Righto, so here's my two cents' worth.
First, I like a slightly more rigid warning/banning protocol. While I am not a hundred percent sold on how vital it is, it's useful, and means we as moderators can cite specifics if and when called upon to do so. The reason that I'm not its first cheerleader, however, is a simple one. Basically it is asking a higher level of accountability from us than has ever historically been asked of mods and admins before. This is not altogether a bad thing, but I have unfortunately seen this thing turn into a slippery slope before. First the mods have to follow a warning/banning protocol. Next the mods have to qualify and quantify exact reasons for warnings. Then you get the people who will invariably waste a lot of time and effort on nitpicking details. In other words, this first step is a great one, but I don't want to see, in three months or a year and a half or whatnot, ninety-eight instances where we have to defend, with paragraphs of text and innumerable text citations, the exact specifics as to why so-and-so was banned. I support it, then, but with a few reservations.
Next point: not all infractions are created equal. If you lose your temper once or twice, that may be warning-worthy, and everyone does it from time to time. I'm okay with warnings fizzling out over time, depending on what they are, because otherwise good people can misstep, and they shouldn't have to live with that for life. On the other hand, however, doing this sort of thing means that if people know their warnings are going to expire after x time, they may learn to dance around the restriction (again, I've seen it before, lots of times). That's another potential downside of more clearly delineated punishment protocol. Some people are just hell-bent on having their say, in whichever manner they choose, and if that means jumping through a hoop or two in order to stay unbanned, that's what they'll do. We need to be careful with this one.
Next is the idea of what I'm going to call a community failure clause. While I think that a solid framework will go a good distance toward ensuring that people have a firmer grasp on what should and should not happen, I also think that there may sometimes arise a case where a prescribed punishment structure simply doesn't make sense. If you give someone a warning and they respond with extremely vicious personal attacks, or if you ban them the first time and they immediately get up to mischief the instant they get unbanned, that's something I think that we, as mods, should discuss and potentially act upon instead of just automatically and without thought proceeding to the next step in the discipline structure. Some of you probably don't like this idea, because we might decide to come down hard on someone for what amounts to cumulative behaviour (this has come up before). But here's the thing. In 999 cases out of 1000, roughly, we are probably going to do the right thing, and will probably be able to ensure that no single one of us is going to let anger, hurt feelings, personal relationships or other drama cloud their judgment. In other words, this is a two-way street. If such a thing is implemented and made clear, give us a little trust, in that you won't instantly jump down our throat if we decide we have to hop to a higher level of punishment for cumulatively bad behaviour on the part of a given user. We, in turn, will obviously do everything we possibly can to be reasonable and impartial in this matter, acting in the best interest of the community as a whole.
Now, rather than just analyze and float opinions around, I actually have a structure, which I'll paste below, that I think works. it's a touch more complicated than what we have now, but it may be able to cover for most eventualities we're apt to see.
Explanation:
This system works using colours and warning levels in order to meat out needed discipline.
Green status: Default. User has little to no current behaviour issues. Green status extends from 0 to 4 points (see below). A user who rises above 4 points moves to yellow status.
Caution (given for something like a partial personal attack, mild to moderate spamming/whining, etc): 1 point
Warning (given for more serious infractions, such as much more blatant personal attacks, attempted character assassination): 2 points for first offense, plus 1 point for every subsequent offense
Critical Warning (given for the discussion of cracks, the support of illegal behaviour in a way that does not provide links/access to said illegal files, etc): 10 points for first offense, 15 points for any subsequent example
In green status, points go away at a rate of 1 every 72 hours.
Yellow Status: User is essentially on watch for several behaviour violations, but is not necessarily in imminent danger of being banned. Goes from 5 to 12 points.
Caution: 1 point for the first, 2 points for every subsequent caution while in yellow status
Warning: 3 points for the first, 4 points for every subsequent warning in yellow status
Critical Warning: 15 points
While in yellow status, points go away at a rate of one every 14 days (336 hours)
Red status: 13 points and above. A player has reached a point where punitive action must take place. Any player who has ever gone into red status has a permanent "trouble" flag, which effectively doubles the point penalty for any cautions/warnings.
While in red status, points go away at a rate of 1 every 60 days.
First red status: ban of 14 days, and subsequent re-entry into the forum at 2 points (green status)
Second Red Status: ban of 60 days, subsequent re-entry into the forum at 5 points (yellow status)
Third Red Status: ban of 365 days (1 year), return to the forum at 9 points (yellow status)
If at any point a player reaches 25 points or above, they are immediately banned permanently, pending appeal.
This system would also let us assign specific point values to specific behaviours if we wanted. We could, for instance, ascribe 20 points to making death threats, 15 points to threats of bodily but nondeadly physical harm, 20 points for cyberstalking, etc. If we did this, we would, of course, post it in the rules.
This might be a little on the firm side, but the aim here is to demonstrate that once you've demonstrated that you're going to keep pushing the envelope, you get shorter shrift than the occasional screw-up from an otherwise level-headed forum member. I'd love to hear what you folks think though. It should go without saying that the moment, this is nothing more or less than my unsolicited idea. it doesn't have any support yet, as I write. It's literally just me tackling the issue head-on and providing a solution which might work.
Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1