Tolerance towards permanent bans

Redstoner → Other → Tolerance towards permanent bans

I know this sounds really stupid, but please just listen.

There has been many permanent bans going on, and I have seen loads of permanent ban appeals. And even though they were trust worthy players, their appeals are still denied.

I remember very clearly back when Redstoner actually had tolerance towards permanently banned people, and seeing that we don’t even show tolerance anymore is quite sad. The people that had actual tolerance towards every ban appeals were just @Redempt and @Dico200 (No offense to the rest to the staff team).

And we had cases where permanent bans were tolerated, which I’m very glad about (Most recent one was about @lachy579’s ban). But what I noticed is that the decisions were biased. Now I’m not saying the staff team did anything wrong, but they mostly unban people that they really know for a long time (Lachy, Sac, et cetera), where as people that were only on Redstoner for a year or two gets ditched in the denied club.

Let’s take one example: AppaXD. He was a really good guy to most of the community, but I assume he hasn’t been playing on Redstoner as much as other people. And bam, he got tempbanned. Yet, he evaded the ban and gets a permanent ban. Yeet, it was (probably) about account insecurity, and he forgot to use /register OR left his minecraft open. But wait, there’s more! Appa made another appeal, sent from someone else (since his forum account is banned). And none of the staff team are giving their two cents about it. Yet, some people which I will not mention here, gets tolerated and gets back on Redstoner.

Isn’t this kind of biased for the new people? And what if they were realizing that what they did was wrong? What if they were actually promising not to do that again? What if they actually matured? What if they were actually sorry?

And no, don’t use the excuse “Permanent bans are permanent”. Appeals are made because their bans were unjustified or they were actually sorry about it.

Even though this is coming from a cheap builder such as me, but please, just please, ==consider this post==. And please, don’t get mad over me making this post. This is something that I think is probably worth talking about.

-GWJD

==EDIT==: Even though I made this thread about tolerance towards permanently banned players, if the players were given many chances before, I wouldn’t tolerate them that much.

Before I put my actual two cents in. Let’s get this straight. According to the rules/guidelines as it stands, it’s only for unjustified bans.

Actual two cents:

I do agree that people have matured and should be given a second chance. As I’ve seen permanent bans for what I think is only really a (maybe long) temp ban. So +1.

I think I know why staff has become so not lenient on ~two year bans. We accepted the first case, and as soon as we did it seemed like more and more people with a permanent ban were using the same reasoning.

+1 I think that people usually deserve second chances. If they don’t scream at everyone for banning them, then I think an appeal should be considered more often.

As much as I agree with your two cents about the reasoning being repeated, but repeated =/= lie. It could be actually true sometimes @minenash

Most people who get unbanned were only banned because they did something stupid, not something malicious. I don’t recall any time when a serious griefer was unbanned because they’ve ‘matured’. Most people on this server are teenagers and teenagers are dumb (me included), sometimes they do stupid shit. In my opinion if someone wants a permanent ban undone they should feel sorry about what they did and show that they have matured in some way, and also 1y+ time later. If they do all of those then I think an un-ban should be considered, if they were a prominent part of the community and we would like to see them come back (so long as they met the requirements above) they can get an un-ban. If people handle the situation poorly and act in an immature way then they are much less likely to be considered.

Thats just my 2¢ though.

True what you said doomblah, but

if they were a prominent part of the community and we would like to see them come back

Sometimes this is biased towards how long the player has been in the community. We tend to not care about new people that were actually nice on the community, and that’s quite sad. But I see where you are coming from, @Doomblah

If they are new to the community we can’t know them very well (if at all) thats not our bias thats just how it is.

Even though that may be true, but what if the person was actually quite nice, but we simply don’t know it? Wouldn’t it be a shame to just ban the player just because of the stupid action the player has done once? @Doomblah

GWJ, no it doesn’t mean lie, but it was the (practically) the surge of people doing it was the problem.

Well I mean, people would use the same reason over and over. But just because it is an overused reason, doesn’t mean you could just decide that the banned person should just stay banned (What if they were literally being serious about their reasoning? Just saying). @minenash

Theres more to it than “they are nice, they made a mistake”

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them a chance, right? @Doomblah

If you go to court and plead guilty but say you shouldn’t go to jail because “it was stupid” and you “won’t do it again”, you’re sure as shit still going to jail.

Ok there @PyjamaL1ama , I get your point. But, this is minecraft we’re talking about, not some irl strict stuff. In minecraft, stuff could be fixed quite easily compared to irl stuff. And most of the jailed parts aren’t permanent. So why can’t we give other people chances? Why? What’s gonna happen? Are you afraid the person will do the same thing again? Even though they might have been sorry about it?

And this is minecraft, not life. Minecraft isn’t as serious as IRL stuff, yes or no?

It was just a comparison. I’m happy with how we handle things currently, but I understand that not everyone else is.

To me, why should a player who will no-longer cause harm not be able to be part of the community for a thing they did 2 years ago.

Using the jail analogy, that’s like saying, why shouldn’t this person who will no longer cause trouble be able to go back into society? We do, don’t we?

