In a city like Reborn... crime never sleeps. And so can't we.
It was a one of those summer nights when the sun set and forgot to take its swelter on with it. We was stewin' in the Main st office and the boys was all pinchin' their bridges tryna stamp out the stench of squalor that wafted up to badger us as if we coulda done something about it. I was consultin' the local desk fan when this broad strolls up to my desk, slams a fistful of documents down onto it, and looks me dead in the eyes.
She says, "We need a lifetime warning point cap on Reborn."
I look up. Her eyes is something fierce. Heavy. The lady means business. I didn't wanna give her none.
I roll my cigar 'tween my finger tips and let dip into the ashtray.
And you know what I said?
I said
That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.
But nowadays, I look back on that night, when I couldn't tell which was stuffier-- the air or that dame. And I think, Damn, Reborn could really use a lifetime warning point cap.
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This is another post about the community's health and discipline. If that's not interesting to you, skip to the end for the TL;DR.
When I talk about a "Lifetime warning point cap," what I mean is a significant change from the current warning/consequence system where warnings can count to a ban no matter how old they are.
Right now, a user gets banned from the community if they reach 10 Warning Points at once. This has been a staple since the system was introduced. However, as any of you who have gotten a warning probably know, warning points fall off after a certain amount of time. This was a part of the system that was designed to let those users who would learn from their past mistakes and warnings fully recover from them provided they were on good behavior for such and such time.
While this is a very forgiving system and I stand by its benefits, the truth is that unfortunately not every user is responsive to change or guidance, and the current warning structure is pretty notably inefficient at dealing with those cases. For people who's behavior does not improve, we tend to see one of two things happening:
The user acquires some warning points but then leaves for an extended period of time on their own, coming back months later after the points have expired only to repeat the same thing
The user hits the 7 WP threshold where they are mute and post-moderated for an extended period of time, but this inability to publicly comment prevents them from ever acquiring the last few points it would take for them to get banned, meaning the behavior repeats once the mute time (and thereby previous points) wear off.
That second point in particular means that in most situations, unless a user is either a dickwad in DMs, or does enough dickly things in a short enough period of time that they jump straight from 6-10, it's almost theoretically impossible for a user to be banned under the current system. Indeed, the number of users who have ever reached 10 points to be banned can probably be counted on one's fingers.
We've been going back and forth on the point of what to do about the effective inability to ban users for some time now. It's not that we have any particular desire to go off banning folks, but being able to do so at least in practical theory is a useful tool for us to keep the community tidy and kind. One of the solutions we have continually arrived at has been a rule that if a person acquires a certain number of points, expired or not, throughout their lifetime on Reborn, then they could be banned. This would mean that even if somebody is away or muted for long enough that all of their points fall off, we would still have a way to hold them accountable.
For a long time I, and some others were against this kind of system because it put those who made positive changes to their behavior in some kind of jeopardy, or otherwise discouraged making those changes. However, after updating to a more stringent mute policy earlier this year, I've been really encouraged by the positive effects I've seen in the community following them, and I wanted to take action to make sure that these positive changes could last.
So, the change is basically this:
Whereas a user currently needs 10 active warning points to be banned, in the future a user will need to have gotten 10 non-etiquette warning points at any time in their account's history in order to be banned.
Now I'll talk about that "non-etiquette" distinction. Most of the warnings we give out are just etiquette violations. That includes stuff like double posting, posting in the wrong section, off-topic posting, etc. This is normal keep-the-forum-organized stuff that most people, especially those not used to forums, sometimes forget. We aren't tryna hammer anyone for those, and we're also not trying to be too heavy-handed as a community.
So, effective as of this post, all normal etiquette warnings have been changed to 0 points*. Further, past and future etiquette warnings will not contribute to the lifetime cap.
In other words, you can't get banned for double posting or whatever.
* The repeat offense variations, for after someone has already been asked to mind their posts and questions, do still have a 1 point value attached to it as previous. This means you can still get muted if you continue to do things like bump threads a lot or post irrelevant things in topics. However, even the repeat offense warnings don't contribute to the lifetime cap-- that is solely for temporary consequences.
In other words, the only things that will contribute to the lifetime cap are things that fall in the realm of actually disrespecting others others or compromising the site's integrity as a community. For a full list of which warnings count as etiquette or otherwise, please see this updated warning list thread.
For those of you with pasts more rocky than you might prefer, you might be wondering if you'll suddenly be banned because of how many warnings you have in the past. The answer is a solid no. This lifetime warning policy is manually considered, and we will only consider the total lifetime volume of warnings when an individual acquires a new non-etiquette warning point (also effective after this post.)
This means that even if you have like, 83 old expired points right now, if you never get another one, then you're fine.
please don't get another one.
In the end, this change is only likely to expect a small handful of users, but I hope that it enables us to keep this a friendly and welcoming community far into the future.
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TL;DR:
Users are now banned when reaching 10 lifetime non-etiquette warning points instead of 10 current warning points
Etiquette warnings have been disarmed to 0 points
No accounts will be considered for bans regardless of how many points they have, until another warning is received after this post.
Thanks for listening. I always hope everyone can stay around for a long time and enjoy the site!