So, a permaban also prevents that user from making any more accounts to bandodge? How would that realistically work, then? Would it be based on IP, email or something totally different?
My stance on bandodging is if I catch you bandodging then I will permaban you, no if ands or buts. I don't care how minor the original offense was, bandodging displays a willing and malicious disregard for the authority of the staff to police the community. By bandodging you're basically giving the middle finger to the staff, as if the rules do not apply to you. We've made it hilariously easy to appeal your convictions, and hell the appeals forum clearly states if you see this you're in trouble so post here. There is literally no excuse to bandodge.
If you insist on playing cat and mouse I will whack every rereg you make. I don't, however, spend all my hours hunting for reregged people to whack. We don't IP ban except in special circumstances because it is very easy to catch innocent users. We do log IPs though so it is fairly trivial to put together who is who when someone reregs. There is a natural limit of one account per email anyways. Generally the class of person who does bandodge isn't very intelligent in the first place. Even then I've had a couple of "persistent" people but they generally only get a couple of posts in before it becomes obvious who is who. You may be able to get past the initial IP checks and fool that, but trust me, behaviors will give you away quickly enough.
Basically if I can't tell which banned user you are (and trust me, I can), then generally that means you've adjusted your behavior and we no longer have an issue. Punishments are given out here because you've become a nuisance to the community in some manner. The rules really only cover behaviors that are undesirable and disruptive to the community at large. The only rule that isn't so much a "disruptive" behavior is the piracy ban and that's in place out of respect for ZUN and other content creators. And even with the piracy bans, if you show remorse or at least an understanding not to do that again, we generally let you off with a warning. Probations/bans come into play when you repeat said behaviors after you've already been told a few times to knock it off.
If you manage to blend in well enough that you aren't completely obvious, then generally that means you've fixed whatever bad behavior that got you in trouble in the first place. We no longer really have an issue with you. But I can say with 99.999999999999999999999999999% certainty that if you hit the level of permaban, barring a miracle, you're not going to fix your behavior and you will stick out like a sore thumb and you will get rebanned. If you were capable of fixing your behavior you wouldn't be getting permabanned in the first place. It is reallllllllllly hard to get banned here.
On that note, is there any sort of USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST mechanism here, or is the Banned-type avatar the only indication?
Just wondering since I'm new-ish here and looking through older threads and seeing the original poster having the Banned avatar is kinda unnerving to me for some reason.
No, I do not believe in public shaming as a method of "curbing" behavior. I've been on SomethingAwful, I've lived with that kind of moderation. Believe me for a time I used to agree with it, but I've seen the end result and I don't want people to fear the staff or have animosity towards us. Does that make us a more lax place? Probably, but let's be honest here, there really aren't that many rules here in the first place, and we collect the large amounts of people here because we're NOT like other forums with that kind of totalitarian deathgrip.
I STRONGLY adhere to the "praise in public, punish in private" method of moderation. Your offenses are between the staff and yourself, noone else. Noone else is privy to the log of bans, we do not want bans and such to hang around people's necks like albatrosses (or worse, being worn as badges of honor). We do not discuss the punishments of other users with other people (unless permabanned, and those are so rare they're stories in and of themselves). There's people here you would never suspect have ran afoul of us from time to time, and we like to keep it that way.
This is why we make our rules so general and judge more towards "common sense" and interactions with the community at large. Consider it more of a list of "do's" and "don'ts". We don't have a list of hidden rules you trip and you get in trouble for, but at the same time we expect a level of maturity from people and feel we don't have to spell out every single case. We don't want to deal with the class of person who intentionally rides every rule to the edge just to hide behind the letter and not the spirit of it. That being said we try to be as unambiguous as possible when dealing with situations, and if there does come up a case where we feel a precedent has to be set, we will announce it openly (while withholding who was involved of course).
