisible to people who browse its pages.

At the time of writing I have 26 out of my 65 entries that have been flagged, 2 of which are invisible (which I'll accept, the arguments are reasonable on these), but the rest all have likes on them, which proves that people see them (and appreciate them!).

... And they don't know that 40% of my entries are flagged.

As they're all screenshots I took several years ago and already put a lot of effort into, I'm not planning on redoing them all to comply with the sometimes capricious demands of "The Moogle Police" (I don't think you need to see the heel of a thighboot if you can already see more than half of it in the picture...). I've reached out in the support channel of the Discord server to try to plead my case and expect some leniency (like come on are you really asking me to retake pictures from 2-3 years ago just because you can't see my character's toes, surely you can understand how much of a pain it is), and the moderators there have asked me to nevertheless update my posts "in due time". But it's been almost a year for some of them now and... my entries are still here. Still flagged, but it doesn't seem to bear any consequence, and no one seems to mind.

The flagging system, and the consequences of it, are also not stated in the Rules and Guidelines page of Eorzea Collection, with the exception of extreme cases (such as modding). So at this point the odds of your entry being flagged, rejected, or made invisible is pretty much up to the whims of whichever moderator is currently looking at it. And based on my own experience and seeing other users confused by their entirely ToS-friendly entry being flagged as modded, it's safe to say that some can be quite petty and drunk on their authority.

(yes I do have one specific person in mind, but the moderating team seems to very much stick together no matter what and conflicts are mysteriously resolved in DMs rather than in the support channel itself, which makes it harder to bring up to the powers that be).

So why is this system in place, if it is entirely inconsequential, except for the fact that it's putting needless pressure on its registered users?

I don't really feel comfortable posting pictures and outfits I took great effort to put together, only to see them flagged by a moderator following their own interpretation of the rules, or worse, risk having my oldest posts getting flagged out of nowhere when they were entirely fine and greenlit before.

I don't really feel comfortable contributing to a website that so ostentatiously promotes the use of third party tools, instead of proving that you can put good outfits together and make them look good with the tools the game has already made available (and no, photo editing does not equate modding. and yes, I do use Reshade! based on videos submitted to various Fanfest contests, it seems that kind of third party tool is tolerated).

...Honestly I also don't feel comfortable having an almighty "Police" authority constantly surveilling my actions and abusing its power over my submissions. I can imagine it was originally meant as a reference to the "fashion police", but with how things have evolved it's becoming easier and easier to compare it to abuse of power by actual police.

I would like for the Eorzea Collection moderating team to be, ironically, stricter and more transparent with its rules. By this I mean:

• not allowing modified game content of any kind (mods, poses, texture upscales, etc) -> I believe this would make things a lot easier for the moderators to begin with, as they would be able to immediately identify custom game content in most cases. I would rather see a subtle mod getting mistakenly approved than genuine ToS-friendly entries being flagged due to a slight suspicion of including mods.
• explicitly stating that the flagging system exists, what the penalties are, how much time you have to comply, and what the consequences are for not following their request -> This would significantly reduce the confusion around the flagging system overall, and make the demands of the moderating team seem a lot more reasonable and actionable.
• including a text field in the "Moogle Police. Your attention, kupo!" [shiver] section of a flagged entry, for the user to argue their case (especially in the case of wrongly identified genuine game content!), instead of a simple "Ask for a re-evaluation" button. From what I see, moderators rarely change their mind without the user having to use the support channel on the Discord server to express their confusion and plead their case.

I do really like (liked?) this website, and it's a shame that its users are being put in such an uncomfortable, ambiguous, and even stressful situation because the moderation team seems to be on the fence about how strict or how liberal they should be with what they allow and don't allow.

Having someone reach out to me in game to say "Hey! I love your glamours!" used to make me happy, and it still does... but now it also leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I don't really know what to do with my account as a result.
People do seem to find my entries enjoyable and useful (I've met someone farming the Heavensward BLM relic because of my post, I randomly saw someone wearing my DRG outfit while I was at the Gold Saucer), so it would be a shame to delete all my entries entirely (and well, no one would ever know why, and it wouldn't have any huge consequence on how the website is managed). But at the same time I don't think I'll be posting new outfits on it anymore. The Wardobe section of this website pretty much fulfills the same purpose, and while it is less convenient to update it, and has practically no visibility whatsoever because I don't really actively promote my website, it is something I have entire control over.

So yeah, I'm not very pleased with how Eorzea Collection has turned out, and at least with this page I was able to publicly say my piece, without risking having a social media drama blowing up in my face lol. And if you've read this, now you know about this too, and for now that's good enough for me :^)

Like genuinely, I see why some of my entries are breaking the website's rules, and in some cases it's entirely reasonable, that's not what bothers me. But in that case just remove the posts entirely and I'll know for sure I should take my business somewhere else, don't leave me hanging in freakin POLICE limbo of all things.

smh
>:(