A reminder about forum policy

[Valik]

Some people seem to be under the misunderstanding that you are owed an explanation for being banned from this forum. Some of you are also under the misunderstanding that there has to be a reason for being banned. Neither of these are true. We reserve the right to ban anybody at any time for any reason and may do so without telling you.

Here are a few comments on being banned.

• Do not create multiple accounts. Having multiple accounts is a very good way to get banned permanently. Creating a new account to come back and talk to a moderator is a very good way to ensure all your accounts are permanently banned. There are other ways to contact moderators that are not nearly as offensive to the staff. For example, this email address can be used to contact someone about your ban.
• Don't waste our time contacting us when you knew you were going to be a ban. We will extend the ban. Really the only time you should ever contact a moderator about a ban is if you just wake up one morning and can't use your account like normal.
• Do not use the Report feature to contact a moderator about a ban. If you abuse the Report feature, you will be banned. Submitting multiple reports will get you banned as well as submitting false reports.
• Our bans are not always fair. Deal with it and move on. Asking once why you were banned or how long you were banned is fine. Whether or not you receive an answer, however, is irrelevant. Don't keep asking and don't complain about it or it will get worse. Also, complaining about the bans others have received is a good way for you to join them. Bans are not open for discussion to people outside the moderator and banned user.
• If you are banned and you start flooding our forum or issue tracker with spam in retaliation your ban is automatically justified no matter how good or bad the previous reason. Even if you were accidentally banned, if you start misbehaving in retaliation to a mistaken ban, you will not be unbanned. Act civilized or you will not be allowed back.
• Remember that spam doesn't just affect that one person you are pissed off at. For example, we have had to keep our issue tracker shut down because some rogue user is upset over something and none of us know why. As a result, there are periods of time where users can't create tickets. This leads to bugs not getting reported or huge delays in getting bugs reported and fixed which may cause them to miss releases. For those of you who still like AutoIt as a language but are upset at an individual staff member, this is a really counter-productive action.
• Further to the previous point about spamming Trac, cleaning it up is trivial but is disruptive. I had to stop development of new features on AutoIt to clean up the mess somebody left on Trac. It's not very conducive to furthering the language when you have to stop work on it to clean up after some immature user who would rather affect the entire community than take his personal grievances to the person in question he is upset at.
• Likewise, flooding the forum is almost equally as disruptive. Certain actions cause emails to be generated spamming all moderators, not just the one you are upset at. In addition, chances are, a completely different moderator is going to take time out of their day to clean up the mess. Not to mention all the innocent users who may not even realize what is going on who get caught in the cross-fire.

Edited January 27, 2009 by Valik