Over the past few months, new and old staff members have been consulting about our punishments system in the mod forum. Various concerns were raised, solutions were proposed, and we hammered out some revisions to the sanctions.
In detail:
Some of you may remember Siriel's topic about private warnings being given in public, and my mentioning that privates were a matter of debate among us. In the end, it was decided that private warnings were not effective: they didn't seem to hit home hard enough for people, they didn't display to the rest of the forum what unacceptable behaviour was, and users got frustrated that reports didn't seem to be acted on, even if they actually were. As a result, the first private warning has been replaced by a public warning.
Temp bans have been decoupled from strikes. We decided it was too limiting to keep this very useful tool just linked to one of our most serious punishments, in permanent strikes. Now a second warning may be accompanied by a short temp ban. We hope that this will actually decrease the number of people going to strikes, because they'll get a period to settle their tempers in, rather than bulldozing right on after a public warning as certain people do now. Otherwise, we now have a heavier hand with which to slap people who are idiots but haven't quite been bad enough to get a full strike.
The strike system hasn't been touched, other than an increase to the cooldowns attached.
The full system of sanctions as it currently stands follows below:
- An infringement of the rules of Beast's Lair is cause for a public warning, presented with formal notice at the point of offence by a member of staff.
- A further infringement within the undisclosed period of 'cooldown' for a first offence is cause for a second warning and, at the discretion of staff, a temporary ban of between one and three days. It also comes with its own cooldown period.
- A third episode of rule-breaking within cooldown is cause for a permanent strike on the record of the member, accompanied by a mandatory ban of one week. You remain on an extended cooldown after you return from your ban, during which we consider you to be on your first warning.
- Another series of offences leading to a second permanent strike is cause for a mandatory ban of two weeks. Your cooldown on return is further increased.
- A final series of offences leading to a third permanent strike is cause for a permanent ban from the forums.
Sufficiently aggravated breaches of the rules may lead to an offender being elevated multiple steps up the ladder at staff discretion. Amongst others, unsolicited advertisers are subject to immediate permanent bans. Other behaviour likely to lead to extraordinary punishment includes (but is not limited to) direct personal attacks on other members of the forum, sock-puppeting, and breaking the same rule time and time again in the face of cautions from staff.
At this time, it may be useful to re-read the rules of Beast's Lair, as laid out in the Forum Rules sticky and the Rules page.
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Originally Posted by I3uster
