Forum Penalty Actions: Warnings & Bans

[EnolaGaia]

The current version of this forum makes provision for both semi-automated and manual imposition of penalty actions (warnings; bans).

Warnings and bans may be imposed for violations of forum rules, violations of the governing Terms & Conditions, or incidental infractions judged worthy of sanction by the staff.

A warning accrues a prescribed number of Warning Points to a given member's account for a prescribed length of time.

A ban suspends or terminates a given member's forum privileges. A ban may be either temporary (for a prescribed length of time) or permanent.

A member's forum privileges are not affected by warning status unless that member's cumulative Warning Points total exceeds a designated threshold, whereupon the member is automatically banned for as long as the threshold is exceeded. Such automatic bans are automatically lifted whenever the cumulative Warning Points total subsides beneath the threshold.

Decisions regarding the propriety and level of sanctions imposed are subject only to the discretion of the designated staff in evaluating specific situations in light of rules, Terms & Condition and policies. No formal member-initiated appeal procedure is offered.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Incidental Infraction warnings may be imposed at any time for relatively minor violations.

Here (below) are the prescribed incidental infraction categories and the current Warning Point values and duration assigned to each of them.

Incidental Infraction warnings are neither mutually exclusive nor limited in number per incident. Multiple such warnings may be imposed in combination if an incident is judged to represent multiple infractions.

INFRACTION TYPE	WARNING POINTS	POINTS DURATION
Inappropriate Content	1​	1 Month​
Inappropriate Behavior	1​	1 Month​
Inappropriate Language	1​	1 Month​
Inappropriate Advertising / Spam	1​	1 Month​

 

[EnolaGaia]

Formal Warnings or Bans may be imposed to reflect a warning status based on one or more violations. There is no necessary linkage or correlation between these status attributions and specific incidents reflected in Incidental Infractions.

These status levels are applied progressively - i.e., the next status imposed will be at least one level higher than the highest level in effect at the time of imposition.

The status level may be escalated more than a single increment should the staff decide circumstances warrant it.

The ultimate (Ban) status may be imposed at any time, regardless of current status level or points total, if the staff judges an infraction or incident severe enough to warrant it.

Here is the set of formal Warning and Ban levels, associated Warning Points values and their default effective durations.*

LEVEL	WARNING POINTS​	POINTS DURATION​
GREEN	1​	3 Months​
AMBER	2​	6 Months​
RED (Final)	3​	12 Months​
BAN	Greater Than Ban Threshold​	As Specified Upon Imposition​

* The effective duration of a Green, Amber or Red warning status may be set to a custom (non-default) value at staff discretion.

 

[EnolaGaia]

NOTES:

• Manually imposed Warnings and Bans will be announced by the staff on the open forum at the time they're imposed.
• Manually terminated Bans will be announced by the staff on the open forum at the time they are lifted.
• Members in a Banned status are identifiable by having their usernames struck through (e.g., BadMember ).
• Members may request a customized temporary ban if they feel it wise or helpful.
• Staff reserves the right to impose a temporary ban as a preventative measure to avoid potential damage to forum content (e.g., wanton post deletions) or to impose a virtual "time out."