Greetings all,

So, we’re here today because of the need to remind certain users how the forums run as a rule of thumb.

There remains a desire by certain users to police the behaviour of other users, though via PM rather than via the Moderators and Report process. Reports can be used for posts and PMs, so the Moderators can act. If something is not brought to our attention, we cannot do anything about it. We do and will not act on hearsay; all of our actions are subject to due process.

When users are approached about their behaviour on the forum (or as Reported), they are given the opportunity to process our input, usually twice or even three times they will be contacted about this to give them several chances to change their behaviour.

If they outright refuse to amend their behaviour, they are given a temporary timeout by way of a ban to reflect. This is a rare occurrence, particularly in the RPF.

On receipt of said ban, the user is notified on how to be unbanned at the time and the process to do so. If a user chooses to not engage with that process but instead login and continue to private message other users, it has to be taken that they have no intention to improve their behaviour, and their ability to message on the forums is removed. Every banned user since, oh, 1998 has been able to follow the process so there is zero question of misunderstanding it unless on purpose.

If part and parcel of that period messaging users is to encourage other users to depart for another website, the process is accelerated. Similarly, if another user assists in this, after having perhaps announced their departure from the forums, they are looped into the original ban as well.

Keeping in mind that the original ban was a temporary ban, a user who takes advantage of that ban to engender drama and disruption is not in keeping with the spirit of the forums. As users have been contacted about continuing locked games off-site in a protest to a ban the user involved essentially asked for, before the original ban was even resolved, the above situation has played out.

We feel it necessary to remind users not to take matters into their own hands, not to share private information against other users, and not to engage with users who are banned. We do not ordinarily discuss bans, but as the banned user(s) in question are spreading an edited version of events, we have felt the need to give them the special treatment they seemingly sought.

While we do sincerely apologise for any difficulties caused to games and GMs and players, we really have no choice in this matter to act to minimise disruption in the medium to long term.

If you have any questions, PM both Moderators.