Once upon a midnight dreary, while I posted, weak and weary
Into many a fierce and furious thread of "these mods suck penor" —
While I trolled for big reactions, suddenly there came infractions
For the forum interactions, that I had to answer for
"'Tis not possible," I muttered, "that OP's a total whore" —
But the ban said, "Evermore"
There's been a little confusion with the infraction system and how it works, so I'm gonna give a quick run-down of what it does and answer any reasonable questions you guys want to ask (and then when the thread degenerates into a total shit-slinging fest, I will quietly slink away into the little room in the back where the mods get drunk and ignore the pitchforks at the door). For clarification, nothing described here is a new feature or new policy, I just wanted to explain how the existing system works.
Rules
First, the list of rules we currently have for the forum is here: http://www.xerq.net/showthread.php?4-Forum-Rules
The rules will probably be adjusted from time to time as XERQ deems necessary. As with any regulation anywhere, ignorance of the rules isn't an excuse for breaking them.
Infractions
When forum members break rules, moderators will, as they deem appropriate, issue infractions to users. The infractions work sort of the same way points on a license work. You get too many points, your license gets suspended. You get too many infractions, you'll get temporarily banned (this happens automatically).
Any time you receive an infraction, you will automatically receive a private message informing you of the infraction, which moderator issued it, what post it was issued for, and why it was issued.
Most infractions are worth one point, and they expire after two weeks. If, at any point, a user has three points worth of infractions, they will be banned for the duration of the period during which ALL of those three points are active. If you were issued a one-point infraction today, and then received a two more infractions a week from today, you would be automatically banned for a week while all three infractions were active, then the first infraction would expire and you would be able to post again. However, you would still have two points worth of infractions active, and until they expired any additional infraction would trigger another ban.
At the discretion of XERQ and/or the moderators, any infraction may be worth more than one point or expire after a longer period of time (including a full ban, should it be necessary). At any time, you may view this information on the infractions tab in your profile (click on your username at the top). This tab will tell you whether you have any infractions or warnings and when any existing infractions will expire. Moderators are also able to see this information, though other users are not.
All infractions also trigger a new post in the moderation subforum displaying all of the pertinent information to other mods and to XERQ. No moderator can ever issue an infraction that is not immediately available for review to all of the other moderators and to XERQ himself. Infractions can be only be reversed by XERQ, should he decide to have mercy on your soul.
Warnings
Warnings function exactly like infractions in terms of notification, profile display, and expiration, with one major difference: they're worth zero points. No amount of warnings will trigger a ban. Warnings serve two primary purposes: first, they inform the forum member that they're breaking a forum rule, and second, they create an audit trail (both on the user's infractions tab and in the mod forum), so that a second moderator won't jump on your case for the same issue.
I would urge users not to take offense to a warning. It's really not much different from a PM, it just lets other mods know that whatever the situation is has already been handled. That said, if you receive a warning for a particular activity, and you do it again, an infraction is probably in your future.
In Defense of Moderation
We try to be fair in our moderation (pause for laughter), but we do realize that moderator actions will inevitably be perceived as biased in some way. If you receive an infraction that you're certain is unfair, I'd advise you to start by responding to the moderator who issued it. Politely (). If you deem the moderator totally unreasonable, then you can appeal to XERQ. That said, if you aren't in the habit of getting infractions, a single infraction probably won't do you any harm as it'll just expire anyway.
tl;dr: don't behave badly and you probably won't get banned.
you all.
-red
(ibworstmoderatorever)