I agree with you there, @minenash

How to appeal on a permanent ban:

I “am/do/promise” “sorry/more mature/regret it/to better myself” and I would be glad to be back.

That’s what people do. That’s not going to get you unbanned. Permanent bans are used as the last resort. They’re not used the same way as kicks are as they are way more severe. You won’t be unbanned by claiming to be more mature or to better yourself. The guidelines state that and that’s how we treat it.

You are talking about the case of this to which I replied. Llama also replied. There’s two staff members replying to the thread where “none of the staff team are giving their two cents about it”. And why was there no reason to go into more detail? Because if you read my reply you would find that I linked the original appeal - and if you read that then you would find that: What you said here about what actually happened with AppaXD is a lie. Also that what he said in his appeal was partially lies. And that his original appeal also was full of lies. So, let’s do the maths:

Person a, known for being ok with breaking the rules if it appears to be fun gets permbanned because they went too far
Person a then appeals on the forums as they think a permban was too harsh
Staff agrees and lifts the permban. It is now a tempban. ==You claimed that this was the initial state. That is not true. We started with a permban in the first place.==
Person a then decides to shorten their ban even more by evading it with an alt
Staff decides that Person a does not actually care about staff’s decisions and the rules which effectively just invalidates the perma ban lift. ==He did not get permabanned because he did ban evasion. He simply got denied the lighter punishment and was given the initial one again.==
Person a then lies about the alt not being their alt
Two years later Person a appeals on the forums again claiming that they do not have a forums account and without ever mentioning what has actually happened.
The appeal gets denied and Person b complains about it being denied despite the overwhelming evidence. Why? Because Person b did not read the evidence presented, nor is Person B interested in the truth of what has happened as their claims are also full of lies/simply wrong statements.

Moral of the story - you would unban someone who has received a permban, which was then reduced to a tempban, during that period they break the rules to get the permban back, then they lie, and then they appeal again with even more lies, just because they claim to have matured? I would say they might have matured, but have no interest in the server or its rules. If they had genuinly bettered then they wouldn’t have to hide facts or straight up lie about things. That’s my thought process behind my reply and closing of his appeal. I thought common sense took most of that away but apparently it did not. So here it is.

Now let’s get to the second appeal that you were talking about.

I have not replied on that thread. I would have generally given it a -1 as the permban based on the facts was a valid one. I didn’t get to reply on it but I will analyze the thought process of those that have replied to it. First, let me summarize what has happened:

Person c /up griefs and gets a permban.
Person c was never seen again since then. No attempts to log in. No appeals. No forums activity.
Ways later Person c comes back to find that they are banned and puts together an appeal on the forums.
There is no lies or misleading facts in the post, everything the person claims seems to match what has happened. The fact that they “only” /up griefed also supports this as a trusted rank player could basically delete every single plot they’re added on and the entirety of TR world within seconds. Which is not what has happened. So the person who was in control of the account at that time either didn’t intend to cause harm (I doubt that as actual harm was caused) or they simply didn’t know about the things they could’ve done (I think that’s more realistic). Also, Person c was trusted rank at the time meaning they got a good history with the server and have a high status in the general server ladder.

Now about the appeal:

Judging from the thread the appeal was not really following any of the format guidelines, which has been pointed out and then fixed
- Person c actually puts real effort into it as they maintain the thread. They should’ve figured this out before posting the appeal, but as they were told that they missed something they went out of their way to fix it.
Judging from the replies the unban was tied to conditions. It was not a simple “oh you’re sorry sure be unbanned”. Also it was #1’ed by yummy and dico, those don’t count. Sorry but both of them are very lenient with appeals.

Now about the actual topic of this post:

Appeals are made because their bans were unjustified or they were actually sorry about it.

Compare that with:

Appeals are supposed to be made because their bans were unjustified.

Someone being sorry does not get them out of jail. If they are truly sorry and they show it then it will shorten their sentence. That is what we do already, take a look at plenty of tempban appeals and you will find that. Take a look at the appeal that you were pointing too AppaXD and you will find exactly that. We lifted the permaban and replaced it with a tempban. We shortened the sentence because they were showing good will. However what we don’t do because it would:

be unjust for those that actually deserve to be unbanned
allow literally anyone no matter what they did to simply point at another appeal and say “hey this guy was sorry and I am too, unban me now”
kind of remove the idea behidn permanent bans

If you do bad enough to get a permanent ban, then you usually deserve it. And if you don’t, then you can make an appeal and we’ll figure it out. If the ban was unjust, it will be lifted. If it was however executed correctly and it’s a “yeah it’s just that I’m sorry and I want to come back” appeal then I see no reason why we would want to unban people based on that.

Hmm, I understand your point @Pepich1851 , Appa denied the tolerance that has been given and then was given a perm ban, correct?

Well in that case, it’s probably something for the staff to solve.

Though my point is that I would like to see tolerance towards some people. Just because they did something stupid once doesn’t mean they would do it again. And as long as they don’t scream or unpolitely ask for an unban, they should be unbanned.

==edit==: also, right, you did reply on that appeal. My bad.